With so much going for her Hillary still found there was a limit

Jun 9 2008 By Sarah Evans

"My daughters and women everywhere... now know there are no limits to their dreams," said the victorious Obama, recognizing the place of Hillary Clinton in history.

But she lost and the fortunes of Hillary Clinton are the fortunes of her generation and class of women throughout the West. Her successes are their successes and her failures, theirs.

She left Yale Law School as top of her year and like so many women before her, she married youngish, a man who had success written all over him, accepting that she would support his career plan rather than forge her own independent path.

She produced an intelligent, focused, loyal daughter.

Her critics would say that Hillary has built her huge political experience on the back of her husband's success but then what else was she to do?

She made the most of the choice she had made but it had a downside.

It is not easy to imagine the powerful political women round the globe taking time out to indulge in sordid little liaisons but Hillary won the admiration of women everywhere for her behaviour as revelation after tawdry revelation of her husband's dalliances hit the headlines.

Attention of the media has focused not only on her mistakes - the supposed sniper fire being a classic whoopsadaisy moment - but excessively on her voice, hair style and weight.

In this too she is typical of how successful women have been diminished in media coverage.

On occasion the gender agenda works in her favour.

Just as when Mrs Thatcher appeared thoroughly shaken to learn her son was lost in the desert, so have moments of vulnerability endeared Hillary to her various audiences.

Her media reaction to Bill's flirtations was one and her response to defeats has been another.

In straight career terms, Hillary has built unrivalled political experience through her own work in the White House and as a Senator.

She has not been a state governor but arguably what she has done is wider and better preparation for a world leader.

Why didn't she get the nomination? Endless reasons both to do with minute strategic details, her flaws, Barack Obama's strengths are in circulation.

But for many women it seems as though it is proof that at this stage in history, not enough people can yet countenance a female world leader.

Hillary is wrong when she says that America is ready for a woman serving as commander-in-chief.

It is hard to imagine a man or a women having much more than Hillary Clinton had going for her.

Intelligent, articulate, experienced, she also has a wonderful daughter, charming husband, unbeatable political networks in Washington and the ability to raise the extraordinary funds needed for a presidential campaign - what, other than gender, was wrong?

Like many successful women, she has not sought to challenge the male model of leadership.

She has been willing to play the game in the way men have defined leadership since Neolithic times.

She has taken on the charismatic, aggressive, competitive style and although women may have sensed other possibilities within her, she has not sought to do anything other than what men have done, only a lot better.

She hasn't shaken the establishment - she has had more in common with high profile men than the general run of women.

She represents one of the divides that so split the 70s' women's movement, the separation between radical feminists who sought to direct the movement away from male power constructs and socialist feminism with its emphasis on equal opportunities, meritocracy and power sharing.

Hillary Clinton is the pinnacle where socialist feminism has lead. And at the moment it is not enough.

In time it will be - Obama is right - and Hillary Clinton will be seen to have smoothed the path for the next generation of women.

But radical feminists would argue it is not enough at a fundamental level.

That until there is a critical mass of powerful women to challenge the male model of leadership and rid the world of aggressive competition, power posturing and bullying, the world will not move forward and is allowing that male model to lead it to destruction.

Barack Obama may have huge strengths but for a generation of women his only place in history will be as the obstacle that stopped a woman get to the White House.