Booktv has covered many of these candidates and you can watch the montel web site, booktv. Org. [laughter] tell me when to start. Yes, okay. Welcome do these work . I am not used to this High Technology at the library. Usually we are passing around is not working . Can you hear me in the back . Just for you. Got it. I dont have to talk into it. I am really not used to this. Welcome tonight to the Bethesda Library and our program, one of many, this is the beginning of the elections season. Seems like it has been going on forever. We are here to introduce joanne and her book, the book she edited, love her not the hillary paradox. She is an Award Winning independent journalist, author, political media strategy attorney and acknowledged expert on women in the media. She is publisher and editor in chief of the Award Winning digital magazine broadside as well as former Award Winning blog, the pundit mama. Her first book was an amazon bestseller mothers of intention how women in social media are revolutionizing politics in america. I will let her introduce her panel. Welcome to the library and welcome to the panel. Thank you all for being here. Thank you so much for the introduction. Thank you so much for everybody being here tonight. We are here to talk about a book that i created and curators, and talking to a lot of contributors, love her love her not the harry paradox. It is a research and policy, a collection of 28 essays by women writers from all over the country of diverse backgrounds of every kind, weighing in on the question that has bothered me for a long time ever since the 2008 election, so many articless and things in the media about Hillary Clinton and is she likable, is she not likable, what do we think about her personally . Is she authentic or not . Is her personality something that we like . We tend to look at her more in those terms that her actual qualifications and experience yet there have been very few articles that called explore why we seem to have these feelings about her that we dont with regard to any other politician male or female. Granted i had this idea before donald trump came on the scene, 2014, but i did not have my crystal ball to see a picture of donald trump and whether he was particularly likable or not but for the most part most politicians dont have this question asked about them. There are innumerable articles with hillarys likability problem, more than likable enough, hillarys likability crisis, hillarys likable, so what . I thought it was time we dealt into this bill little bit especially as we are preparing to decide are we ready to elect our first woman president or not . I would like to introduce the panelistss before i do that, i am going to read it little bit from the introduction and introducer each panelist and we will do a little bit of a reading and questions and q a from the audience. As i was putting this together i did a lot of research. Believe it or not there have been many Academic Studies about hillary from 2008, so many that by the time this campaign is over we could probably have a curriculum for degree in hillary studies. I thought it was important to try to look at that research and include it in the introduction so the we have put lens through which to view the various opinions of the women writers, those who love her, those who love her not, those who are on the offense. I want to read from the introduction to give you a little bit of that flavor. Why do we play the hilary duff hate card with such vigor . It is less about whether she voted for war in iraq, what she knew about benghazi, her votes in the senate or as she once infamously remarks, whether she should have forsaken her professional goals to stay home, bake cookies and have tea. I think it is because she did to embrace through her life more in one version of herself, presenting a three dimensional view of modern womanhood rather than a prepackaged portrayals of many of us expecting any politician especially women in the harsh national spotlight. Hillary clinton brazenly dared to step out in the most public of ways from expectations of winning general and first ladies in particular. She landed in one of the most gendered roles in america that of first lady of arkansas when her husband served as the youngest governor in the country and she has been trying to escape the constraints of that role ever since. In 1992 at the age of 45 she was the kind of first lady we had never seen on the national stage, someone who was already an accomplished professional in her own right with a life separate from that of her husband that she dared to cultivate. For many voters even decades after womens lib she was viewed as a wife who didnt know her place rather than someone representing the majority of women at the time, those working outside the home in their own careers. Using too big 4 bridges, too ambitious for a politicians wife, too educated cough too smart, some said smarter than her husband. Who knew whether we could trust a woman with that kind of agenda. Said is just a little bit of the introduction that helps frame the essays that we are going to be reading from tonight and discussing and hopefully you all will have some good questions for us so i would like to introduce the wonderful panelists. To my right is barack point aeriala, professional feminists, writer