Clinton made her long- (long-, long-) awaited announcement Sunday that she is, indeed, making a second run for the presidency. This is notable in the history of women in politics, of course, since Clinton is a highly experienced candidate, and the second run reinforces the truth that she was not some sort of boutique, look-I’m-female-and-a-presidential-candidate, sort of contender in 2008. She came close, then after losing, continued in public service and is returning as a more seasoned and battle-tested candidate. That resilience and refusal to slink away after defeat is indeed an important symbol and example for women.
But Fiorina is also breaking important ground for women, and for the opposite reason. On paper, at least, Fiorina has at best no traditional credentials to be president, and at worst, no business at all running for the job. And the reason this matters is that men have been doing this for many, many years.
[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton]

A major reason women are so underrepresented in elected office is because they don’t run. And that, quite often, is because perfectly qualified women still seem to think they don’t have the qualifications necessary to serve in office.
This isn’t peculiar to elected office. Studies show that women are far more reluctant to ask for raises at work than men. And they are far less likely to apply for a job unless they meet 100 percent of the requested qualifications. (Men will apply for a job if they meet 60 percent of the requirements, while women tend to apply only if they possess all of the qualifications, according to an internal report by Hewlett Packard, somewhat ironically the firm Fiorina headed before being forced to resign in 2005.) Men who have no experience in public sector budgeting or legislative negotiations will wake up, sit on the edge of their respective beds, and say to themselves, “sure, I could be president.” Women, meanwhile, too often need to be convinced that they are qualified to make decisions for the public.
The trend starts at the lower levels of elected office. Rutgers University’s Center for the American Woman in Politics – the gold-standard authority on female voters and candidates – reports that womenneed to be recruited and convinced to run, whereas men are more likely to decide on their own that they ought to be in elected office. That’s a recipe for fewer women in politics, since getting women into office requires more pro-active behavior by the political parties. But it’s also reflective of the troubling persistence of an antiquated idea that men get to make decisions and women have to wait to be asked.
That’s bad enough when it comes to getting a date to the prom or deciding to marry. But it’s particularly destructive when it means women, who are a narrow majority of the population, are still a minority of state legislators, congressmembers, senators and presidential candidates. The fact that progressives are hounding Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president – despite her repeated, clear insistence she is not running – underscores the insult. It’s as though what Warren thinks and says doesn’t matter. All she needs is someone to ask her, again and again, and she’ll give in, like in some tiresome rom-com.
[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections]
So the women we have had seeking office have tended to have fairly solid qualifications. (GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, notably, did not decide to run on her own – she was asked.) Among men, we get characters like Donald Trump, who has no experience in foreign or domestic policy and no record in elected office, making runs (or threatened runs) for president or governor with nothing more than an inflated ego as a justification.
Clinton surely has her critics, even her enemies, but she has experience in both the foreign and domestic arenas, as well as experience mounting campaigns. The fact that her rollout for this race looks more like her successful run for Senate than her unsuccessful bid to be the 2008 nominee shows that she indeed learns from her own extensive experience.
Fiorina has less of a traditional record to tout. Yes, she was the first woman to head a Fortune 20 company, but she was also forced out of her job as CEO, and came under criticism for outsourcing jobs. She has never held elected office, and, in fact, lost a Senate race in 2010. True, the race was in largely Democratic California, but 2010 was a banner year for Republicans.
As for sophistication in campaigning, one can only look to the bizarre “demon sheep” ad Fiorina ran during the primary. Discussing a potential (but likely) bid for the presidency on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Fiorina talked about leadership and management, saying the country needed leadership and she could provide it. That in itself is not only naive but ill-suited for the current crisis in Washington. If “leadership,” in its old-fashioned sense, means trying to force Congress and interest groups and the public to follow one’s dictates without discussion or negotiation, that approach will fail. The problem in Washington is not that President Barack Obama refuses to tell people what to do; it’s that Congress and its individual members can’t or won’t compromise or even, often, just listen to each other. Good leadership is, in fact, rooted in good management.
[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Ted Cruz]
The fact that Fiorina is a complete outsider might appeal to some people, but again, it’s not a good fit right now for Washington, which is suffering from the deterioration of personal relationships among lawmakers. Obama, with just four years in the Senate before he was inaugurated as president, has been stymied by the fact that he simply didn’t have enough time on the Hill to develop close relationships and fiercely loyal allies. Coming to the Oval Office with no previous interaction at all with Congress – be it as a member of Congress or as a governor – will just make it harder.
Nor is Fiorina’s record as a businesswoman a replacement for experience in public sector finance. Handling a federal budget is far more complicated than running a company (impressive as that is) because every federal spending cut or increase, every change in the tax code, has a ripple effect, sometimes wide-reaching and unanticipated. And while a CEO can make command decision, a president must deal with Congress, foreign leaders and the electorate. On paper, the U.S. president may be the most powerful person in the world, but in reality, he (or maybe, after 2016, she) is remarkably constrained by law and politics. This is a hard adjustment for businesspeople to make even when they come to the House of Representatives, and realize that despite the impressive title, they are really just one of 435 people in one of two chambers in one of three branches of government.
So Fiorina has a lot of holes in her resume, if she indeed makes a full-on run for president. It’s about time we had a woman like that.