Every woman knows “The Rules” (even if you never read the execrable book): wait to be invited instead of asking first; never seem too into it; always leave them wanting more; never reveal your feelings first.
Politics is a similar game. And it’s one that Hillary Clinton is playing quite well: despite a well-timed visit to Iowa this weekend, a painfully boring energy speech the other day and a really, really long “book tour” over the summer, she has convinced the world that, somehow, she is still undecided about running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
The thing about The Rules, though, is that they’re always a double-edged sword for women. Ignore them, and you risk being labeled too aggressive and too ambitious to the detriment of achieving your goals; follow them to the letter, and you’re accused of playing hard to get ... or just playing coy.
“Coy” – that word has been bandied about a bunch to describe Hillary Clinton’s will-she-or-will-she run-up to the primaries. It evokes a simpering, feminine-for-show sort of woman, the kind who says “no” when she means “yes” but knows the saying “yes” is, somehow, not appropriate for a lady to say.
It evokes, you could say, the exact kind of woman that Hillary Clinton is not and never has been.
Everyone plays at the I’m-just-thinking-about-running game: it’s a way to test the waters without earning the label of “failed presidential candidate” should your toe-dipping fail to enchant even a minnow. Running (or “not-running”) for president raises your profile in the national press, earns you talking-head-show invites, cements you as a Serious Thinker no matter how deeply unserious a person you are (see: Cain, Herman) and garners you name recognition and lists of people you can hit up for money whenever you do (or don’t) decide to run.
Take, for example, another 2016 wannabe, Rand Paul, who is currently making rather an art of wriggling out of the Tea Party positions that got him elected to office (but which won’t fly in a general, nationwide campaign) while not-officially-running for president. Paul has “not been coy about his intentions”, and instead has been called “intriguing” – and the words “political genius” have actually been used to describe the man by someone who doesn’t work for him.
If you’re stumping in Iowa in 2014, you’re not playing “coy”. You’re running for the nomination for president of the United States, and you probably having bumper-sticker ideas just about ready for a focus group.
There are, of course, plenty of reason for this perennial dance. There is the would-be candidates’ desires – and the parties’ implicit demands – not to suck media oxygen, political donations and voter attention from the 2014 state and federal races. Hillary herself acknowledged as much in Iowa, telling reporters on Sunday “This is about people running right now. 2014”.
But an official announcement triggers a whole host of legal and financial repercussions: once you announce your candidacy, and raise $5,000, you have to start filing reports with the Federal Election Commission. You’ve then got file an official statement of candidacy within 15 days, and file organization documents for your campaign committee within 25 days of the initial filing, and you have only 30 days to file personal financial disclosures. After that, your campaign is subject to inflation-indexed individual and political party campaign contribution limits through the end of the 2016 primary – i.e., around Labor Day 2016 – and you’ll have to file at least quarterly reports on your contributions and expenses through the end of the campaign.
So you legally cannot just say you’re running, unless you are really, really running and basically already have the campaign apparatus in place to back that up. And every single reporter and analyst busy talking about a “coy” Hillary Clinton already knows that – or should.
But there are rules, and there are The Rules. Clinton has spent most of her public life (and probably at least some of her private life) getting ridiculed for being too ambitious, too aggressive, too pointed, too transparent, too grasping – for leaning too far in, for breaking the rules of what is, apparently, appropriate for a woman. She’s always been playing the game by the boys’ rules – and she is damn good at it, thank you very much.
We’re not waiting for Hillary to decide: we’re waiting for Hillary to announce. Let’s not be coy about that.
