The End of Option A

August 28, 2017

She’s second-guessing herself, and shouldn’t.  We shouldn’t, either.  In releasing an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Happened,” about what she was thinking in the second presidential debate of 2016, Hillary Clinton this week sent out an anguishing tease that presages an onslaught of angst to come.

Clinton wonders whether, in the face of Donald Trump acting like a “creep” who was set on stalking and intimidating her in the second debate of the presidential campaign, she should have called him out (she calls this “Option B”) rather than keeping her cool (the chosen option, “Option A”).  She suggests that perhaps this decision was part of what led to her defeat, and to her letting America down. 

First of all, Hillary, you didn’t let America down.  America let America down (We elected the guy).  If America couldn’t tell by the time this creep was stalking you in the second debate that he should not be president, well, then, there was nothing you could do to help us.

Given our president’s behavior over the course of his first year in office, you could just as easily be releasing a book called, “I Told You So” or “What the Hell Were You Thinking?”

But you’re not.  Instead, you’re telling us that your campaign regrets are too many to count.  It is the response of someone who deeply cares—who feels like even though she spent every last ounce of sweat to win, somehow she could have done more.  It’s also a classically female response.  We have not simply witnessed the first woman to run for president as the candidate of a major political party, we have also watched the first major female candidate lose—and now we’re witnessing—on a grand scale—an example of women’s tendency to beat themselves up for a negative outcome.

I usually chastise women for not just getting on with it when things go badly.  And I’m not going to break form here.  Secretary Clinton, in the heat of that second debate, as in the heat of other campaign moments, you made a call.  That’s what leaders do.  And then election night happened.  And now it’s done.

The great lesson you have taught so many of us over these decades is to just keep going, no matter what.  Don’t complain about the misogyny around you; just keep making your contribution to the world.  Don’t let anything, or anyone, stop you. 

The only way you could let us down would be to stop now.

So what does it look like to just keep going after losing the presidency, the biggest prize of all? 

I don’t know, but maybe it starts with a Hillary-ahead-of-her-time finally seeing the times catching up with her.  Plenty of people have been saying this week that Millennial women in a second-presidential-debate type situation would be totally ready to reject Option A (grin and bear it while proving how qualified you are) in favor of Option B (just tell the guy off).  We’ll see.

For women en masse to truly reject Option A, it could mean that mainstream women are finally taking the obligation to end sexism seriously—and into their own hands.  And what a success this would be—when all women as brilliant and tough as Hillary Clinton can be as brilliant and tough as they want to be, never having to pump the breaks on their passion and intelligence to accommodate sexist sensitivities.

It will only happen when millions of women (which is to say all of us, not just Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris) stop letting other women like Hillary Clinton take all the hits, and step up themselves. We’ll see.  That would certainly be the way to make Clinton’s agonizing defeat worthwhile.  And much better than second-guessing.