A First in Presidential Politics

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"Let me just say, first of all, that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy."

Rep. Geraldine Ferraro
Oct. 11, 1984

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Thirty years ago tonight, a woman participated in a vice presidential debate for the first time.

Actually, that isn't really as impressive as it sounds. There had been only one vice presidential debate prior to that — between then–Sen. Walter Mondale and then–Sen. Bob Dole in 1976. If Geraldine Ferraro had not been a participant, the debate probably never would have garnered the attention it did.

But it was part of the historic nature of the 1984 campaign. Ferraro, after all, was the first woman to be nominated to a major party's national ticket. Minor parties had nominated women before, but few of them managed to win even 1% of the popular vote. Most were mere footnotes in the annals of presidential politics. Even the first women to seek a major party's presidential nomination — Republican Margaret Chase Smith in 1964 and Democrat Shirley Chisholm in 1972 — were treated more as oddities than legitimate candidates.

Conventional wisdom holds that, in any election, a Democrat can count on winning one–third of the vote, a Republican can count on winning one–third of the vote, and the election will be decided by what that final one–third — the undecided, the uninformed and the easily swayed — choose to do. Consequently, Ferraro knew she would receive more votes for a national office than any woman before her — although, as it turned out, the Democrats lost that last one–third of the vote by a wide margin.

Conventional wisdom also holds that most people don't vote for the running mate. They vote for the candidate at the top of the ticket.

Now, personally, I have never been a big fan of vice presidential debates. What is there to debate? Vice presidents don't make policy. In fact, it is only in the last 40 years that the vice president has been treated as a legitimate and contributing member of the executive branch — but the transition has been a work in progress. Vice presidents still serve, as they always have, as the designated national representatives at foreign weddings and funerals. Vice presidents also preside over the Senate and cast votes when needed to break ties.

(That is why the distinction is made in this year's midterm elections that Republicans need to control 51 seats to take over the Senate whereas the Democrats need to control 50 seats. The decisive vote in a tie in the Senate belongs to the party in the White House because the vice president presides over the Senate.)

Otherwise, their chief responsibility is to stay awake during tedious Senate debates, even if they are battling jet lag from having just returned from a funeral halfway around the world.

But if vice presidential debates focused only on those experiences that qualify a person to be vice president, no one would tune in. After all, who wants to hear people talk for 90 minutes about their experience attending funerals or weddings or how they managed to stay awake through tedious legislative debates?

So vice presidential debates focus on issues that presidents are able to influence — sometimes — and other times are not able to influence. In short, a vice presidential debate is predicated on the assumption that one of the participants will one day become president, by assassination or election or maybe even resignation, and, consequently, it is necessary to know the candidates' views on abortion and guns.

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Actually, the notion that it is inevitable that a vice president will one day be president is absurd. Forty–seven men have served as vice president; fourteen went on to become president. That's less than 30% — and most of them became president following the death of the incumbent. It is by no means certain that they would have been elected president on their own. Five only served out their predecessors' unexpired terms, then faded into obscurity. Only four (that's less than 9%) were elected to the presidency without the benefit of having ascended after the death or resignation of someone else — and two of them were elected before presidential elections started involving a popular vote in the early 19th century.

The vice presidency simply never has been the stepping stone to the presidency that you might think it would be.

Many vice presidents have gone on to seek the presidency on their own. Many failed to win their party's nominations — and all who did win the nomination after 1836 and before 1988 were defeated (with the exception of 1968, when Richard Nixon, running as a former vice president, won both the Republican nomination and the general election).

George H.W. Bush, of course, had sought the presidency before — in 1980, he had been Ronald Reagan's top rival for the Republican presidential nomination before being chosen to be Reagan's running mate. Ferraro, however, never had sought the presidency. She had barely sought the House seat she occupied, having won three terms, and was barely known outside her district.