and mom, took her degree in biological sciences with a minor and womens studies internal into a career looking at diversity, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Veronica is director of the behalf of women and girls recognized by her coworkers with women of the year award, community with Chicago Foundation for women and that the word and by the white house organizational president ial award for excellence in science, mathematics and engineering entering. Her blog has been named top Political Blog by many organizationss. Writing can be found at usa today, New York Times and ms. Magazine, she is on the board of directors at fidgety and her current project hatched and the 3557 this selfy project teams to have people that themselves every day and see the beauty everyone else sees. To her right is Kathryn Reynolds lewis, washington d. C. Based Award Winning independent journalist who covers issues related to work, gender, diversity, parenting and education. A regular fortune contributor byline has also appeared in mother jones, the atlantic, Bloomberg Business week and the New York Times. She is active in the nation american journalists association, the American Association of journalists and authors and the society of professional journalists, graduate of harvard university, the proud parent of three children. To her right is a list of worthington who grew up in baltimore and began writing 2009 at the age of 40, sometimes her riding follows the seinfeld of love no learning no hugging. Other times it involves a lot of things. She writes about life, liberty and happiness at her blog the worthington post and her work appears at the broadsides a lawn. Herpes for the broadside leaving gender at the door won her voice of the year award in 2013 and she won an additional voice of the year award in 2015. Last but not least is Jennifer Hall lee, filmmaker and writer, her film feminist stories from womens liberation is an independent film about the womens liberation movement, she has worked for many years in hollywood as a visual effects producer and editor on many films including forest gump and parts of the caribbean ii, she was named as one of the global ambassadors for the global Media Monitoring project, she grew up in atlanta and staten island, graduated from Hampshire College and now lives in los angeles, calif. Please welcome our panel of contributors. [applause] what i thought we would do is have a very short reading from each of our respective essays and ask the contributors as well as myself to answer the question why they chose their topics and why they thought it was important for the 2016 election. Veronica, why dont you get us started . My essay is entitled hillarys privilege. Hillary Rodham Clinton successfully shatter the class stealing from women president ial candidates, she will need to grab a sledge hammer from her privileged knapsack. Oh yes, that knapsack, mcintosh taught so many of us in 1989, that knapsack that holds so many of our unconsidered privileges like White Privilege and class privilege that color our perceptions. It holds the money sledgehammer that she requires to snatch away into the white house in her own right. And get the votes of women who dont carry the same knapsack by breaking down inherent problems in her wellintentioned family policies. Hillary and her entourage may think that the key to a 2016 white house victory is establishing the Democratic Party with wind men i contend for her to succeed she must win the hearts of lowincome women and women of color. In 2008 president obama not only overwhelmingly won africanamerican, latino and asian voters but also triumphed with a majority of voters who earn less than 50,000 a year, increased the edge of voters of color in 2012 and maintained favorability with lowincome voters. According to the Brookings Institute and Pure Research center the diver suffocation of the electorate will only continue to grow which suggests any president ial candidate in the future must appeal to many diverse constituencies. As of latina i know that in order for the right to win us over she needs to spend more quiet time with her knapsack and show voters in those groups more respect. She doesnt have a great record of doing that. Tell us what prompted you to write that and say and what personal experience led you to write that. I wrote this as a after rehearing Hillary Clinton speak at Clinton Global Institute conference in chicago. I was excited to hear her. As critical as i am i and a critical fan of her and she was talking about maternal policies, what we need to do to make sure everyone in the world has a healthy pregnancy and healthy birth and healthy infants but away she was framing the policies in her remarks were more about telling and educating women around the world, how to be good mothers as if poor women dont know how to the mothers as opposed to not having access to the things that will make some good mothers, clean water, healthy food, regular medical care, and just the way her framing is, she needs to adjust that frame and i believe that will bring more women of color, i wrote that as a right after that experience, and to dust it off and update it in a little bit for the anthology so i was excited for that. Do you think she has made any shift in that since you saw her to what she is saying today . I think she is trying. She is really struggling with that. I really think there is a large group of people in this country especially in the Democratic Party who want to be helpful in be empowering for people but dont understand their framing can come off as buried i am struggling with the right word, offensive. As opposed to understanding. Most women understand what they need to be healthy during pregnancy and how to care for their children but dont always have access to that. What do you think she should be doing to fix that . Others then you, who do you think should be advising her on this . Obviously it has been talked about that women of color are a Significant Community sheeny did she wants to win the white house . Guest she needs to have a cohort of people especially women of color who are not in her inner circle, or not in this political circles, really going out and talking to women who are not doing politics on a regular basis. Everyday women and see what their lives are, what their realities are. As cynical as some people might think, take a day off or take an afternoon off and see what it means to get on a bus in chicago and have to dig two buses to get to a Grocery Store and have to decide how you are going to spend your snap money and not by a cart full of lime but figuring out do you by the healthy fruit and vegetables you know your kids need or do you by the box of macaroni and cheese that will last longer. To see those kinds of things as opposed to reading it in reports. Kathryn, want to read a portion, tell us the title of your essay and read the section that you chose. My essay is called what i learned from hillary. One of the facts in hillary Rodham Clintons biography the always loomed large in her mind is her college degree. When i was an undergraduate at harvard in the 1919s, buses brought students into the square each weekend almeida and dressed for romantic battles. They were our competition for men and they tilted the malefemale balance at the parties and clubs to put us at a disadvantage. My female friends and i considered the wellesley girls our sworn enemies. At the time i couldnt understand why any straight girl would choose to attend the womens college. I was 18, full of hormones and eager to be in as close proximity to as many boys as possible. Plus the young feminist indeed considered it a cop out to retreat to female only classes and lecture halls. At the time i thought how could you prove you were as good as or better than the men if you werent going toe to toe with an academically . I chose physics as my major or concentration as harvard called in after the boys in my freshman entryway scoffed at my decision to sign up for physics v, you never last they predicted. I was determined to prove them wrong and worthy of what i considered the finest college in the world. I assumed anyone at wellesley would have enrolled at harvard if she had a Strong Enough academic record to win acceptance. Can we blame my educational snobbery on newyouth . Did you choose this topic . What resonated with use a you wanted to think about womens colleges vs coed colleges as they relate to women in leadership . First of all i hope everyone will buy the book and read the essay. As shallow as i may have sounded in that excerpt, i think it has evolved somewhat since the 1990s. I chose a topic because hillary really was shaped by her Wellesley College experience, not only the Commencement Speaker for her graduating class, that brought her to national attention, the cover of Time Magazine and in a sense was her first taste of something political or something very prominent and also just because the relevance of female only education is a fascinating topic and it is almost more interesting now that women can attend any college we went to, why do you choose to have a female only space . What is the value in some of those spaces . What is the power in womens solidarity . In her political career you have seen some of the power of that with her closest confidants dating back to her college days and also the way we in the media like to make everything a cat fight for hit the women against each other. Carly fiorina or Hillary Clinton, you cant have them both or theres only room at the top for one and that kind of dynamic can be very poisonous i think. You explore in the essay about the networking aspect and your experience with women and networking given your coed experience versus what there might be with women and how do you think that impact not just hillary in the campaign but women moving forward . As i was saying, we often have this choice of working together, and every one to raise all those or to have this sense of fair is going to only be one or two or three successful women or whenever, lets not help each other out. I definitely think it is interesting to look back at her history and the way she is using those relationships, not in a negative way but kept those connections strong and relied on people she knew from those females bases and as myself looking back and thinking i didnt even consider it because i didnt see any value and looking back i see i was always somewhat of a secondclass citizen, many colead educational spaces. Would it have been different . It would have been if i had been at a Womans College because there would have been no men to put me down for