Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Yet I clearly remember that I felt the feeling: the focused anticipation, my competence, my loneliness.

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.