We keep asking, because we refuse to see the plain answer. Hillary Clinton is not the victim of a double standard. She is the beneficiary of a double standard.

Consider the grandmother question. If elected in 2016, Hillary Clinton will be the second oldest president in U.S. history, after Ronald Reagan. At age 69, will she be too old? That was a question people felt free to discuss when John McCain ran for president.

CNN.com reported on June 15, 2008:

“Listen to some Democrats, and you’ll think the 71-year-old Arizona senator is a man lost in a perpetual fog. He is ‘confused’ and has ‘lost his bearings’ or is ‘out of touch.'” The “lost his bearings” innuendo was used by candidate Barack Obama himself, in a May 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer. …

In other words: as between Hillary Clinton on the one hand, and John McCain or Bob Dole on the other, the same standard is a double standard.