Of course the comparisons have already begun between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Ségolène Royal who just ran for and lost the French presidential election. The comparison has been dismissed by the Clinton camp but it does hit an interesting point.

Political junkies, historians & pundits have a habit of comparing things. We love doing it! I mean LOVE IT! We like to find similarities, differences, fun quirky bits of information, numbers, whatever we can to take someone like President George W. Bush and see if he is more like President Harry Truman or President Herbert Hoover. Why? Because it is good geeky fun.

Because there isn’t exactly a long list of women with executive power Sen. Clinton has been comared to everyone from Geraldine Ferraro to Margaret Thatcher to Katie Couric. That’s right, Katie Couric. If you remember when Couric started as the news anchor on CBS it was predicted that her rise & fall would be a great indicator of Clinton’s potential. Why? I have no idea. I guess because Couric is a woman in the news doing what we used to think of as a male job and Sen. Clinton was too.

The problem is Couric reads news off a teleprompter, Clinton is a sitting Senator who wants to take over the free world. Which means though it isn’t exactly an accurate comparison between Clinton & the French candidate it is at least in the ballpark.

It is difficult for us as humans and especially us as commentators, critics & geeks to look beyond that very basic factor. Clinton is a woman, Obama is black, Romeny is a Mormon, Giuliani is Italian etc. Those things say little about the candidates ability to handle a nuclear crisis or make decisions about racial or social strife. Their personalities, experience, temperament and a whole lot of other things do.

We can compare Obama to Lincoln or Roosevelt or Reagan and see how he adds up, we can do the same with Clinton or any of the other candidates. But then there is that first step, getting over the superficial. It may actually be more accurate to compare Ségolène Royal to Obama or Edwards or even more accurately Gravel or Kucinich. Just as it might be more accurate to compare Clinton to any countless number of men who have come before.

It is easy though to lock these figures into a box and only put in those people who look like them. It won’t really get us far in judging these candidates, won’t help us move the country forward and won’t do much to help racial or sexual discrimination. It will be easy though and that’s why we should probably try and push ourselves a little further and think outside that box.