So why was it important? It was important for Democrats to keep the momentum going after Mondale's first debate with Reagan. The polls showed the Democratic ticket trailing the Republican ticket by a wide margin — correctly, too, as it turned out — and the Democrats' hopes for victory depended on a perception of sustained momentum.

Bush's objective was simple — halt the Democrats' momentum, then Reagan could close the deal in the rematch with Mondale later that month.

My memory of that night is that neither candidate was the clear winner — which, in some ways, was a victory for Bush because it supported opposition arguments that the Democrats' momentum had stalled. If Bush had been the clear loser, the Democrats would have had momentum decisively on their side when Mondale faced Reagan in their second and final debate a week and a half later. But the absence of a clear winner changed the conversation.

For the next couple of decades, women were frequently mentioned as potential running mates for presumptive nominees — but such talk was mostly to appease women voters. A vice presidential debate has been part of every presidential election since 1984, but Ferraro remained the only member of the club of major–party female nominees for almost a quarter of a century.

It was a week shy of 24 years later — on Oct. 3, 2008 — that a female nominee participated in another vice presidential debate. That was the day that then–Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the first female nominee on a Republican ticket, and then–Sen. Joe Biden met in their only debate of the 2008 campaign.

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Once again, the conclusion was that the debate had been a draw. As nearly as I could tell, the 2008 vice presidential debate, like the one in 1984, had no influence on the outcome of the race.

The First Bump on That Glass Ceiling

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Nearly 15 years earlier to the day, Neil Armstrong took a giant leap for mankind. On this night in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro took a giant leap for women.

She had been telling folks to "just call me Geri" since long before Walter Mondale picked her to be his running mate a week earlier. But somehow that just didn't seem right for a presumptive vice–presidential nominee.

It took her more than four minutes, but Ferraro finally said what thousands in San Francisco's Moscone Center and millions more watching on TV had been waiting to hear.

First, though, she reaffirmed that "America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us."

Exactly one week earlier, Mondale, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had announced that he had chosen her to be his running mate — and now, it was her turn to officially accept the nomination (per political protocol) after the delegates approved Mondale's choice, which they did by acclamation.

It was a mere formality, of course. A rather quaint American tradition. No one thought for a second that she would turn down the nomination. And she didn't. Then after she had accepted the nomination, she spent about 25 minutes introducing herself to America. Other than her debate with Vice President George H.W. Bush three months later, it was about the most extensive exposure America would get to the first female on a major party's national ticket.

Not all Americans were watching, of course. They never are, but in a convention week that included soaring speeches from Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson, Ferraro's speech clearly was the emotional high point.

American Rhetoric proclaimed the speech she gave 30 years ago tonight to be #56 on the list of the top 100 speeches of the 20th century. It carried unique challenges that neither Cuomo nor Jackson had to face.

Ferraro was the first woman on a major–party ticket. It was historic, and all eyes would be watching her closely. Her detractors would be looking for anything to criticize, and her supporters would be looking for anything to praise.

Ferraro simply seemed to want her opportunity to tell the country what she could do.

"The promise of our country is that the rules are fair," Ferraro told the delegates. "If you work hard and play by the rules, you can earn your share of America's blessings."

That is pretty standard political rhetoric, but it seemed more convincing coming from the first woman on a major party's national ticket.

And, taking a page from John F. Kennedy's political playbook, Ferraro said, "The issue is not what America can do for women, but what women can do for America."

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Reactions to the speech were generally good. Pundit reactions to the selection of Ferraro as running mate were decidedly mixed, although Ferraro initially proved to be an asset. Mondale's campaign had been far behind Ronald Reagan's in the polls before the convention; after the convention, the Democratic ticket enjoyed a nice bounce and even managed to pull roughly even — for awhile.

But the Democrats came back to earth in a hurry. By the end of July, questions came up about her finances, her husband's finances, their separate tax returns, etc., and the momentum came to a screeching halt.

No one knew any of that 30 years ago tonight, of course, when Ferraro stood before the delegates to the Democratic convention and accepted the vice presidential nomination.

