The first president was a man, John Hanson. Few people count him, however, and so his name has faded into obscurity. Hundreds of years later, a woman was the candidate for vice president of a major party, Geraldine Ferraro. She lost, but not because she was a woman. She had the misfortune to run with Walter Mondale, who was crushed by Ronald Reagan.
There were national leaders elsewhere who were women, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher. And there was the first credible candidate for president, Elizabeth Dole, who ran in 2000, and lost to George W. Bush. He was followed in office by Barack Obama, the first black president.
In 2016, the question is posed whether the United States is ready for a woman president. We’ve been ready for years, decades perhaps. But it’s an immature question, despite many who feel deeply moved by Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democratic candidate for president. For some, her nomination “breaks through” the glass ceiling that some believe prevented a woman from being taken seriously as being capable of holding the office. And indeed, symbolism has a beloved place in American culture.
But was the problem up to now that the patriarchy crushed the dreams of women? Was the problem that women were prevented from being nominated by a major party as candidate for president because of their gender?
Or was the problem that there was no candidate who was willing to run, and for whom enough people wanted to vote, regardless of their gender?
A more mature view would look beyond the question of gender to the question of qualifications. That should be obvious following the two terms in office of President Obama, whose “historic” election as a black man left us with the Day 2 issue. Now that we’ve gotten past race, the president needs to govern. For the balance of his first and second terms of office, race was no longer the issue. He was president, skin color aside, and there was a job to do.
The same is true for a woman. The symbolism of a woman being nominated as the presidential candidate for a major party has occurred. Everyone focused on small things can applaud. Should Clinton be elected president, we will get another opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for ending the drought that started with Hanson. Yay, us.
But if elected, Hillary Clinton will still be president on day 2, after we’ve done the gender happy dance. What then? As a nation, we’ve been beyond the point of gender as a preclusive characteristic for the presidency for quite a while. If you believe that gender is the deciding factor, then you are not ready for a woman president. You do not believe that a woman can possess the qualifications to win and perform the duties of the office of president, that gender is an irrelevant factor.
The problem hasn’t been gender, but a candidate who shows the gumption to run and the ability to muster the support to win.
Will that candidate be Hillary Clinton? That’s up to a voting nation. But vote for the candidate you want to be president on Day 2, not just Day 1 for the sake of symbolism. That moment will pass quickly, and then we will live with the choice for the next three years and 364 days.
If Hillary Clinton is the person you want as the President of the United States of America, whether because you think she would make a good president or a less bad one than the alternative, then cast your ballot for her. But not because she’s a woman. Vote for her because you want her to be your president. For better or worse, you may have to live with your choice after the joys of symbolism have waned.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
But not because she’s a woman.
I’d modify this to “But not only because she’s a woman”. There’s power in symbolism and let’s face it, voting is mostly all about symbolism (unless you actually think anyone can change the vote outcome by showing up). Just because it’s occurred doesn’t mean the opposite conclusions aren’t being taught to my little girls – no matter how much, we as parents, work to show them otherwise. I was shocked when I heard my niece tell her parents, both of whom are extremely successful lawyers and executives that she couldn’t really become President some day because she was a girl. So, given two equally strong candidates, we ought to consider the symbolism of a woman holding the top office, if only for girls to look up and see someone that truly embodies the notion that they CAN actually grown up to become president someday. Symbols matter.
The question should be whether the Democrats or the Republicans are ready, not society. But that would require an introspection into the tribe like mentality and admission that third parties like the one that nominated Victoria Woodhull could have figured out a better answer long before the D’s did.
If your niece said so, that changes everything.
Based on your quip, I might think that you were too focused on the anecdote to notice I made a critique to your post about the nature of voting (and why a focus on gender isn’t as silly as you make it).
I debated whether to include an anecdote, but decided it was relevant here. If you can’t readily overcome a societal perception with the actions modeled every day in your home, it’s more than a cute story that can be overcome with appeal to pure logic.
As you know, I’m not a fan of *empty* symbolism. But then, I wouldn’t deprive anyone of enjoying a good symbol, provided their was substance beyond it. But no need to say the obvious aloud.
What good is the symbolism of the first woman President if she turns out to ineffective, venal, oppressive, or even a puppet? Symbols are tricky in how subjective they can be.
Where does nuance fall in the middle of your good / bad dichotomy? I think you’re miscalculating the “good” of symbolism with the “bad” that other factors might play. Each person gets to use their own calculus for what’s important to them while voting. If making sure one person wins the election, there’s no point in my ever voting at all. I can’t recall an election that ever came down to a single vote.
