![]() And that’s likely because of things that have, in the end, very little to do with who Clinton is and much more to do with the work she has been engaged in this year. It’s Tracy Flick-not Elizabeth McCord or Mackenzie Allen or Selina Meyer, but Tracy Flick, whose ambition makes her a menace-whom Hillary Clinton is (still!) asked about. They have been evidence of Hollywood, whose products have claimed partial credit for marriage equality and the presidency of Barack Obama, recognizing its great capacity for world-expanding, and then attempting to use that power for good-one Madame President at a time.Īnd yet, despite all the accomplished women who have occupied Hollywood’s various West Wings, it’s Tracy Flick, the manic pixie scheme girl-the perfectionist, the know-it-all, the girl whose hand was perma-raised-who has persevered as a metaphor. These characters have been the stuff of (political) science fiction: They have been framed, self-consciously, for the future. In the high-heeled footsteps of Leslie McCloud in 1964’s Kisses for My President and Julia Mansfield in 1985’s Hail to the Chief have come Kathryn Bennett in Air Force One, Elaine Barrish in Political Animals, Mackenzie Allen in Commander in Chief, Caroline Reynolds in Prison Break, Claire Underwood in House of Cards, Sally Langston in Scandal, Elizabeth McCord in Madam Secretary, Selina Meyer in Veep, and many more. That’s not to say that TV and movies haven’t, in the many years leading up to a woman’s clinching of a major-party presidential nomination, provided the American public with a host of fictional female leaders. People compare Clinton to Tracy Flick, the stateswoman to the organization kid, for a simple reason: Hollywood hasn’t given them anyone better to compare her to. ![]() Pop culture has long offered depictions of women in positions of political power ambition, however, is another matter. ![]() And that’s been reflected not just in news media reactions to Hillary Clinton’s runs for office, but also in broader cultural treatments of (necessarily fictional) lady presidents. ![]() For women, though, the self-assertions required of political candidacy are particularly fraught. It revels, in its sardonic way, in the lingering martial framework of the “campaign.” The story of Tracy Flick’s effort to win the presidency of Carver High School’s student government is a broader meditation on political ambition-and on the pitfalls and punishments that can result, in particular, when that ambition has the audacity to be realized by a woman.Īmericans, who are subject to a mess of rules when it comes to self-assertion (confidence: good! arrogance: bad! hard work: good! overeagerness: sad!), have, by extension, a generally awkward relationship with political ambition-one whose awkwardness extends across genders and generations. On the other hand, though, the association makes perfect sense: Election is all about the layered strifes of, well, elections. senator and secretary of state-and also the mother, and the grandmother, and the woman whom the American media once spent years chastising for an expressed preference against cookie-baking-with a cupcake-wielding adolescent. It is supremely strange, on the one hand, that the American public would associate the former lawyer and First Lady and U.S.
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