It was a legitimate nomination, but it was still mostly symbolic. Nearly everyone watching probably realized, on some level, that she would not be elected.

Nevertheless, the euphoria inside the convention hall was unmistakable, and Ferraro was almost giddy at times.

"By choosing a woman to run for our nation's second–highest office," Ferraro said, "you sent a powerful signal to all Americans. There are no doors we cannot unlock. We will place no limits on achievement.

"If we can do this, we can do anything."

The Day Mondale Made History

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"You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace."

Geraldine Ferraro

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In 1984, I made up my mind early to support Walter Mondale for president.

His announcement 30 years ago today of his selection of Geraldine Ferraro to be the first female vice presidential nominee of a major political party did not influence my decision.

Nor, I suppose, did it influence most of my friends and co–workers, all of whom seemed to have decided how to vote fairly early, too.

I know it didn't affect my mother. She was an admirer of Mondale before he was chosen to be Jimmy Carter's running mate.

Mom and I never spoke about Mondale's choice so I don't know if she would have selected someone else if it had been up to her. I might have picked someone else. There were times, I guess, when I questioned the wisdom of Mondale's choice — not because of Ferraro's gender but because of her rather thin political resume.

So, if it had been up to me, I probably would have picked someone with more extensive political experience — and perhaps some experience running in a statewide campaign. As a representative, Ferraro's campaigns had been districtwide.

Of course, if the point is to make history with a nomination, one is limited to the options that are available at the time. In 1984, Mondale didn't have the luxury of an abundance of choices. Democrats had no women in the U.S. Senate and only one serving as governor of a state. He probably could have found a woman in the House who had spent more time there than Ferraro, but she might not have shared so many of his views.

Ironically, that would change within the next few years. That may have been — at least in part — an outcome of Ferraro's groundbreaking candidacy. The '80s was a decade of great strides for women. In addition to Ferraro's nomination, Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman nominated to be a Supreme Court justice, and Sally Ride was America's first woman astronaut.

But, in the rush to make history, the Mondale campaign staff failed to adequately vet her and thus was subjected to a distracting investigation of Ferraro's family finances at a time when the Democratic ticket needed to be refining its message for the general election. It was embarrassing, too, because it revived stereotypes about New York Italian–Americans and organized crime.

Twenty–four years later, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman nominated for the vice presidency by the Republican Party.

Myth America

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I think the origin of the phrase "women's liberation" can be traced back 50 years, maybe more, but it may not have been widely used until this day in 1968 (I was a child in 1968 so there are certain to be things of which I knew little and understood even less).

Forty–five years ago today, hundreds of women staged a protest in Atlantic City, N.J., home of the annual Miss America Pageant. They were protesting what they saw as the meat market atmosphere of the pageant.

And women's liberation joined all the other groups of that day that demanded to be treated better than they had been treated up to that time. As I say, I was just a child, but the logic of the argument did not escape me. My parents had always taught my brother and me that a principle upon which this nation was founded was simply this — all citizens should be treated the same.

Now, at a time when there were protests for and against just about everything by just about everyone, it was necessary to stand out in some way. As much as it was anything else, the '60s was a very theatrical decade, and you had to be entertaining to gain attention. The protest at the Miss America Pageant found its dramatic hook — so to speak.

Into a barrel labeled "Freedom Trash Can," the protesters dumped such symbols of domestic oppression as makeup, pots, mops, high heels, girdles, false eyelashes — and bras, lots and lots of bras.

But, contrary to what rapidly became urban legend, the trash can's contents were not set ablaze.

(I will admit that, as a writer, I appreciate the dramatic side of that tall tale. But that doesn't change the fact that it simply is not true.)

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That was what mainstream America thought, however, and "bra burning" became synonymous with the women's liberation movement.

I heard the phrase, but I had little idea what it meant. I only knew that the idea seemed alien and, in some ways, frightening to the adults in my world. Actually, fire was a frightening thing for me as well. It was frightening for anyone who had seen uncontrolled fire — and you could see it on the news every night — although I have to admit that I didn't fully understand things from the adults' point of view. Now that I am an adult myself, I think I can understand the confusion my parents, my grandparents and their peers felt.

