“The eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.”
President François Mitterrand’s famous description of Margaret Thatcher captured not only a chauvinist view Frenchmen may have of the complex mix of attributes that reside in a powerful woman. It also hinted at a deeper reality about the particular set of characteristics demanded of a successful female leader in a democracy.
Feminists complain, with some justification, that in professional life women are held to different standards than men. To succeed they are expected to have all the qualities of an alpha leader — resilience, fortitude, ruthlessness. But they are also somehow required to conform to age-old stereotypes of feminine character: They must seem caring, emotionally responsive, even alluring.
The double standard surely applies in politics too and provides clues to the presidential election campaign, in which again a woman is attempting to make it to the top. If the short history of successful women in Western democracies is a guide, I would suggest that Mitterrand’s Caligula-Marilyn hybrid is exactly the model Kamala Harris is aiming for.
It is noteworthy that more than 45 years after a woman became prime minister of the U.K., almost 20 years after a woman became chancellor of Germany, and almost two years after a woman became prime minister of Italy, America is still waiting for its first female chief executive. Yet so far at least the vice president’s sex has kept a low profile.
If she loses in November, no doubt Democrats will blame it in large part on the misogyny of the deplorables, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But this isn’t convincing. For one thing, it is hard to believe that Britain in 1979, Germany in 2005 or for that matter Italy in 2022 were more enlightened about women’s roles than America is today. What’s more, the gender gap in voting behaviour in the U.S. may actually give Ms. Harris an advantage. Polling suggests that the gap is wider than ever this year. Since there are more women registered to vote than men, her advantage could be crucial.
Yet for some voters — of both sexes — who may still apply those double standards to female candidates, there are three useful lessons from the three most recent successful female leaders of major industrialised democracies: Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Giorgia Meloni.
First, none of these women made her campaign — or her governments — about women’s empowerment. All focused relentlessly on the issues confronting the whole country. This was one of the errors Mrs. Clinton made in 2016 — all that “glass ceiling” rhetoric and dreary “Fight Song” music announcing her entrance like the arrival of the queen of Sheba. It gave voters the impression that the election was all about her, not them.
Ms. Harris’s campaign has grasped this. While she may be justly accused of an enveloping vacuity in her campaign rhetoric, at least we have been spared the glass-ceiling talk.
Second, these successful Western leaders were all tough as nails, arguably tougher than the men they opposed. For Thatcher, earning the sobriquet of “Iron Lady” from Moscow early in her premiership was a supreme honour. It was a common joke in Westminster, when she presided over an all-male cabinet, that she was the only member with balls.
But she also understood how to use her femininity to win over men especially. Her toughness was both underpinned and balanced by a powerful female allure, as Mitterrand’s famous observation noted.
Ms. Merkel of Germany had a similar combination of femininity and toughness. Though her nickname was “Mutti,” German for “mom,” this was as much an allusion to the stern figure of famed Teutonic constancy as it was to any maternal softness. She was childless, as it happens (also catless).
When she first visited Vladimir Putin in 2007, the Russian leader, knowing she had a fear of dogs, ensured an intimidating black Labrador was on hand, sniffing around the visibly uncomfortable German leader.
She had the last word.
“He’s afraid of his own weakness,” she told reporters later, “Russia has nothing. No successful politics or economy. Only this.”
Spend an hour in the company of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, as I did recently, and you get a similar sense of the combination of iron resolution and feminine charm. A fiercely nationalist leader of a party that has its roots in fascism, she has proved both a sterling defender of Italian interests on the world stage and a pragmatic and engaging stateswoman — less Mussolini in a pants suit than Garibaldi in Gucci.
Ms. Harris has evidently learned these lessons too. We are fed charming stories of her cooking tacos for the family and winsome tales of first dates. But these are leavened by accounts of how she enjoyed nothing more than sending bad men to prison for the rest of their lives.
The third common attribute of the female Group of Seven leaders, however, is beyond Ms. Harris. They have all been conservatives. This may be no accident. If cautious voters are to be persuaded to break new ground, they don’t seem to want to go all in with a radical. Better to elect a woman of more traditional tenor.
If she’s to win, that’s another mould Ms. Harris will have to break.
THE WALL ST JOURNAL
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