There *is* symbolism and that symbolism doesn’t get eliminated just because, to paraphrase Churchill, you think Hillary is the worst possible candidate to vote for (except for the other one).
I don’t think there’s as big of a problem as you see though, because Ms passive voice* seems to be teaching these children very adult, mature thinking. Your niece, absent understanding of the complex history and precedent as to why there’s never been a woman President of the US, defaults to simple Bayesian inference, which is a great way to calculate probability. It doesn’t really matter whether people actually hate women and vote against them in an election, or whether the mass of political, societal and personal factors leads to women having a significantly lower chance of becoming President – gender is a good enough predictor whether one is likely to not be President**. Your niece seems to have grown a mature view of the world, that not everyone is a special and unique snowflake and the tyranny of statistics implies most of us will live mediocre and uninteresting lives. Only massive outliers like Clinton have so far managed to get close to the Presidency, and for most women, the prospect is very unlikely.
Of course, that could all be bullshit and it could just be an off-hand sentence from a child who is trying to absorb all the complexity of the world and distill it through their lens of limited experience.
Despite all that, I agree with Keith – I don’t think you can easily separate qualifications and gender. Perhaps one of Clinton’s qualifications is that she’s a woman, like Keith says, Symbolism Matters(tm). The more detached you are from US politics and the presidency, the less the US President is a particular person, and the more they are a symbol. Not necessarily just children, but political leaders may use her gender in their decisions, or at least in their rhetoric. “Common folk” may be inspired or appalled at the idea of a woman President, and that could influence US sentiment in other countries. Would Canada look upon the US with inspiration and support? Maybe that factors into your decision to vote for Hillary. Maybe you’re worried about fomenting more disdain for the US in the Middle East, so you’d vote against her. I think you can imagine lots of reasons why gender is a valid qualification for the US President, no matter how much we wish it wasn’t.
* As per The Times’ rules
** It’s not a good predictor of the opposite – clearly many males do not become President simply because of their gender.
“Deicing factor?” Spell checker misfire, or subtle jab? I smell a VRWC!
Ordinarily, I would make the correction and trash your comment, but yours may well be the wittiest thing I read today.
WTF? ! You can still dance on day two!
Sometimes I think you let your feelz muck up how this here military industrial complex disco rolls. Even Eisenhower doesn’t let his feelz get in the way of him rolling over in his grave to the beat.
Get with the program Geezer.
I guess you could roll with Jill or Gary both day two wannabes but let’s face it, if watching Hillarry twirll atop the glass celing above your table doesn’t do it for you, who wouldn’t get a little excited to see Donald and Vladimir break out the mankinis for a little man loving with ice dildos to cool down the next cold war?
P.S. Look for, there only being eight tantric sex positions to influence leglislative efforts to keep the Supreme bench at eight indefinitely.
1. The SJW’s like the idea of a woman president.
2. SHG hates the SJW’s with the white hot fire of a thousand suns and knows that everything they think is wrong.
3. Therefore the SJW’s liking the idea of a woman president must be wrong.
4. But it can’t be that the idea of a woman president is wrong, because that would be gender discrimination even to non-SJW’s and that would mean the SJW’s might be right about something.
5. So the SJW’s must like the idea of a woman president for the wrong reason. That’s it.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Holly QED Tramp Stamps Batman!
When a simply “I told you so” would have been sufficient too.
I know you just wanted to be mean and all but you got to chill with the QED references. It’s hard enough to have an affair with a nice physicis or chemistry grad student from the midwest these days as it is without having to worry about QED catching on with the wrong crowd.
Jeez…
My working hypothesis is that the correlation coefficient between the desire to place consecutive numbers in front of baseless inferences and opinions and the ability to think critically is somewhere around -0.8.
Good post, tummy rubs (not requested, I understand), etc.
I’ve already been accused of malevolent motives, so it must be okay.
The trouble is that this symbol if elected will probably consider her position to be a mandate to continue the practice of giving women jobs just because they are women. Anyone who thinks this is unlikely to happen has been asleep for the last fifty years. Hillary has made no secret of the fact that she is happy to preside over a country that is blind to half the population if it helps her personal ambitions. Don’t get me wrong , I believe she would go the other way if the wind was blowing in that direction. When all these top jobs are filled by people on the basis of gender and not performance what then? Is everything going to just fall into place because the almighty decreed it so? I would say that this is precisely the time when it is most dangerous to elect a woman due to symbolism when affirmative action is running rampant and young men are being edged out of higher learning. If I where voting I would take a good look at the present situation and say “that’s far enough anyone playing the gender card is not getting in”.