A couple of interesting facts emerged from last week's presidential primary elections in New Hampshire. One is that the current race is a long way from over. Another is that it's finally all right for a female candidate to shed a tear or two from time to time in public.
Male candidates and other prominent private- and public-sector figures have been doing it for years - in fact President Bush welled up just the other day while touring the Holocaust Museum in Israel - and nobody denounced them as being weak or emotionally unstable.
But just let a female office seeker show a little emotion on the campaign trail and that's it, she's bound to suffer a meltdown when confronted with the many tough issues that come with the job.
Talk about a double standard. But all that appears to be changing. And for that we have the women voters of New Hampshire to thank.
Here's something else worth considering: Isn't bringing change to Washington what the current campaign is all about? Well, the voting public finally has a chance to do what even 30 years ago many thought completely out of the question: Put either a woman or a person of color in the White House, and I don't mean as a maid or a dishwasher.
What those tears of Hillary Clinton did for her - and every other woman in America, for that matter - was to demonstrate that she, like every other woman, is just as human as is every man. And what is so wrong with that?
For months, television's know-it-all talking heads and news commentators have ganged up on the campaign's only female candidate, with much of the criticism centering on her "likableness" as a candidate. It seems candidate Clinton strikes many of the opinion makers and pollsters as being too uppity, a too-much-take-charge female in an arena for too long dominated by men.
But then came New Hampshire, and because Clinton's "surprising" victory there gave her candidacy new life, perhaps now she can finally completely open up and reveal to voters in no uncertain terms why it is now possible not only for a person of color, but also a woman, to play a leading role in bringing about the changes that are so necessary to getting this country back on track.
This is not to suggest that candidate Clinton is necessarily the best or right person for the job. John Edwards hits the nail squarely on the head in hammering home the point about how Washington has been taken over by Corporate America.
Male candidates and other prominent private- and public-sector figures have been doing it for years - in fact President Bush welled up just the other day while touring the Holocaust Museum in Israel - and nobody denounced them as being weak or emotionally unstable.
But just let a female office seeker show a little emotion on the campaign trail and that's it, she's bound to suffer a meltdown when confronted with the many tough issues that come with the job.
Talk about a double standard. But all that appears to be changing. And for that we have the women voters of New Hampshire to thank.
Here's something else worth considering: Isn't bringing change to Washington what the current campaign is all about? Well, the voting public finally has a chance to do what even 30 years ago many thought completely out of the question: Put either a woman or a person of color in the White House, and I don't mean as a maid or a dishwasher.
What those tears of Hillary Clinton did for her - and every other woman in America, for that matter - was to demonstrate that she, like every other woman, is just as human as is every man. And what is so wrong with that?
For months, television's know-it-all talking heads and news commentators have ganged up on the campaign's only female candidate, with much of the criticism centering on her "likableness" as a candidate. It seems candidate Clinton strikes many of the opinion makers and pollsters as being too uppity, a too-much-take-charge female in an arena for too long dominated by men.
But then came New Hampshire, and because Clinton's "surprising" victory there gave her candidacy new life, perhaps now she can finally completely open up and reveal to voters in no uncertain terms why it is now possible not only for a person of color, but also a woman, to play a leading role in bringing about the changes that are so necessary to getting this country back on track.
This is not to suggest that candidate Clinton is necessarily the best or right person for the job. John Edwards hits the nail squarely on the head in hammering home the point about how Washington has been taken over by Corporate America.
Also appealing for a variety of reasons are the candidacies of Illinois and Arizona senators Barak Obama and John McCain.
But what the voters of New Hampshire have made clear is that being a woman or a person of color is no longer an impediment in running for the highest office in the land. What matters are a candidate's views, ideas, and ability to lead in dealing with the vast array of domestic and foreign issues that have been so badly bungled over the course of the last 40 years.
And here it matters only to the most gender- and racially biased among us whether the candidate with the best message and greatest hope for needed change happens to be a man, woman, white Southerner, African-American or former POW.
As if such labels mean anything anymore in these complex, deeply troubled times.
Jim Munn is a writer and boys' track & field coach at Gloucester High School.
