Is Obama the first female president?

An interesting read from politico... I remember we talked about this 2 weeks ago:

Dept. of originality
A reader emailed last night puzzled by echoes among three columns:

Martin Linsky, Newsweek, February 25 2008:

It has been a rarity in modern political life: a wide-open race for the nomination of both parties. But whatever happens from here on out, this campaign will always be remembered for the emergence of the first serious woman candidate for president: Barack Obama. Obama is a female candidate for president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the first black president. It was Toni Morrison who first had the insight. In a 1998 essay in the New Yorker, the Nobel Prize-winning author described Bill Clinton as "the first black president," commenting on his saxophone playing and his displaying "almost every trope of blackness." Obama doesn't play the sax. But he is pushing against conventional—and political party nominating convention—wisdom in five important ways, with approaches that are usually thought of as qualities and values that women bring to organizational life: a commitment to inclusiveness in problem solving, deep optimism, modesty about knowing all the answers, the courage to deliver uncomfortable news, not taking on all the work alone, and a willingness to air dirty linen....

Ralph Alter, The American Thinker, June 5 2009

In the same sense that Toni Morrison claimed Bill Clinton was our first black president, Barack Obama could be thought of as another groundbreaker: our first female president. He displays every trope of femininity more than any female "who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime" (to borrow Morrison's phrase about Clinton). ...Obama is filled with sensitivity (one might even
say, empathy), he would rather talk than fight, is highly (yet selectively) compassionate and to top it all off, he has a finely tuned sense of fashion. B.O. attempts to collaborate with Europeans, South Americans, Muslims and nearly everyone except the citizens of red state America. Oh, and his position onabortion and women's rights is nearly identical to that of the Choicers at NARAL and NOW. ...While some might choose to describe BO as our first metrosexual President, the clincher is that, consistent with all outward appearances, the Obama administration fights like a girl.

Kathleen Parker, yesterday:

If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.No, I'm not calling Obama a girlie president. But . . . he may be suffering a rhetorical-testosterone deficit when it comes to dealing with crises, with which he has been richly endowed. It isn't that he isn't "cowboy" enough, as others have suggested. Aren't we done with that? It is that his approach is feminine in a normative sense. That is, we perceive and appraise him according to cultural expectations, and he's not exactly causing anxiety in Alpha-maledom....

I think this all has most of all to do with the well-established risk of trying to write like Maureen Dowd, who launched the meme in a February 24, 2008 column.

Posted by Ben Smith 09:39 AM