not being a good enough whatever the case might have been. That is something you talk to your daughters about . They are not college age yes. One is already through. I definitely talk to them but i also dont want to plant ideas in their head about not being good enough for needing to somehow be helped because being a female, a topic of conversation but more said they raised it and i try to strengthen their backbone. Great, thank you. Tell us the title of your s a and share with us the parts you are going to read. My essay is entitled i walk the line, Hillary Clinton versus the foreign. I guess i can just i will just read and talk about how it came about. John kerry wrote a poignant forward to the 2014 book about the iconic 1960s group peter paul and mary. Years that john kerry who took over as secretary of state after Hillary Clintons departure and former u. S. Senator from massachusetts. In the foreword he writes with great poetry and beauty about the impact the group had on him throughout formative and Tumultuous Times in his life and his eventual friendship with an inspiration from members of the group. Of mary he wrote, quote, she was always guided by the advice she got from her mother be careful of compromise, she said. There is a very thin line between compromise and accomplice. I am going to stop there and just say after i read that line, i was up in my car in new york in upstate new york, it was a coffee table books they had on the table and i was up there for the purpose of writing the as a for this book and i felt terribly conflicted because i still hadnt decided what side i was on, for whom i would want to vote. At the time there is a strong push to have Elizabeth Warren run for president. Now she is a yearandahalf ago, what would i do . What i voted the primaries if i needed to choose between the two of them an edge then i read this line about there being a thin line between compromise and accomplice and i thought that is my essay. If i vote for hillary, am i feeling more like i am an accomplice to something bad or is it more that i am compromising and affecting the fact that she isnt perfect and my feelings about Elizabeth Warren are that i am not quite sure, this is a yearandahalf ago, i think that i would feel i could vote for hillary without feeling like i was an accomplice to something but it was more along the lines of compromise because no candidate is perfect. She has been of of what is going on in terms of my feelings that the height of a civilization correlates with the way it treats its women. And that her time in office as senator, secretary of state, and even first lady, was so focused on advancing the causes that were important to women, their safety and their health and education, that i think we could do all right with her. By way of comparison knowing you were on the offense to women candidates, if Elizabeth Warren bristol in the race today, would you still be feeling the same . And she hasnt endorsed anyone yet and depending on what she does does that impact how you are feeling . If she were to endorse hillary or someone else. I dont think that i would use Elizabeth Warrens endorsement as that strong a guide for who i would vote for. I dont think i would do that. She endorsed somebody else i dont think i would take that as a sign that i shouldnt vote for hillary. Right now is hard to answer that question because a year has gone by and the lot of campaigning happens. And what happened between hillary and Bernie Sanders has taken place and form an opinion about it is hard for me to say. And Hillary Clinton now, i go with Hillary Clinton. You talk about how this isnt just about your feelings at that time about those candidates but over time, not necessarily accomplish, but no one is perfect, and when candidate or another. Deal feel that more strongly because it is Hillary Clinton, and are you always on the offense as the voter . I tend to be on the offense as the voters as a rule because when it was between barack obama and hillary, i voted for hillary because of her experience over his bed and when he won the nomination i was thrilled to vote for him. I feel at this stage in the game when we are dealing with the primary to july want to represent me as a democrat, as a woman in a big race, i would still now if it were Elizabeth Warren still in the race i would have a hard time. I dont know how she would have campaigned but so far i dont know. I might go with Elizabeth Warren. She has as for reinecveronica sh more clear statement of black lives matter, she has talked to them Unanswered Questions and stuff but Elizabeth Warren comes out and says it, this is important, you guys are idiots if you ignore this. I admire it that about her. We will save questions until the end. Indeed surely when we were putting this together and i was trying to figure out who would be a great selection of people you try to find people and not everybody says yes and have a list of topics i thought would run the range of topics and what i really love about this project was almost everyone came back with that is a good list of ideas but i have another idea and this is what i would like to write about and this is what makes this a special collection because it is not okay, we have as as to fit cleanly in certain boxes, not withstanding the title of love her love her