They had seen the war protesters burning their draft cards so the idea had some legitimacy. They had just witnessed riots in the streets at the Democrats' national convention in Chicago; a few months earlier, they had seen race riots in nearly every major American city following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

It was a confusing, frightening time in America. Traditional roles — gender, racial, you name it — were under assault. Those roles may have been — well, they were — based on unfair stereotypes, but they gave most Americans a guide for who they were and what their role in the culture was.

I don't have a vivid memory of the things my elders said, but my impression was that they were fearful of the violence, the aggression — and, also, probably, the threat posed to that social yardstick — that was implied by the idea of women burning their bras in protest. It was almost as if women were seen as the last friendly, traditionally nurturing demographic group in America. If the idea of their violent revolt was true, no hope was left.

And that is all it was, really — an idea, an idealized image, not a fact.

As I say, there were other items that were trashed during the protest, but nothing was burned. No fires were started.

In fact, according to the story I heard, that whole rumor started when a reporter who was covering the protest compared (I presume in conversation with other reporters) the women protesters to Vietnam War protesters burning their draft cards.

And a myth was born.

Nevertheless, I can remember hearing my mother, my grandmothers and the other women of their generations speak disapprovingly of what they thought was going on in Atlantic City.

After the fact, I wondered if, secretly, my grandmothers and the women of their generation weren't a bit envious of those younger women who were asserting themselves so publicly, perhaps expressing what my grandmothers and their friends had long believed but had never had the nerve to say.

My grandmothers were young when American women won the right to vote, and they may have thought that was as much liberation as they could expect in their lifetimes. Then, as they were approaching the end of their lives, the younger generation was doing things my grandmothers never would have dreamed of doing.

The times really were a–changing.

PDQ Bachmann

The last presidential election demonstrated rather vividly that growing portions of both political parties are embracing the idea of electing a woman to the executive branch of the federal government, as either president or vice president.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was narrowly beaten for the presidential nomination by Barack Obama in a race that came to be seen by many as a battle between historical guilt trips, misogyny and racism. And, on the Republican side, of course, Sarah Palin became the first woman nominated by the GOP for vice president.

But each party wants different things from its female candidates — and will tolerate nothing less from the other side. And both continue to hold female politicians to expectations they would never impose on men. In that regard, I suppose, women continue to be subjected to a political double standard if not a societal one.

As far as they have come in my lifetime — and that includes occupying seats on the Supreme Court, traveling in space, acting as diplomats on behalf of the United States and serving as speaker of the House — women are still expected to do things that no man is expected to do — like remain young and attractive long after it is natural for anyone to be young and attractive.

In our highly visual age, appearances have taken on more influence than ever before, but men are not subjected to anything like the scrutiny that women are. Gray hair on a man is seen as distinguished; it is a sign of advanced age in a woman. A few extra pounds have seldom stood between a man and electoral victory; on a woman, they can be politically fatal.

I suppose that accounts for the reaction to Newsweek's unflattering photo of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on its cover.

Such negative stereotypes are offset, to a degree, by positive ones — such as the image of nurturer and healer — that make the idea of electing a woman president an appealing one for so many in these troubling times. They see a dysfunctional political system that needs a "woman's touch" after being taken to the brink of catastrophe too many times in recent years.

In Republican circles, Palin had that market cornered for a long time because she was really the only female whose name was being bandied about. But things have changed. While Palin has been motoring around the country, Bachmann jumped into the 2012 race and won yesterday's straw poll in her home state of Iowa — and some are wondering if Palin's moment in the spotlight has ended. She is supposed to reveal her 2012 plans next month.

(Personally, I would think that Palin — if she really does intend to run for president, and I am inclined to think she will not — would not mind relinquishing the spotlight for awhile.)

