When This Blows Over

America does have a number of problems with lack of accessibility
to public life. But the biggest one is that women have historically
had no actual access to the presidency at all – rich, poor, black,
white, young, old, experienced or fresh. This problem needs
sorting more urgently than any other. Happily, the means by which
the sorting can start have been, since Sunday, easily to hand.
Nothing would break the male monopoly on the US presidency
quite like a female president would. Quite clearly.
But the plain truth is that it has proved impossible up until
now for a woman to be head of the US. (Or the “free world”,
as they like, hypocritically, to put it.) The US may have been
offered a choice between a Bush and a Clinton before. But
they’ve never been offered a choice between a man and a
woman, let alone opted for the latter. Some Americans are
more free than others: which, in the land of opportunity, is
catastrophically appalling, a huge, oppressive stain on the
world.
And I do mean the world. How can America complain about the
treatment of women in other countries and cultures – which it does
– when its own democratic system is so manifestly inadequate in
this regard? America’s biggest problem is that it over-idealizes its
own perfection, and therefore believes that what it has to offer is so
perfectly precious that corners can be cut in inducting the rest of
the world into its joys. America still kills and tortures because it
believes its moral authority is impregnable. It’s quite astounding
that a country that still refuses to be led by a person who is a nonman
believes that its own pure and refined liberal democracy is
ready to be gifted to the rest of the globe.
No doubt many people consider it wrong to believe that Clinton
should be president “just because she’s a woman”. No doubt many
feminists are troubled by the way that Clinton is following in
footsteps trodden first by her husband.