Hillary Clinton is on the verge of losing the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination because she has “had trouble portraying her authentic self,” according to her onetime friend and mentor Jean Houston.
Houston is a philosopher who gives seminars on “human potential.” During Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, she tutored Hillary in what would be her most successful ventures as first lady — a trip to South Asia, her first book, and a speech in China about human rights, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Her friendship with Hillary ended after Bob Woodward wrote in a 1996 book that Houston had helped guide Hillary in imaginary conversations with her hero Eleanor Roosevelt, an episode that critics dubbed “Wackygate.”
Houston believes that Barack Obama is poised to win the Democratic nomination “because he has promoted himself as the embodiment of a new kind of politics, and partly because Clinton has had trouble portraying her authentic self,” Robin Abcarian writes in the Times.
Houston said Hillary “is funny, hilarious, generous, warm, given to acts of kindness that are extraordinary. She is a deep woman, not just a very bright woman. But she is part of a dying breed, an archaic sensibility.”
Looking at the presidential race in terms of “archetypal structures,” Houston said Obama has “a shamanic personality,” Clinton is “the classical wise woman or priestess,” and Republican John McCain is “the warrior.”
Houston also said that Hillary has become bogged down in proving herself capable of emulating the male model, which requires combat and the demonization of enemies, the Times reports.
Woodward wrote in his book that Houston tried to help Hillary move away from her “warrior mode” and “the need to have enemies who could symbolically be singled out to embody the opposition.”
But Houston declared: “It’s a shame the warfare model is still there.”
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