Will the U.S. Ever Be Ready for a Female President?

Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, 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,” Mr.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, Mr.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.”Their similar predictions are the latest in a conversation that has frustrated and foiled two generations of female candidates.For Democrats still scarred by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald J.

Trump in 2016, Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat at the hands of the same man in November has only deepened anxieties over gender bias and prompted a fresh round of debate over the electability of women to the nation’s highest office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....