As Barack Obama and Joe Biden inch toward the end of their terms, they’re taking some time to reflect on the narratives that defined them. Biden enjoyed an “Uncle Joe” reputation, the guy who says all the wonderful and cringe-worthy things your too-drunk male relatives might blurt out at Christmas dinner. And Obama, a freshman senator whose run for the presidency could have seemed overly ambitious, was able to spin that bravado into an inspiration for America’s youth.
If they were women, the public narratives around their candidacies might have looked different. On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Biden told host (and Slate columnist) John Dickerson that he’s benefited from a “double standard” that would work against a female candidate like Hillary Clinton. “I get all of this credit for being authentic, and you know, and now even Biden gaffes are now, you know, ‘Biden tells the truth’ kind of thing,” he said. “But I’m a guy.”
Biden said when he tears up while talking in public about his son, Beau, who died of cancer last year, people say things like, “Well, he’s just a good decent father, honorable man.” If Clinton were to cry during a speech, Biden mused, “you’d have a chorus of, ‘She’s playing the woman card here. She’s crying.’ A little bit like Michelle. Anytime Michelle Obama said something strong, ‘Well, she’s an angry black woman.’”
Because of the increased scrutiny Clinton has faced, and because a public that’s not used to seeing women seeking power is less forgiving of any flub-ups, Clinton has made fewer gaffes and mistakes than most other candidates. This has had the paradoxical effect of making some people dismiss her as unemotional, closed-off, or robotic. A female Joe Biden, in other words, wouldn’t last long in politics.
Obama, who’s been getting incrementally woker on issues of gender, raised another political double standard in his interview on Monday’s Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. When Bee asked Obama what persistent strain of bigotry would trail a President Hillary Clinton the way birther nonsense has followed him, the president mentioned attacks on her disposition. “I think the equivalent will be ‘She’s tired. She’s moody. She’s being emotional,’” he said.
The idea that Clinton can’t be trusted is another product of the impossible standards women in politics face, Obama suggested. “When men are ambitious, it’s just taken for granted: ‘Well, of course, they should be ambitious,’” he told Bee. “When women are ambitious: ‘Why?’ That theme, I think, will continue throughout her presidency, and it’s contributed to this notion that somehow she is hiding something.” Lucky for Clinton, all she has to do to access four years of convincing us otherwise is beat the guy who won’t show us his tax returns.
