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Monday, November 9, 2026Nov 9

Will the U.S. ever be ready for a female president?

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, at the Department of the Interior in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, at the Department of the Interior in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, at the Department of the Interior in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., don’t agree on much. Yet, recently the ideological adversaries found some common ground on a political question that has quietly endured over nearly two decades.

Yes, a woman can win the White House, they agree. But she’s probably going to be conservative.

“Are there women out there, governors, Republican, Democrat, that can be the next president of the United States? Absolutely,” Graham said in an interview on Capitol Hill this month. “If you have a Republican female nominee, they would have a good shot of being the first woman president.”

A few days earlier and several hundred miles north, Clinton – whose wife tried and failed twice to win the White House – made a similar argument.

“Ideologically, the people who are most likely to be against women are most likely to be conservative, so when people agree with you, it’s easier to be for them,” he said in an appearance at the DealBook Summit hosted by The New York Times. “But I think a woman can be elected president. I do.”