The XX Factor: What women really think.

No Tears For Hillary Today

In the past couple of days, walking around the carnival that's U Street in Washington and gaping at the throngs lined up at Busboys and Poets -- which looks likely to become the Obama era's Smith Point and Cafe Milano rolled into one -- I've speculated with a few people about how different a John McCain inaugural would have been.

But you have to wonder what a Hillary inaugural would have looked like, too. A little more than a year ago, that's what we looked bound to have, right? The answer, I'd imagine, is a similar type of thing, with fewer kitsch tables set up outside Ben's Chili Bowl, and a little more Rob Reiner and less Tom Hanks. I suspect a good part of this excitement would have appended itself to any admirable Democrat about to sweep George W. Bush out of office.

Some of Hillary's ardent supporters here still feel wistful about what could have been. In the Washington Hilton on Sunday, I ran into Rep. Maxine Waters, the irrepressible Hillary-booster from L.A., waiting for her huge coat after an EMILY's List lunch. Hillary had just spoken to the EMILY's List women, briefly reminiscing about the "18 million cracks" she made in the glass ceiling and going on to explain how a Secretary of State might be able to improve the lot of women around the world. I asked what Waters thought of Hillary's speech, and Waters gave me a sad smile. "I'm glad she landed on her feet," she shrugged. "So I'm happy for her. But I'm sad for her, too." The city's sense of feeling sad for Hillary was amplified yesterday, of course, when it was reported that Jill Biden had blithely told Oprah that her hubby Joe had been given a choice between the vice-presidential post or Hillary's Secretary of State gig. Politico's Ben Smith wrote that the anecdote "has to make Hillary just slightly insecure about the power of her own job relative to his."

Boo hoo. It's inauguration day. Can we, today, finally put a moratorium on feeling sorry for Hillary Clinton? For ages now, pity has been the dominant emotion associated with Hillary: Pity that her husband embarrassed her, pity that the media mis-covered her, pity that she didn't get the nomination for prez, pity that Obama supposedly never vetted her for veep, pity about her insecurity vis-a-vis Biden, etc. The pity actually diminishes Hillary, because it makes her look fragile, like she can't handle the slightest public diss of the kind that happens to all politicians, eventually. Geez, who even cares if Biden was offered the choice? Maybe Hillary was offered a different choice. I don't feel remotely sorry for her today. She landed in a fascinating, influential role she only would have gotten if Team Obama respected her, and I can't wait to see how she transforms it.