moms and dads as presidents

Hillary's appeal among older women has little to do with a superficial sisterhood-is-powerful solidarity. It has everything to do with her representing the moms who do all the unglamorous family management: the logistics, the calendars, the bookeeping and housekeeping that remains invisible to all but the one person doing it.

Hillary is the one who emphasizes that she can get bills passed, negotiate a bureaucracy, and get incremental improvements delivered to people instead of agitating for some massive system change that may be impossible in the face of entrenched interests. Let's be practical and make the best of the situation, says Hillary. Let's be realistic and make sure we're taking into account all of the challenges in a situation and adjust our expectations.

HRC obviously is glorifying her pragmatism for many reasons, mostly because it's the strongest attribute to contrast with a more youthful and less nationally experienced candidate (whether he's actually less experienced in government is a different debate). But she also emphasizes it because it plays to her core constituency.

You don't necessarily have to be a radical feminist to identify with a woman who says the same thing you have to repeat all the time to your kids: Hey, I want to help you, but we can't just get whatever we want, whenever we want. I know all the machinery and planning that goes into making your life run smoothly, whether you realize it or not. So just give me a little bit of respect here, that I'm trying to balance a lot of different needs and a lot of different schedules here.

Now, contrast that with Obama's narrative of idealism, of using the leverage of tremendous empowerment and voter turnout to say "we can change the whole system!" Maybe I'm stretching here, but doesn't Obama sound like "fun dad" who waltzes in after a day at the office and says "Hey! Let's all go for ice cream!"

As you take the parallel further, think about the dynamic between Barack "cool dad" Obama and Hillary "nagging mom" Clinton, who, when faced with an opponent who wants Americans to feel like they can get the electoral equivalent of ice cream, reverts to hedging and objecting on the basis of thinking she knows the larger reality of the kids' lives:

"Well, Julia has a singing lesson tomorrow, and shouldn't be having dairy, and David has to finish his science project, and if you had CHECKED with me FIRST, we could have avoided getting the kids all excited about ice cream, but now they want ice cream and I have to be the one who tells them they can't have it."

And of course, that's where the kids say "Yes We Can! Yes We Can!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

(a la the Obama video from will.i.am and assorted fresh-faced, attractive young quasi-revolutionaries, albeit revolutionaries looking to reclaim the founding values of patriotism, not exactly zine-writing anarchists, here).

Much as I cry to that video every time, as much as it maintains my optimism and hopefulness about BHO's campaign, my concern os that I can't imagine a more off-putting or annoying refrain for a world-weary older soccer mom who's had to beg off more trip to McDonald's or ice cream or what-have-you that I can count.