Just a quirk on my part (too long in another culture?), but I'd feel better about Hillary if her gender didn't come into it. That it does is mostly not her fault -- if at all. I agree with Mamaj's comment about her stick-to-it-iveness.
But I'd like to see her discussed without reference to personality, looks, Bill, and gender, just as I wish the Dem candidates could now be discussed in terms of issues, not eclat and dough. Where I've gone brain-dead on Hillary is with respect to her original health plan. As someone who favors national health of some kind, I remember not having the usual knee-jerk reaction to it. But I've forgotten the particulars.
Oh Tartarin - how could her gender not come into it? That's a huge part of the discussion. And her personality, Bill - all these things go into what she is, and help make her visible as what she is. Churchill's persona was always there, and was part of him, and could not be separated from any other part. It is the parts, after all, that make up the whole.
And yes, I wish to hell someone would start talking persuasively and in a leadership way about a lot of the issues - and national health (or something similar) is one of the things I wish they'd REALLY talk about, instead of pussyfooting around with this and that. One of the biggest arguments against privatization is the HMO. And some figures recently released compared the percentage of money that went into administrative costs of HMOs vs medicare. Much more, of course, on the HMOs, but it explained that their profit margins as private corps was taken into consideration. It seems to me that this represents a fairly simple way to do some of it, but complicated ways are more in a politician's line. The Clinton plan was complicated, but did contain far more elements of a national health plan. I think part of it was complicated by the almost ununderstandable language Ira Magaziner couched it in. If we ever get a candidate who speaks plainly about plain issues, I'll salute him/her.
