Short Thoughts on a Woman as President of the U.S.

Following up on something I said in my previous article:

To put it more bluntly: American voters aren't against electing a woman president. But they are against electing Hillary Clinton.

Let me elaborate. As I said in the article, "come on, people, it's 2017." Except for a few on the radical right (the remaining 8% of Americans who still support Donald Trump?), we don't live in the Stone Age anymore, and the idea of a woman as president is not only okay, but it's plausible - maybe even inevitable.


I would consider voting for someone like Condoleeza Rice or Madeline Albright, but not Hillary Clinton. To the best of my knowledge, Rice and Albright are not as blatantly greedy or power-hungry as Clinton. They are not rude, whiny, condescending or snobby, while Clinton is all of those things. They do not have the serious credibility or trust problems that Clinton has. They're not as full of themselves as Clinton is of herself. And they enjoy more respect (and credibility!) in both domestic and international circles of power than Clinton does.

Now, to those of you who will accuse me of holding a woman to a different standard than I would hold a man: first, notice that in the previous paragraph, I compared women to women. Second, perform a quick test by replacing "Clinton" in the previous paragraph with "Trump". See? Not a different standard at all.

No, HIllary Clinton, You've Got It All Wrong.

I'm going to put the concluding paragraph of this article at the beginning. If you don't read anything else, read this:

Nowhere in What Happened will you read these words, "I understand now. The America people didn't like me because I was a thoroughly unlikeable and immoral person who made it very clear that I was only in it for myself - well, for the power and the wealth." But that's the truth, and that's the bottom line.

Now, if you're still interested, you can read the article from top to bottom.

Hillary Clinton is making the talk-show rounds, plugging her new book, What Happened, which is a very whiny and self-absorbed analysis of why she lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

No, I haven't read the book. But I've heard a lot of the interviews — too many. Clinton's main contention is that it's everybody else's fault that she lost. Here, in no particular order, are my observations on her comments. Please note that I'm not citing any polls or news articles to support my assertions. I don't feel like doing that today. If that hurts my credibility, tough. Clinton and her election opponent, Donald Trump, did (and do) the same thing.

1. I agree that the Russians were undoubtedly involved.

2. I agree that James Comey's bumbling undoubtedly played a part.

3. Point 2 notwithstanding, I don't think the emails themselves had anything to do with it. But Clinton's attitude, that she could do whatever she wanted and that she was above the law, had a lot to do with it.

4. Trump's charisma, and the voters who were deceived by his charisma, played a big part. Hillary Clinton has never had charisma. See also Kennedy vs. Nixon, Bill Clinton vs. anybody, and Reagan vs. anybody. Charisma wins votes.

5. I disagree that sexism (or misogyny, a stronger word) played a big part. Come on, this is the year 2017. Sexism may have played a part in the right-wing fringes of the Republican Party, but I don't think it played as big a part with the general electorate as Clinton says it did. I think that the majority of Americans are not opposed to a woman as president. After all, we've witnessed successful female heads of state in Great Britain, Germany, India and Israel, to name only a few, but those women were (and are) great leaders and, ahem, statesmen. Clinton's not even in the same league with them.

5a. To put it more bluntly: American voters aren't against electing a woman president. But they are against electing Hillary Clinton.

5b. Do you remember, "Who wants to see a woman president?" Clinton herself shouted this from the podium at a rally, at the beginning of the primary season. She got an overwhelmingly positive response. There's no difference between "Vote for me because I'm a woman!" and "They didn't vote for me because I'm a woman." She was not above using sexism to her own advantage.

6. And point 5a, of course, brings up the Electoral College. She can blame that antiquated institution for her loss, but hey, the Republican side knew how to play the game, and they played it very well. She could have done the same thing. She chose not to. That's her own fault, and nobody else's.

7. Simply put, the American people didn't like her. They thought she was devious, manipulative and underhanded. They thought she was greedy and dishonest, exemplified by the Clintons' looting of the White House when they left it in January 2001. They thought she was self-centered, mean, petty and cruel, especially to those in subordinate positions. They thought, accurately, that she wanted the office of President just so she could collect more power and wealth for herself.

