Quote of the Day: on Hillary Clinton

From Peggy Noonan today, on the junior senator from New York (first two ellipses are mine):

Media people keep saying, as Hillary gears up for her presidential bid, that her big challenge in 2008 will be to prove that she is as tough as a man. That she could order troops to war. That she's not girly and soft.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. Hillary doesn't have to prove her guy chops. She doesn't have to prove she's a man, she has to prove she's a woman. No one in America thinks she's a woman. They think she's a tough little termagant [definition: A quarrelsome, scolding woman; a shrew] in a pantsuit. They think she's something between an android and a female impersonator . . . She does not seem like someone who would anguish and weep over sending men into harm's way.

And in this, as president, she would be deeply unusual . . . Hillary is like someone who would know she should be moved but wouldn't be because she couldn't be because . . . well, why? That is the question. Maybe a lifetime in politics has bled some of the human element out of her. Maybe there wasn't that much to begin with. Maybe she thinks that if she wept, the wires that hold her together would short.