not, every estate is very nuanced in terms of as you can tell, there are pluses and minuses and that is something of almost everyone said those are nice ideas but i have been thinking and this is what i would like and feel passionate about and that is how that happened, very collaborative. Thank you. We will move on to jennifer. If you will let us know the title of your as a and read a little about it and tell us why you wrote this and what prompted you to write this. The title of my essay is Hillary Clinton changed my life. My old hallmarks of progressivism that formed part of my identity had dissolved and i saw a partisan politics more objectively. I had developed a new way of looking at the political world especially with regard to women. All be writers, anchors and politicians just looked like a deck of cards to me. In my mind i took the deck, place it between my thumb and forefinger and jettisoned the cards into the air. I didnt look to see where the cards fell because i had already walked through the political looking glass. I was in the wilderness. I felt alone and was just a little bit cold but in reality i was with 18 million voters who stayed with her. Those cracks in the ceiling of the oval office. We could all see differently now after having experienced that campaign. Hillarys presence and words were a powerful message to girls and women and that is why she didnt chris and as a mother of a daughter, that is one of the reasons i didnt quit her. To be sure, hillary was fighting to win but she also knew that we needed the memory and damages to move forward for those who came after her. Like her beijing speech she was the head of the curve but this was the rougher road. The accusations that were hurled at hillary were hurled at all of us. We were all called vagina voters, working class, old, and the be word. Right along with her. And suffered the same dismissal as she did. And some of the people who threw out those slurs were feminists. Hillarys 2008 campaign is now a snapshot that is part of our collective cultural memory from past events the we all share. These memories help us form our identities as individuals and as citizens. Boys and men have the totality of president ial cultural memory reflected to them in the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt old and up his hat, Dwight Eisenhower with arms held aloft, and john f. Kennedy with marilyn monroe. The history of male president s is the gendered bedrock of power on which we for our National Identity and women without similar maurice cenemories cent lack of power. Iron it never worked on the Political Campaign before and when she started campaigning i thought there she goes, okay. Then i started to see the sex is amanda cox something is wrong. I have to the some closer. I have to watch. And i kept watching and listening and i thought something is wrong, there is the bulk of the media that i normally watched and listened to, cnn, in the are, all of its was very, they used a lot of sexism. A lot of bias. It hit me hard but moreover, it was a lot of progressive people, colleagues, people worked with in hollywood, and i felt very alone and cold and i stood up for her and stood up for my choice and i was treated kind of like how i always treated republicans all my life. So i had to step back and take a cold hard look in the mirror and rethink my idea of who i was politically, where i stood in partisan politics and what i believed in in my heart so when you ask me to write an essay i thought that is the place i have to go because it is the most honest place i can write from. You talk so much in the essay about that transformation and overtime and little bit by little bit getting to the point where you are today. So how would you describe how would you have characterized yourself in your politics than, before the Hillary Campaign and the sexes in versus how you would characterize yourself today . I was definitely a hardline progressive democrat down the line. Republicans are idiots and i know what i am talking about and this is what it is. I had to stop because of lot of people i worked with in hollywood, ala of my progressive colleagues would come up to me and attack and said why are you doing this . This is wrong. She shouldnt be doing this, you got to dump her. I am not going to dump her but all my conservative colleagues came up to me and said how are you doing . Are you handling this ok . Because we are watching and we are kind of surprise and i said i am sort of handling it okay. I am learning a lot and i felt on the other side of things. I would call myself a progressive democrat. Now i would say i am very independent and i love to be here. It is open. I can listen to people on the other side of the aisle, it is fascinating and i learn a lot and just because somebody is on the other side of the aisle doesnt mean they are automatically my enemy. It is a great place to be. What do you think it would take to get more people and or congress to that stage of thinking . It is important to stepped over into another community of people who dont think like you, who dont live like you, whose backgrounds are different and it helps to focus to i and as a political person, as a woman, a United States citizen, i feel it differently. I see it differently. And there is nothing much to be gained from just staying