‘Crooked’ or Cursed? – Hillary Clinton and the Curse of Likability

“You don’t have to like her – she’s not going to call you!” – Fran Lebowitz

Is political success all just a popularity contest? Like a 2000’s coming-of-age movie, is it those we want to be – the Regina George’s of the world – who get our vote for prom queen, the only natural precursor to world leader? While we hope our voting patterns are more nuanced than who we deem the most likable, for female candidates in American politics, it is the all-important hurdle.

Hillary Clinton, the most qualified presidential candidate in American history, had a ‘likability issue’ which permeated her personal and political life since she was the First Lady of Arkansas. ‘Hillary [has] three decades’ worth of animosity [behind her],’ one Democratic strategist told POLITICO recently, ‘it [is] just the way the world [treats] her.’ The harsh words and names of political pundits and opponents have trailed Hillary for years – ‘unlikable’, ‘shrill’, ‘abrasive’ – despite the old saying, sticks and stones would have hurt the Clinton campaign less. Why is it that a First Lady, a first woman to be elected by a major party to run for the presidency, got pipped at the final hurdle – to be the first female president of the United States? Her likability issue.

In 2008, the two candidates for the Democratic nomination were at loggerheads – one was experienced, one was charming. At a debate between the two, when the experienced Clinton was questioned on her likability, the charming Obama flatly interjected – ‘you’re likable enough, Hillary.’ The then Senator of New York awkwardly laughed as she grasped at an answer, visibly thrown by the question which would repeat itself until her shocking defeat to Donald Trump in 2016. A question rarely put to her male counterparts, many are assured that Hillary’s presidential loss was not a freak incident of far-rightism – it was sexism.

During the 2016 campaign, Isaac Saul wrote an article for The Washington Post entitled, ‘I Despise Hillary Clinton, And It Has Nothing To Do With Her Gender‘. In words which swam in circles, Saul defended the ‘Bernie Bros’ who were being accused of sexism against Bernie Sanders’ opposition. He cited Hillary’s controversial support for the wars she backed as Secretary of State as his rationale behind his hatred, pleading with his readers to understand that his animosity toward Clinton was not gender-based, but well-founded. His stance was reiterated by Janet Polak in the Los Angeles Times, Hillary’s loss was not because she was a woman, she wrote, it was because ‘she was the wrong woman.’ In a democracy, this is perfectly plausible. A candidate is not necessarily the best one because they are a man or a woman, and no one is obligated to agree on who is in fact ‘the best’. But, as political analysts drive themselves insane in the fight to discover how it is they missed a Trump victory, it poses the question; if Hillary was the best, why is she not president? A weak candidate maybe, but weaker than Trump? Impossible.

Clinton’s issue of likability cost her the presidency, as it costs many American women a promotion, a pay rise, an invite to the office Christmas party. Marianna Cooper detailed the uphill-battle women face in the workplace in The Harvard Business Review, arguing that allegations of aggression are more likely to be made about women than they are about men. The behaviours which are seen as conducive to success are considered inherently masculine traits and as such, when these behaviours are displayed by women, they are inconducive to our expectations of what a woman should be. In the case of Hillary Clinton, her favourability ratings have sunk each time she has sought more power in politics. According to Gallup, an American pollster, Clinton ‘has tended to be quite popular when she is no longer seen as a political figure’. When viewed as merely the First Lady, Hillary achieved some of her highest approval ratings ever. When she ran for the Senate, she faced another drop, and another when she ran for 2008 candidacy, and another when she was announced as Secretary of State. Each time her favourability ratings recovered, but each time Hillary sought more in her career, the public retaliated – in the case of 2016, they did so to the extreme.

Brit Hume of FOX News described the female presidential candidate as looking ‘composed, smug sometimes… not necessarily attractive’ – the holy trinity of an egregious woman. For Hillary, her husbands misdeeds became her own in 2016 as she faced taunts from newscasts of Trump rallies. Chants of ‘Lock her up!’ echoed from television screens as The Donald hunted down her hidden emails while his own tax returns remained buried. Following the release of the Access Hollywood tape where the Republican candidate explained to Billy Bush his tricks of seduction which implied sexual assault, Trump deflected that Bill Clinton had ‘said far worse to me on the golf course.’ Rehashed tellings of the Lewinsky affairs became a Trump ticket to news headlines as he marched seven women alleging sexual assault claims against Bill Clinton in front of a press conference. Despite three divorces, infidelities and sexual assault allegations to boot, Trump remained unscathed in the Republican opinion. According to Gallup, 71% of red voters viewed Trump favourably, just 4% viewed Hillary in a positive light.

While her links to Wall Street, her missing emails or her support for military intervention are a logical reason to abstain from voting Clinton, when contesting a candidate such as Trump – they just don’t hold up. In reality, the United States seem to be grappling with what it defines as a woman, what it expects from a female leader. “You’ve heard people say, ‘I’d vote for a woman, just not that woman”, Hillary told the Eagleton Institute last March, “I’m often ‘that’ woman”. For Democrats, the party is debating how wise running another female candidate is in 2020 – they fear Hillary’s loss was not a fluke of a weak candidate who happened to be a woman, it was because she is a woman.

History appears destined to repeat itself in the Democratic candidacy of Elizabeth Warren in 2020. Her likability was a non-issue in 2016 with over 200,000 people signing a petition to encourage her to make a bid for the White House. She was beloved, warm and without controversy, and yet three years later a USA Today/Suffolk Poll has revealed that more people now oppose her 2020 candidacy than support it. A satirical piece by Devorah Blachor articulates the decay of Warren’s likability perfectly, ‘I Don’t Hate Women Candidates – I Just Hated Hillary and Coincidentally I’m Starting to Hate Elizabeth Warren.’ What happened to Elizabeth Warren since 2016? She inherited Hillary’s curse – the ‘likability issue’.

Warren, in asking for more power in politics as Hillary did, is perhaps now seen by the American public as asking for too much. The quest for the presidency for female candidates such as Warren does not begin with how they are different from Trump, it is how they are not Hillary. The popular vote means nothing to a voting system which favours the best, the most likable and, arguably, the male.

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