Think that's Pollyanna talk? Consider Hillary's predecessors in the woman-for-president business. Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run back in 1872, got called a witch, evicted from her home and, the night before the election, thrown in jail. One hundred years later, opponents physically assaulted U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm several times when she campaigned for the office. Even the most successful recent candidates, Rep. Pat Schroeder (in '88) and now-Sen. Elizabeth Dole (in '00), were forced to close down their campaigns before anyone ever had a chance to vote for them --- the victims of too much competition and too little money. ("After testing the waters," Rep. Schroeder put it later, "I extracted my toe.")

Seen against that depressing backdrop, you have to wonder what anyone who questions the door-opening quality of Hillary's campaign is smoking. So what if one crackpot yelled "Iron my shirts!" on the campaign trail, and pundit Chris Matthews called her "witchy"?

In the presidential marathon, Hillary made it roughly 225 million dollars and 18 million votes farther than any woman ever had before and it seems clear that had she not been running against, oh, the most gifted candidate in decades, she could have snagged the nomination, and maybe the presidency too. The distance she came should lay to rest once and for all the question of whether a woman can run for president. She already has.

For young women, seeing that, knowing that, is transforming. After all, as a Brookings Institution study found last month, women who do run for office tend to win as often as men do -- the real problem is that they just don't run. Hillary's example should change that, for women of both parties. Is it far-fetched to think that my own kindergartener is just a little more likely to consider politics as a career having grown up exposed to Hillary's constant front-page presence? I don't think so. As the cliché goes, before you can be it, you need to see it.

Years ago I interviewed the great judge Martha Craig Daughtrey---the first female U.S. attorney in Tennessee and at the time the sole woman on her state's Supreme Court. I was breathless over her historic resume: How did it feel to do all that pioneering? "Oh," Judge Daughtrey shrugged, vaguely annoyed by the preciousness of the question, "someone was bound to come along and get those firsts one day or another."

So we've gotten the First Woman thing out of the way; now let's get on with it. Don't let the media naysayers convince you otherwise: The door's open, waiting for you to walk through it.

[image: Hillary Clinton via Wikimedia]