in a safe zone and listening to people who reflect your own point of view. I would say it that to the people in congress. Step across the aisle. I am going to go ahead and take time and read from my as a and we will have some q a from the audience and the panel so my essay is called i dont need Hillary Clinton to be perfect. I confess that in 2000 i didnt think we were a country that was ready for a woman president. How i wanted us to be. The geeky Political Science major in me wanted voters to see that it was finally time for a woman to move into the white house in her own right and not as a first lady. The 1970s feminists in the who was fooled about conservative phyllis shapleys political efforts to keep women in the home, the possibility of an equal rights amendment and the womens lib expectation that i would of course be a woman president in my lifetime, assumed that in the 21st century things finally were changing. Yes, we were still waiting for our very own Margaret Thatcher. Many countries have already gone past us on that milestone like ireland, the philippines, sri lanka, liberia, kosovo, switzerland and more. In 2008 how could it not be time for the United States finally to join that club . By the time Hillary Clinton announced her bid for the white house i was much older than i thought i would be when we would finally see a viable woman president ial candidate. I had become a middleaged mom with a couple good careers under my belt but i was much further down the road of life that i dreamed i would be when a woman finally had a serious shot at sitting in the oval office as commander in chief rather than as adviser or mvp, to be honest it didnt hurt my excitement about hillary that in some ways she was like me. A woman of a certain generation also we are at opposite ends of the baby boomer generation. Wanted to make a difference with a mother of a daughter. A woman with a law degree wasnt afraid to speak up and who felt politics was in her blood. Of course that connection wasnt hurt by the fact the we both had a pair of vintage strike genes she was wearing and a famous life magazine photo spread from her Wellesley College days. As we watched her jump into the race my third grade daughter and i were more than ready for hillary. Polls showed america was statistically on board with the idea of a woman president eight years ago the worry in my get new that women like hillary and like me often were not taken seriously in the world of old and new networks and there were too many gender ideas about how women should be that held us all back, held a real included, from what we could be. Sadly my gut correctly predicted that 2008 election cycle was not going to be the year of the woman president in america but it took me longer to figure out why. Hillary fell short because she wasnt perfect. I wrote that and i go on to explore that a little more because i really believe we live in an age when there are so many expectations of women to be perfect and 100 at everything and we hold that against ourselves and so we hold it against hillary that she is perhaps more perfect than we are, perfect in terms of having her family, having her career, moving forward, and living in an age where we see that reflected back to was in magazine articles and trying to reinvent yourself and oh well if you havent found a perfect 3 that may be that perfect career is still out there it you have to work harder and try harder, that in some ways we hold that against her and away we dont with other politicians including women politicians. She is not perfect. No politician is perfect. None of us are perfect. My hope and my desire in writing that is a was to get us a little bit out of that mindset and think about none of us are perfect and maybe stop analyzing politicians on do we like them, do we not like them and look at their experience and qualifications to meet. When you look at other countries women who have been leaders dont seem to have been subject to that. Angela merkel was just on the cover of Time Magazine as one of the year, it was a really great article but nowhere in the article do they talk about is Angela Merkel likable . What we want to sit down and have a glass of wine with her . I dont think we have looked at womens leadership the same way a lot of other countries have. That is my hinting in writing that as a. So before we open it up to other questions from the audience i want to go down the line and ask our panelists one more question. We all heard from our own essays, their 28 of them in the book and aside from your own, what is a deal like the best and why . You are not going to make me answer is this. All right. Pick two. Kick three. I am really happy to be included in this Broad Spectrum of opinions on this really important one and. No matter where we fall as i like to say on the Hillary Clinton likability scale, whether we love her or dont, she is one of the most important women of this generation. Anybody else want to weigh in . My four favorites are yours, yours, yours and yours. Really, what impressed me when this book was finished was how varied the topics were and how many Different Things came up from style and what she wore to the very high level politics to the very personal and it was really just interesting to me that someone who has been in this life for decades has