Paul found God on the road to Damascus. Columbus discovered America on his 32nd day at sea. Now, after decades in public life, Hillary Clinton has gone and found herself among the voters of New Hampshire.
It was a genuine Sally Fields moment -- of the star connecting to her fans. "I listened to you," Clinton said in her victory speech, "and I found my own voice."
Desperate to find transcendent meaning in the momentary political preference of a couple of hundred thousand New Hampsherites, pundits almost unanimously embraced the conclusion that what Americans wanted in their commander in chief was a human, preferably one who acted genuinely, authentically human.
It didn't take much really -- misty eyes and an expression of frustration. But that was enough, apparently, to prove to a sufficient number of voters that Clinton was indeed not just a real human but a real female human.
"This is her essential self," crowed one of her biographers, Carl Bernstein, on CNN, as if the candidate had finally dug deep enough to strike something real. "Hillary is being more like Hillary," said NBC's David Gregory. And they all agreed that being herself made her seem more "human." What a brilliant campaign strategy!
But not everyone would have predicted that Clinton's emotional moment would play so well. On the very day Clinton allowed her feelings to seep through her famously controlled exterior, iconic feminist Gloria Steinem argued in a New York Times Op-Ed article that Clinton could never employ Barack Obama's moving public style "without being considered too emotional." Leave it to Clinton to prove her wrong.
The "politics of authenticity" mean different things at different times. In the late 1960s and 1970s, for white men, it meant being earthy and organic in a phony, establishmentarian world. For minorities and women, it meant having to fit into a narrowly drawn political definition of group membership. Traces of that thinking still linger. You'll still hear murmurs about whether this or that candidate is black or Latino enough. And don't forget that time Steinem called Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a "female impersonator" because the Texas lawmaker wasn't a strong supporter of abortion rights.
For years, some feminists held that politics defined the boundaries of authentic womanhood, and women in general have been convinced that to wield corporate power, they have to obscure most attributes we commonly associate with femininity.
