The First Woman To Be President

That Different Style

I posted my 337th tweet on April 6th, 2016:

Unexamined assumptions department: a female Presidency will be visually stirring, rhetorically exciting, diplomatically unambiguous.

My point, of course, being that we've always had men as presidents, so we assume that the visually stirring image, the rhetorical thunderclap, and the unambiguous declaration are part of being president, when of course they're not...necessarily.

So what might be stylistic differences that we could expect in a woman president?

Ezra Klein had a long essay in Vox (with accompanying Hillary interview) that raised this topic.  He was trying to reconcile the Hillary that her friends and associates know (funny, at ease, well liked) with the public image of a somewhat uncomfortable politician who has high negatives in public surveys.

Klein came to the conclusion that Hillary's style accentuates the feminine networking that links friends together, as opposed to the masculine focus on status that sends the best to the top.  In other words, the power of positive outreach, rather than the power of comparative striving.

The feminine answer to the projecting of dominance, then, might be to have cabinet officers take on a greater role in dealing with the public.  And, instead of 'talking head' media presentations from the Oval Office that involve citizens watching their leader, a feminine approach might be to have more town hall, roundtable, and panel discussions that showcase cooperation, listening, and attempts at consensus.

Hillary's productive relationships with her fellow senators when she was in the Senate might also suggest a higher priority being given relationships and constructive negotiations with the legislative branch.  

As for outreach to the public, perhaps she'll have fewer press conferences, and instead, once a week, invite everyday Americans to the White House in order to listen to their concerns, to suggest ways government can address their problems, and to give the public a sense of how she governs--all recorded and the video made public.

Personally, I find the ceremonial duties of the presidency to be much too time-consuming for things that could easily be left to underlings.  Hillary's known for her policy expertise, so instead, why not focus on that, and let the pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey fall to the Vice President.

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[8/16/16 update: the remainder of this piece was written prior to her Veep pick,  and can now be skipped]

Extra points from me: if she explains to the American public when announcing her vice presidential pick that the office of president has become so demanding that she'll have an assistant veep, who, with the V.P., will take on most of the ceremonial duties she'd normally perform.  Her Veep team would thus be:

Vice President: ask Joe Biden to stay on for another four years (serving as her legislative bridge-builder)
Assistant Vice President (serving mainly overseas): Julian Castro
In-country Special Assistant: Bill Clinton (for all the schmoozing done in this country)

A lineup like this would emphasize both past experience and set up a veep step up in the future.