Life & Wisdom Quote by John Podhoretz

Politics is a performance art that punishes nuance, and Podhoretz is naming the costume change Clinton was always required to nail: toughness as optics, not just biography. “She needs to seem tough” is doing double duty. It nods to a basic campaign reality - candidates must telegraph strength - while also indicting the electorate and the media ecosystem for treating “seem” as the governing verb. In that single word sits the whole pageant of commander-in-chief signaling: cadence, posture, photo-ops, calibrated hawkishness.

The second clause tightens the screw. “Whatever Hillary’s weaknesses” gestures at the familiar catalog - likability, trust, warmth, triangulation - without relitigating it, because the line’s real goal is to box those critiques in as secondary to a more election-relevant trait. Podhoretz, a conservative writer, is also performing a grudging respect: he can dislike her politics and still concede competence in the arena that traditionally decides credibility for women candidates.

The kicker is the understatement: “tough is a pretty good word to describe her.” “Pretty good” reads as deliberate restraint, a rhetorical shrug that pretends objectivity while smuggling in a firm conclusion. Subtextually, it’s a defense against the gendered double-bind Clinton lived in: if she projects steel, she’s cold; if she softens, she’s weak. Podhoretz is arguing she should lean into the trait critics can’t plausibly deny - not because it’s flattering, but because it’s strategically legible.