Insisting his wife is not “manly,” former President Bill Clinton defended Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Thursday against a rival Democrat’s charge that she tends to “behave as a man.”
“I don’t think she’s trying to be a man,” Bill Clinton said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “I don’t think it’s inconsistent with being a woman that you can also be knowledgeable on military and security affairs and be strong when the occasion demands it.
“I don’t consider that being manly,” he added. “I consider that being a leader.”
The former president was responding to remarks by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. In a backhanded compliment, Elizabeth Edwards commiserated with Hillary Clinton’s desire to appear as masculine as powerful men.
“You want to reassure them you’re as good as a man and sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women’s issues,” she told Salon, the liberal online magazine. “I’m sympathetic – she wants to be commander in chief. But she’s just not as vocal a women’s advocate as I want to see. John is.”
This prompted return fire from Bill Clinton, creating the unusual spectacle of a dispute between not the candidates themselves,but their spouses.
“If you look at the record on women’s issues, I defy you to find anybody who has run for office in recent history who’s got a longer history of working for women, for families and children, than Hillary does,” he said.
Ironically, critics of John Edwards have long questioned his masculinity. They make fun of his $400 haircuts and call him the “Breck Girl” for fussing over his hair. In a popular YouTube video that features the song “I Feel Pretty,” the candidate and a hairstylist spend two full minutes primping his hair in advance of a TV appearance.