8. Who can forget:
- "I could have stayed at home and baked cookies," her disenfranchisement of half of the electorate in the country;
- "I will do whatever it takes to get elected [president]," justifying her campaign for the U.S. Senate;
- "What difference does it make?" her handwaving dismissal of the Benghazi debacle/tragedy;
- "Get the @#$%* away from me!" to her Secret Service escorts;
- and many other condescending, insulting, dismissive, or imperious remarks? To mix metaphors, she opened her mouth and shot herself in the foot, over and over again.

9. She was married to Bill Clinton. The country still hasn't forgiven him, and they still think she was complicit in some of his debauchery. This may not be fair, but it's real.

10. Many of you will reread point 7 and say in Clinton's defense, "Hey, you can say all these same things about Trump," and you will be right. Everything I said in #7 about Clinton can be said about Trump (except, maybe, looting the White House). Donald Trump was just as bad a choice for president as Hillary Clinton. I've already talked about that, in this article and this article, for example. Neither of them should ever have won their party's nomination, let alone the general election.

Nowhere in What Happened will you read these words, "I understand now. The America people didn't like me because I was a thoroughly unlikeable and immoral person who made it very clear that I was only in it for myself - well, for the power and the wealth." But that's the truth, and that's the bottom line.

Feeling sorry for myself: what might have been

A recent tickle from a former colleague on LinkedIn dredged up something from my distant past and sent me on a short tailspin into the Land of What Might Have Been. I'm going to feel sorry for myself, then go to bed and sleep it off. In the morning I'll go to my new job, where I am happy and content and working hard.

This former colleague "endorsed" me for a skill on LinkedIn. She hasn't seen me for about 15 years, so the endorsement doesn't mean much. So I ignored it. Then I fell into my tailspin.

In the late 1990s, I was an extremely competent engineer in my department at Hewlett-Packard. In fact, one year I was the top-rated engineer out of a peer group of about 80 engineers. I was sought after for my technical expertise, my problem-solving skills, and my communication skills. Engineers and non-engineers from other departments came to consult with me.

Our department had three engineering groups. One of the engineering group managers got a promotion, leaving his position vacant. My manager suggested I apply for the position. So did his manager.

I hadn't even considered such a move. I was happy being an engineer. But people had told me over the years that I would make a good manager, and many people had even said, "I would work for you if you were a manager." So I did some research, mainly sounding it out with other engineers and managers, even on the production/operations side, all people whose opinion I valued and trusted. I got unequivocal encouragement from all of them, including votes of confidence from all of the managers, and more "I would work for you" responses from my peers.

The managers' opinions were important to me, because some of them would be on the interview team.

So I applied for the job. I prepped for the interviews. And I did a great job in the interviews. And they gave the job to someone else - one of my fellow engineers was promoted.

Well, she turned out not to be a very good manager. In fact, seeing some of what she did as a manager, I wondered how she had ever gotten the job. I ended up sitting in meetings and on committees with her as the years went by, and - really, this is not  sour grapes - she just wasn't very good at management or leadership.

Then HP and Agilent split. We endured wave after wave of layoffs. I never saw any managers get laid off, or any executives. You would think that the Powers That Be would do the math and figure out that they could save more money by firing one incompetent executive than by laying off ten innocent production workers. Or five hard-working engineers. F#$&ing idiots.

Here's the sorry-for-myself "What Might Have Been" part:

Ten years after leaving Agilent, I am still an engineer, but I am making $10,000 a year less than I was back then, and after ten years of struggle, my personal and family financial situation is precarious.

If I had gotten that promotion, I would now be high up in the management ranks at HP or Agilent. I would be a highly respected manager and leader. I would be making $150,000 a year - or more. We would still be living in that big brick house. And my wife would still have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom, with all the benefits that go with that. My daughters would not have had to scrimp on their weddings. My musical daughter could have gone to Ithaca College instead of the University of Northern Colorado. We would be living free of debt or other financial worries. And we could be using our time and our wealth to help our children and other people, something we have always wanted to do. Instead, we struggle.

That other engineer that got the job? She has changed employers. At least twice. She has changed careers. She has changed husbands. She has changed her last name. She has even changed her first name. And  she has changed her appearance so drastically that I don't even recognize her photo on LinkedIn. And she has parlayed that promotion into a Chief Technology Officer position in another state. I don't really know her anymore.