This is an older article, came out this June, but it sums up a lot of what I think about Clinton and why I think most of the dislike of her is rooted in sexism, that she will make a phenomenal President, and why people should vote for her.
http://www.vox.com/a/hillary-clinton...ership-quality
It's a long, in depth piece which I think paints a pretty fair picture of Clinton. Both her strengths and weaknesses and how her strengths can cause weaknesses.
Usually I cut out a bunch of excerpts from an article when I post it, but this one, I feel is too long to really do it well. Basically it credits her greatest strength as listening, points out that this is a feminine trait, acknowledges that a political process which has been dominated by men for hundreds of years may not favour someone who's strength is listening instead of talking, and then discusses some of the problems and flaws that result from being a 'listener' and what that could mean for a Clinton White House.
I think, though, it's best summed up by this:
Quote:
Clinton laments how polarizing she is, but the fault lies at least partly with her. Asked at a Democratic debate to name the enemies she’s most proud of making, she replied, “The Republicans.” For all her talk of finding common ground, of reaching out, of respecting each other, she stood up, on national television, and said she’s proud of the enmity she inspires in roughly half the country.
I asked her if she regretted that statement, whether she thinks she’s feeding the negativity, becoming part of the problem. “Not very much,” she said. “I mean, you can go back and look at how I’ve worked with Republicans, and I think I have a very strong base of relationships with them and evidence of that. But, you know, they say terrible things about me, much worse than anything I’ve ever said about them. That just seems to be part of the political back and forth now — to appeal to your base, to appeal to the ideologues who support you. We have become so divided, and we’ve got to try to get people back listening to each other and trying to roll up our sleeves and solve these problems that we face, and I think we can do that.”
It’s a weird answer. Within the space of a couple of sentences, Clinton refuses to apologize for calling Republicans her enemy, says she works well with them, blames them for saying worse about her, laments that this is how politics works now, and then says, “We’ve got to try to get people back to listening to each other.”
I spent a lot of time puzzling over her response and asking people about it, and I’ve come to think that the right interpretation is the one that is also hardest to credit: She believes what she said. She is a master compartmentalizer, and she believes she can cleave who she is on the campaign trail, and who she is in the minds of Republican voters and even some Republican politicians, from who she’ll be as president. And she’ll do it by reaching out constantly, endlessly, relentlessly, and cheerfully.
“A lot of governing is the slow, hard boring of hard boards,” she says. “I don’t think there's anything sexy, exciting, or headline-grabbing about it. I think it is getting up every day, building the relationships, finding whatever sliver of common ground you can occupy, never, ever giving up in continuing to reach out even to people who are sworn political partisan adversaries.”
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That particular quote at the end sounds like pablum, but it is followed by a bunch of examples of her doing exactly that. It's a really well written article, and I know vox.com and Ezra Klein are pretty far in the tank for the Democrats, but I think it's a good, balanced write up, which is pretty revealing of her character.