Maureen Dowd, Hillary Clinton, and the Intern Factor

Why is it that Mitt Romney has been criticized for putting Hillary Clinton in the league of an intern when it comes to her experience?

This "loaded" word was considered by some to be an insult to Hillary. It's supposed to be a cheap shot to say "intern" around her.

"She's never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn't run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern," Romney said.

The Boston Herald says that's a "loaded" word when talking about the senator or her husband because of the former president's well-documented relationship with then-intern Monica Lewinsky in the mid-'90s.

A Clinton campaign spokeswoman had this to say about Romney's remark: "Hillary Clinton is a two-term United States senator who has represented the United States in 82 countries around the world, and has been one of the nation’s leading advocates for children and families for 35 years," Ann Lewis said in a statement, according to the Herald. "Trying to diminish her service isn't going to help Mr. Romney's weak and rudderless campaign."

As for the Romney campaign, spokesman Kevin Madden sent this response when we asked if Romney had intentionally alluded to the Lewinsky affair when he used the word intern:

"Governor Romney offered a substantive contrast between his record of experience as a chief executive in both elected office, at the Olympics and in the private sector compared to that of Senator Clinton.

"Senator Clinton doesn't have any comparable experience, and the governor's point is that, at this place in time, he is a better choice in that capacity than someone who needs on-the-job training as a chief executive.

"I'd disagree with any hyperactive analysis that a reference to needing on-the-job training has anything to do with the past Clinton administration."

So Romney is slammed for playing dirty just because he questioned the level of Hillary's experience.

Will Maureen Dowd be attacked by the Clinton camp because of her column today, a direct confrontation of Hillary and the intern factor?

From the no longer "Select" columnist of the New York Times:

It’s an odd cultural inversion.

The French first lady, the one in a role where wives traditionally ignored and overlooked their husbands’ peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping their marriages intact and running the Élysée Palace, has fled her gilded perch, acting all-American and brimming over with feelings and feminist impulses.

The former American first lady, the one who’s supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband’s peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House.

Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French.

...In Essence magazine, Hillary sounded très French, très laissez-faire, talking about her marriage. “Now obviously we’ve had challenges as everybody in the world knows,” she said. “But I never doubted that it was a marriage worth investing in even in the midst of those challenges. And I’m really happy that I made that decision. Again, not a decision for everybody. And I think it’s so important for women to stand up for the right of women to make a decision that is best for them.”

In addition to the warrior strategy, the one that led Hillary to back President Bush on the Iraq war and the Iran drumbeat, the senator has a girlfriend strategy.

Hillary recently told an interviewer that they should talk like “two girlfriends,” and last week her campaign theme was: “Women Changing America.” She returns to Wellesley tomorrow to launch Hillblazers, a bid to attract young Hillarys to the campaign. She will be back in the setting of her 1969 feminist triumph as the commencement speaker who described her class’s desire for a “more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living” and who spoke truth to power, chastising Edward Brooke for being out of touch.

Hillary doesn’t speak truth to power any more. Now that Mark Penn believes women can carry her to victory, Hillary speaks girlfriend to girlfriend.

That tack, Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, would only work if she were “willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband’s sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain that it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest — and most womanly — ideals and convictions, for the Clintons’ political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he’s used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake’s characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification.

“In glossing over her husband’s actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judgment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness and added to the pain delivered upon these women.”

Dowd is not cutting Hillary any slack on this.

If a Republican dared to write or say anything remotely like this, that individual would be crucifed by the Left.

I guess it's OK for Dowd to seemingly attack because by the end of her column, Dowd points out that Hillary's handling of her philandering husband serves to prove that she's the superior candidate.

...But maybe the qualities that many find off-putting in Hillary — her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness — are the same ones that make people willing to vote for a woman.

Few are concerned that Hillary is strong enough for the job. She is cold-eyed about wanting power and raising money and turning everything about her life into a commodity. Yet, the characteristics that are somewhat troubling are the same ones that convincingly show she will do what it takes to beat Obama and Rudy. She will not be soft or vulnerable. She will not melt in a crisis.

And, unlike Obama, she doesn’t need to talk herself into manning up. Obama whiffed in the debate last night when Brian Williams and Tim Russert teed up the first question for him to take on Hillary — something the debate dominatrix never would have done.

Bottom line: Dowd is calling Hillary a man.

Dowd is saying that Hillary is more of a man than Barack Obama.

Will she be criticized for using the term "dominatrix" to describe Hillary?

Is that a "loaded" word?

There's so much in this one column over which Hillary and her people would cry foul if it came from Republicans.

---She has abandoned the women that Bill dumped at the side of the road when he was finished with them.

---She has whitewashed his abusive pattern of preying on "women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful" for his sexual gratification.

(Sounds very "intern" to me.)

---She has off-putting qualities, including: "her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness."

---"She is cold-eyed about wanting power and raising money and turning everything about her life into a commodity."

---She's manly.

---She's a dominatrix.

---She acts so French.

Dowd gets to say it all. She gets to tackle the intern factor head on.

That's because Dowd is arguing that Hillary's marriage to hound dog Bill makes her uniquely qualified to be President of the United States.

A woman strong enough to accept a lifetime of betrayal and humiliation from her husband, tempered by adultery, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, is fit to be leader of the Free World.