You can exchange “wife” with “significant other” or any one of many roles a female has in the life of a man if you’d like to universalize this post, because I’m sure what I’m about to describe occurs in long-term relationships as well as father-daughter, sister-brother, son-mother and other connections.

What am I talking about? Start here with Swaraaj’s very open post about how men, in their attempts to compensate for being less than perfect when it comes to standing by their women, tend to overcompensate when they do finally realize that they’ve been less than perfect.

Case in point: Bill Clinton, as Swaraaj points out.

I don’t understand why leading democrats are asking Bill Clinton to pipe down…

When you cross 60, you suddenly realise how unfair you had been to your wife, and maybe not much supportive during the testing times in life….

At least I realised this. And I presume, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who are my age, may be thinking like that…!!!

Observations made during the roundtable portion of this morning’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos reveal what it is Swaraaj gently says he doesn’t understand about the requests for Bill to step away from his wife (and who ever thought we’d have to ask him to do that?).

Specifically, here are comments made by the guests and host regarding Bill Clinton’s troublesome emergence in his wife’s campaign over the last few days:

George Will: [refers to Bill Clinton as an “Olympic-class whiner” but says that such behavior “might work” in terms of helping Hillary]

Katrina vanden Heuvel: “I’m not sure it’s working [Matthew Dowd speaks and then KVH again]…He is so over-invested in her candidacy. When she said in New Hampshire, ‘I have found my own voice,’ she was talking about more than just the politics of it…people are looking at him like a little league dad…he has to be sent far away…”

George Stephanopoulos: “…I don’t think that President Clinton believes he is hurting…”

[snip]

Dowd: “…the best thing that she can do is stand alone…the best thing they can do is he sort of take a step back, go off the stage and let her stand on her own.”

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!!! Give those folks a cigar (or a nice This Week mug)!!!

Especially vanden Heuvel who may just be my newest hero of batting back at the push the MSM gives to certain theories and issues. But that’s another post.

Who got the dingdingdingdingding?

Both vanden Heuvel and Dowd. When a person – in this case, Bill Clinton – reaches that point when, as Swaraaj says, he (or she) realizes that they’ve somehow been less than helpful to someone who is supposed to mean the world to them or has propped them up in the past, they aren’t supposed to take actions that make them feel better. They are supposed to take actions that make that other person feel better.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, Bill needs to do exactly as Matthew Dowd says and let Hillary stand alone. She absolutely without question can stand alone.

Now, maybe the public – Republicans included – don’t want her to stand alone. Maybe even Bill doesn’t want her to stand alone. Why not? Why wouldn’t anyone want Hillary Clinton to test out, try out and remain standing alone?

Because the result of letting a capable, intelligent woman stand alone might:

1. show just how much the man is not needed. Man no like not being needed;

2. concern the woman that maybe she needs him after all (she must fight that back, because this is about her succeeding or failing, on her own); and finally,

3. lead to the woman succeeding – and what would that be like?

When it comes to the American presidency, no one knows yet. So understandably, some of us might be a little freaked out about the possibility. Allowing Bill to overcompensate for not letting Hillary be Hillary all by Hillary’s self is another excuse to keep her from standing alone.

But obviously, Bill Clinton is freaked out by the possibility of his wife becoming president, too. Which is why he has to step away from the wife and let us see Hillary on her own.

Then, if you want to slam her, she’s all yours. And you can leave Bill out of it.

The real trick for Americans will be testing themselves to see if they – the Hillary supporters and the Hillary haters – can neutralize the image and actions of Bill Clinton, though he may leave too indelible an impression for Hillary to ever be seen and critiqued as standing alone.

And that is the real shame about having so few women leaders.

Cross-posted at Writes Like She Talks.