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Renée Graham

Clinton didn’t have the luxury of being unprepared for the debate

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the debate on Monday.AFP/Getty Images

Though Hillary Clinton aced the first presidential debate, some still criticized her for being over-prepared. For many women to succeed, there’s no such thing as being over-prepared. They have no other choice.

Of course Hillary Clinton was prepared.

Anyone who has observed Clinton on the national stage for the past quarter-century shouldn’t have expected anything else. This would be the biggest moment, thus far, of her political career, and it is not in Clinton’s nature to approach such a critical event with less than a full quiver of facts, figures, and pertinent anecdotes.

When Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, met Donald Trump, her Republican opponent, this week in the first debate, she had the assured glow of someone aching to ace every answer. She took days off from the campaign trail to participate in mock debates with close aides, pore over briefing materials, and scrutinize tapes of Trump in those umpteen GOP primary debates. She took nothing for granted.

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“Like a lot of women, I have a tendency to over-prepare,” Clinton said at an event in North Carolina earlier this month. “I sweat the details.” This, despite President Obama saying “there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America,” and despite the fact that Clinton is a former US senator and served as secretary of state during Obama’s first term.

Women always sweat the details.

Not much was made of the fact that Trump saw no need to hold mock debates with staffers — “Hey, he’s unconventional,” television pundits clucked. In a veiled jab at Clinton, Trump pointed out what he saw as the pitfalls of over-preparation. Trump, whose churlish cult of personality stampeded through the primaries, clearly thought he could just cruise through the debate — especially against a woman — with his usual blustering assortment of insults, lies, and gibberish. Still, after Clinton laid him to waste Monday, even with Trump interrupting her more than 50 times, some still think he is more qualified to lead this country.

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To be unprepared is not a luxury any woman can afford, unless she wants to be dissed and dismissed as grossly out of her league. Even so, she’s probably already heard the whispers that her presence merely fulfills a quota. She’ll watch less qualified men get considered for better positions. If she ascends too far too fast, some conversations will grow even more offensive and demeaning.

Plus, in all likelihood, she’ll still earn less than a man doing the same job. As much as people love to quote the line about Ginger Rogers doing backwards and in high heels everything her dancing partner Fred Astaire did, no one ever adds that Rogers probably wasn’t paid as much as Astaire for the 10 films they made together. Women must work twice as hard to be considered half as good. That truism fuels the tendency Clinton mentioned and clings to every woman’s psyche. There is no such thing as over-preparing.

Yet the goal posts are always shifting when it comes to women (and people of color). Some, like NBC’s Chuck Todd, complained that Clinton seemed “over-prepared” in the debate, a stupid thing to say when someone is making a case before the American public to be their president. That Clinton prevailed against a pathological misogynist is even more impressive. But then, it’s always the same old sexism when it comes to women — they’re branded as either incompetent or shrill know-it-alls trying to steal a man’s shine.

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In a debate post-mortem, a Los Angeles Times political reporter called Clinton’s takedown of Trump “nearly a TKO [technical knockout].” Nearly? If Trump had done as well, many would have declared the race over, but that’s fine. Clinton will likely use an even more arduous preparation process to be ready for the next two debates, in hopes that “nearly a TKO” will be a KO come November. It is her tendency, every woman’s tendency. To over-prepare — and take nothing for granted — is women’s work.


Renée Graham writes regularly for the Globe. Follow her on Twitter @reneeygraham.