Here's the drumbeat—Hillary Rodham Clinton is a strange test case for a what-if we women have been rehearsing for decades. What would be the chances that the most significant run for the presidency by a woman would be made by someone with more baggage than a ball team headed to an away game: a former First Lady, married to one of the most polarizing political figures in modern American history, who had suffered the public humiliation of his sexual perfidy? What would be the chances that she would survive all that to enter the Senate, then to mount what all believed would be a cakewalk to the Democratic nomination, only to be parried, not by the right wing or entrenched bigotry but by youth and eloquence and a colleague who symbolized a newer new America than she did?
But just because all this makes it difficult to parse the double standard surrounding Senator Clinton's candidacy doesn't mean the double standard no longer exists, or shouldn't be acknowledged. There may be many reasons apart from her gender—past, positions, personality—that have led people to turn away. But there has also been an inescapable undercurrent of bias. It's summed up in the word "calculating," which is often used to describe the senator in as witchy a way possible. There is no male politico equivalent for "calculating," except perhaps "business as usual."