come to been so many Different Things and so many different topics that relate to women and americans and where we are right now, also relevant through the lens of Hillary Clinton. Yours of course. Because in general when you approach the idea of i dont need her to be perfect i talk about that too because i talk about the fact that i am often conflicted in the voting booth, i have an ideal side and the pragmatic side and give state line up with the same candidate that is fabulous but if they dont i tend to go with the pragmatism. That is how i feel about hillary. I love that jennifer and veronica i love them for the metaphors that they use, you did a fabulous things throughout the essay of the dimmer switch going on and on. Other event getting reflect upon, i love your backpack, we need to inspect that backpack and that goes on in schools a lot and that was interesting and your essay about wellesley iron found relevant because of what is going on today about whether women schools provide something that is really valuable in terms of the team to 22yearolds who are not quite grown ups yet. I find that same issue among friends of color it that i have who are conflicted about what is going on on College Campuses and whether they would consider sending their kids to a historically black Colleges University and a lot of them have your sentiments which were is that a cop out . Am i a limiting myself . There was a point to get out, the answer, some of them are coming up with, the kids are 18, 22, four more years where they can engage in intellectual pursuits in a safe atmosphere and maybe it is not a cop out to go this way and have this save space because we are not at the point yet where i dont know. I found that incredibly relevant. I am not as dismissive of that idea of as i used to be. The same sort of intellectual snobbery. If you cant compete i dont think that is the case. I you going to waiting to the water at all . I love suzy parkers yankee in a southern belles court. I love the title. It struck me when i read it that she covered hillary when hillary was first lady of arkansas and susie was 8 years old or something and she saw her one day in a store shopping with chelsea and she observed her as a mother and saw bill with chelsea once and observed him as a father and those memories of both of them are in the essay and it is fascinating to look at because her first image of her is in the mother and that is how long we have known them and i think that comes into play in how we perceive her. Thank you all very much. Now would be a good time to open up to the audience for questions. She so graciously set up this event. I am going to vote for hillary but not because she is my first choice. All of you women, i would not vote for any of the republicans. All the women worried about role models and having a daughter read 33 and 30 i think it is all full, she is the terrible role model. She should have kicked bill out. That has nothing to do with the issue is but you have to throw that into the mix of role models. It is not substantive in terms of issues but it is not just bill, theres a lot of money in the foundation not being ethnically handled. Bills foundation which he has a big part of. I am just wondering, her remark about we work for at one point, they had to give speeches for 100,000. All the women out there were concerned about will models for our daughters, how does that square with your feelings towards hillary . The question i would throw back out into that is do we judge male politicians in the same way . I would absolutely that is good because i think a lot of people do not. Lets assume it is an even playing field. I dont judge people on what to me is an incredibly private matter which is their own marriage and i dont look to than as relationship role models. I dont necessarily expect somebody who is ambitious enough and genius enough if they have that quality which they dont to also have outward the respectable romantic encounters, you know what i mean . That is not something i would bring into it. Can they do the job . More that he was dishonest to per. I can answer this. I have an 11yearold daughter. By this time she is 18 she is probably not going to care about Monica Lewinsky nor do she is or be bothered but can i be president . Can i achieve that power . She will care how women are treated all over the world. The person of all these candidates who has done the work globally for womens rights is Hillary Clinton. [applause] can i add one thing . It is the great question and the fact that you are struggling with it shows why we need more women candidates. And be that is the only choice of even if she may be ethically flawed or we dont agree with her choices there is no one else that you can point to, young girls or young women in politics and say you can achieve that. Not just politics but business and the sciences, we see that even the women now graduates waiting from college at higher rates than men and achieving academically as soon as we enter the workforce that gap widens to the point where we dont have a female leaders and will models that we deserve. It is a really important question. It is addressed in several essays in the book. You are not the only person who has this feeling. It is out there and we all have our own opinions but it is explored by several women