Okay, so I watched a replay of the democratic NH debate--most of it. And the truth is, I think Hilary is a convincing candidate with a firm grasp of issues. Prior baggage aside--and I know that's hard to push away for some--she is firm, clear and pragmatic. She's an excellent executive and a hard worker. She comes to each question immensely prepared. Barack, at times, seems to be thinking out loud, a little less organized in his presentation--which I think is what people consider his asset--that's what makes him 'authentic.' My husband, who is less obsessed than I am with this race, dips into the debates, and every time he wants to like Barack, he comes away unconvinced. "I think you're all deluding yourself. He's a fantasy." Maybe it's generational, he admits. He just thinks Hilary's hard-nosed and seasoned enough to get the job done.

I feel a little badly for Hilary, I must admit. Something elusive has slipped from her grasp--likeability, they call it. A silver-tongued grace, which her husband has, a charismatic ease, an ability to be himself before a crowd. How much of this is the box that women politicians are put into in the U.S.? That earlier generation of shoulder-padded, corporate amazons not allowed to be a "personality?" (Or is that reserved for the Oprahs of the world?) Aren't we seeing, writ large, what those women complained about so much--that they always had to be "better," more prepared, more organized than their male counterparts to get attention and power? The guys could simply just "be" and exude confidence, mastery and male cuteness. And so the women are passed over because they are the good girls, the ones who multi-task and do everything right, and yet they're somehow not the one at the top.

Okay, I realize that Hilary is one formidable gal. And that she's hardly an overlooked phenomenon in American politics. I just want to record, for the moment, that I'm a bit guilty of falling for charisma and ease over the well organized striver.

And there was one moment in the debate where I could see it so clearly. When she said (I'm loosely paraphrasing here) "Talk is not change. Being able to deliver is change." At that moment--clearly directed at Barack--I could not help but feel that she was having a terrible moment of deja vu: it was the scolding she must have delivered to Bill countless times, in countless midnight kitchen heart to hearts. Enough talk, Bill. It's time to deliver. Get your act together, discipline yourself and follow through! She was once again the wife put in the role of the hectoring mother prodding her brilliant, rambling son to stop his lofty promises and finish what he started. The next day, on the campaign trail, Hilary apparently said of politics--it's not "poetry," it's "prose." That is, hard, hard work, often dull, not romantic at all.

Thanks, mom, I want to say (and this coming from a mom who has to prod her brilliant son to finish his homework) But the truth is, politics is poetry and romance and heart, too. People don't want to be reminded of prose--that's their hum-drum day-to-day lives already. They want ecstatic, hopeful, transcendent poetry that takes them beyond themselves. And on this, I suspect, she's losing.

But that doesn't mean I have to crow about it.