And I've sort of made my peace with that.  I hate it, of course, and my fondest wish is that she's putting on a "toughness" schtick because, not being a complete idiot, she knows misogyny dictates that women have a tendency to be portrayed as weak.  And, unfortunately, we're still, at base, a bunch of dumb apes, and "strength" in the midst of a campaign is often bestowed upon s/he who talks the toughest game about sorting out the savages with freedom bombs.

So perhaps she pivots away from the hawkishness when/if she wins.  That's the hope anyway.  But my inclination is always to take politicians at their word barring strong background evidence to the contrary.  They may all be corrupt liars, but presidents do historically move in the direction they promise to move.

Some of the difference between the two is probably generational.  They're about 15 years apart, I think, which is massive in a cultural sense.  She grew up a middle- to upper-middle-class white woman from a pretty standard suburban family in Illinois during the height of the Cold War.  He grew up a middle-class black man raised by an academic mom in Hawaii and Indonesia and came of age as the Soviet Union was rotting.

She always strikes me as a classic Boomer, and he always strikes me as a classic Gen-X'er (even if he's technically from the back end of the Boomers).  They can kinda understand each other, but it's like me and my friends sitting at a bar here and chatting with the college kids.  We can talk football or something else universally relatable all day, but when you get into politics or music or something, there's a little common ground.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Trump fits that stereotype pretty well too.  Born into money, he can do more or less as he pleases, say whatever, fail any number of times in business, have no educational qualifications or previous public service accomplishments and hey Presto: He's a leader, ready for the White House. Can you imagine a women with a similar track record get past first base?

Hopefully Hillary has learned that she doesn't have to act like a macho man once in office.  No drama Obama could be quite a powerful role model for her. She's also not inheriting a full scale war from him and Isis seems to be on the run. A key test will be how many neo-cons she puts into powerful positions.  Obama has pretty much marginalised the worst of them. We'll see.

Index of Frank's Diaries