in the book as well and they come out in different places. I struggle with the same, the foundation, what bill and hillary do in their marriage with the foundation and the appearance of some sort of corruption, i am from chicago so i am familiar with the topics. What i go back to thinking about is for too long and we continue to expect our women politicians to clean misses up, do the womens work in politics. And to be the ones who come in to be better than the men in terms of corruption and ethics and all of these things and what hillary proves is when you go play the game you are going to get dirty too. I am not excusing what she or any other politician would do in office or anything like that, but we cant expect clinton to enter fields and magically change them. You were right and i was wrong. I am sorry, what was that . Whether it is right or not, how we are going to judge, hillary knew that she wanted to run. She has known this for a long time that she wanted to run. Whether it is rice or not, we are going to put extra scrutiny on who she is as a candidate, i think rather than talking about her likability or things that happened with her marriage my biggest question right now, the question of a lot of other women im talking to, democrats who want to vote for her but they cant because the frustration is how can you have someone who is so bright like her husband and yet be so politically tone deaf . Touched on it some but you dont send emails from a private email account when you know you are going to run for president. That is not about whether i like her or i like her clothes or her hair style, i dont want to hear about any of that. What i want to know, that speaks to decisionmaking and that is what were looking for in a leader regardless of gender. The question for me is are we holding her to the same standard we hold every other politician to . Perhaps we hold in a Perfect World know we wouldnt but in reality she was going to be the first viable female president ial candidate and so does she know it to herself . Does she of it to us to want to back her, to be politically savvy . It is the political tone deafness that i am talking about, not the other stuff, not not like ability. I am interested we are getting close to the end. Some answers, respond briefly. I would say what comes up in my mind is the Justice System we have, the people who are successful are not ethical or cant rise to the top by being the most straightforward and honest and trustworthy and you asked me one before. I have a question. We do valerie and then you. The hillary paradox in the sense is the fact that everyone is concentrating on her, the sum total of womens political achievement rests on her. England elected Margaret Thatcher decade ago, they have tremendous sexist problems inert parliament they have a pay gap. A lot of the problems we have they have been just about the same proportionate measure. To what extent do you think focusing on hillary really distorts the picture . We are still only going to have 18 to 20 women in congress, still have 22 women in state legislatures. Do you think when we talk about hillary we are doing ourselves a disservice because we are inflating her significance when it comes to womens true political empowerment in the u. S. . It immediately reflects on our honeymoon with president obama where some people wanted to beat we did it, the elected a black guy and racism is over and have a party. And it wasnt. It is the great question. I dont frame my liking Hillary Clinton and wanting to see her as the first woman president in that sense. A lot of it has to do with the fact that i know someone has to be the first woman president and given this time and moment she is the best person i want to see take the rain because i dont want someone like sarah palin or anybody else like that to take that mantles. That is part of my calculus. It is a great question. One of the things, leaving gender at the door was a piece that i wrote about marriage some higher being the ceo of yahoo and when we do better of we didnt focus on the fact the she was a woman or the first woman to run a company that large or technical and all that, maybe we should leave her gender out of it and see if her policies will bear fruit. And how these controversial decisions she made, how they will work out for yahoo down the line and that was the point. I see that too but also in your question about focusing strongly on hillarys gender but also the reality, we dont i dont think it is necessarily a disservice to point out, look in the mirror and point out the we havent the fact that people ask the question are we ready for a woman president reflects such maturity to me on the part of the entire american electorate. Whether or not she is likable or does she need to be like and to me also reflects a level of immaturity that bothers me about the way we look at politics. If she is focusing as a woman may be it brings people it is embarrassing almost that the progressives, independent, nation we are, have such a disparity in the genders holding power. I dont think it is inappropriate. It might make me uncomfortable but i dont think it is necessarily a disservice and i dont think it is wise to think it is just the way barack obama, now racism is done, i dont think sexism will be over wind she is president either