An opening for Clinton

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Friday, Dec. 28, 2007 | midnight

Fort Dodge, Iowa

At his final campaign stop Dec. 18, former President Clinton called attention to his wife's international experience. She has visited 83 countries, he said. In polls of many nations, people preferred her to all other candidates of both parties. And when it came to making peace in Northern Ireland -- which he described as one of his proudest achievements -- Hillary, he claimed, had laid the groundwork by reaching out to Irish women.

In Bill's telling of it, by the time the leaders of the various factions sat down, they had already heard an earful about the need for peace from their wives, thanks to Hillary's intervention with Irish women.

It was a passing remark, but noteworthy in one respect: For all of the Clintons' efforts to woo women voters by trumpeting the history-making aspect of electing the first female president, neither Bill nor Hillary has emphasized the idea that there might be a substantive difference in having a woman in office -- that a woman might be able to achieve things that a man could not.

Like women who have been elected to top offices in other countries -- such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- Hillary Clinton has been careful to present herself as exactly the equal of men, not different because of her gender. There is obvious political peril in claiming that women think differently from men -- it's a can of worms that most successful female candidates have been reluctant to open.

But Democrats are so distressed by America's low image in the world that many primary election voters seem to be looking for the biggest possible change of image in the White House. And that makes them receptive to the first woman president or, perhaps even more emphatically, the first black president.

Now, as some globally minded Democrats get ready to cast their votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, it is hard not to believe that somewhere in the back of their minds they are assessing the relative merits of the first black or the first woman, and wondering which would do more to change the world.

Unlike Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama openly suggests that his background -- both as the son of parents of different races and as a person who spent part of his childhood in Muslim-dominated Indonesia -- would enable him to appeal to other nations on different terms.

“The morning I am inaugurated, America will look at itself differently, and the world will look at America differently,” he has said repeatedly on the campaign trail. And he makes clear that the difference will not be just symbolic: He has said he would cite his years in Indonesia as a way to gain credibility with leaders of Muslim countries, and would point to his African grandmother to create a bridge to the Third World.

There is little doubt that Obama's background gives him a unique stature -- and that having him as the symbol of America could alter perceptions of the United States in Africa, Asia and South America. Emphasizing the multiracial aspect of the United States to a multiracial world could give the American Dream new currency: It would prove that American values are applicable to everyone. Such a possibility is obviously thrilling to the Democrats who've flooded Obama's campaign events.

There is excitement around Clinton, too, of a different sort. She has pushed the idea that her election would be a benchmark in the struggle for women's equality, and she tells of the 90-year-old women who've remarked that they were born before women could vote and want to see a woman president before they die.

But others have suggested that having a woman as commander in chief could mean more. Swanee Hunt, former U.S. ambassador to Austria and an arch-admirer of Clinton's, has built a study center at Harvard University around the idea that women view foreign policy differently from men -- and that there would be fewer conflicts if women had an equal say in world affairs. Hunt has recommended that the United States require, as a condition for its cooperation, that half of all peace delegations be women -- believing that women have a greater stake in maintaining peace agreements.

Clinton hasn't dared suggest such a thing. But with her primary rival saying that his background could change the world, the door is open for her to try. There clearly are risks, but there could be rewards as well.

Peter Canellos is the Washington bureau chief of The Boston Globe.