It's made me think about expectations, cliches and modern "firsts" in the American presidency in ways I never did before.

There is a desperation in people's expectations these days, I believe, born in part from a certain amount of disappointment in the policies of the current administration. Many of the president's supporters seem content to give him the benefit of the doubt — and additional time for these saplings to bear fruit. But not everyone, particularly the unemployed, is so generous — and patient.

This president was symbolic, of course, because of his race. He was the first black president. Whatever history may ultimately say about his tenure in the Oval Office, he will always be the first black to be nominated for — and elected to — the presidency.

When a female becomes president, she will be the first of her gender — and therefore will be symbolic as well.

Such distinctions may have made Barack Obama — and may someday make the first female president — sensitive (and vulnerable) to allegations of favoritism or preferential treatment. The religious issue presented similar challenges for John F. Kennedy half a century ago.

My experience is that, after a certain point, most historic "firsts" in the American presidency became isolated, no matter how successful the groundbreaking president may have been, and that the second of whatever it is hasn't come along rapidly.

Kennedy, of course, was the first Catholic to be elected president. He wasn't the first Catholic to be nominated, but he was the first in more than three decades. As president, his job approval ratings never fell below 56%.

Well, it's been more than 50 years since Kennedy was elected and nearly 50 since he was assassinated, but America still has not elected its second Catholic president. Catholics have sought the nomination, including JFK's younger brothers, but only one has been nominated for the presidency.

That's three Catholic presidential nominees in 83 years.

This applies to the vice presidency, too. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman on a Democratic ticket. There have been half a dozen Democratic tickets since then, and none of the nominees was a woman.

I strongly doubt that Bachmann will be nominated in 2012, but if Republicans really are strongly considering nominating a woman for president, it may be largely because they and the voters who support her believe the kind of healing and nurturing the nation and its economy need can only be provided by a woman.

To meet the unrealistic expectations of the voters, that woman would need to revive this economy P.D.Q. — in an era long before texting, that was a well–known abbreviation for "pretty damned quick." Given the dire forecasts from economists, that doesn't seem likely.

With unemployment stuck in the 9% range and the stock market bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball, the experiment with a black president (whether it is acknowledged as such or not) may come to be widely regarded as a failure, and it may be as long before America elects its second black president as it has been between Catholic presidents.

Even if Barack Obama turns things around and manages to win re–election, my gut feeling is that it will be decades until another black candidate is nominated for the presidency. If he is replaced with a woman — Bachmann, Palin or someone else — this economy may prove too stubborn for her, and the next female presidency will be a long time coming as well.

I don't know what to expect in 2012. There are times when I think Obama is on the verge of righting the ship and really living up to the standards he set for himself and the nation — but then he does something that tells me that my original conclusion, that he is in over his head, was the correct one.

Sometimes, though, presidents rise to the occasion.

And if there is anything of which I am certain, it is that the next president, whoever he or she turns out to be, must rise to the occasion.

Or he/she seems likely to be the last American president.

Twisting Slowly in the Wind

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There have been many tragic stories coming from Egypt in recent weeks, but the most tragic may well have been the report of the sexual assault and barbaric beating of CBS correspondent Lara Logan.

Reports of attacks on foreign journalists have been fairly common, but Caroline Glick writes, in the Jerusalem Post, that "the most egregious attack ... took place ... when ... Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men."

I can't argue with that.

CBS, Glick goes on to say, "took several days to even report the story, and when it did, it left out important information. The fact that Logan was brutalized for 20 to 30 minutes and that her attackers screamed out 'Jew, Jew, Jew' as they ravaged her was absent from the CBS report."

Glick tells a tale of journalistic cowardice and misogyny that makes the attack on Logan seem virtually inevitable, and she begins her column with the bewildered questions that many people no doubt were asking after word of the attack began to spread:

"The Western media have been unanimous in their sympathetic coverage of the demonstrators in Egypt," Glick writes. "Why would the demonstrators want to brutalize them? And why have Western media outlets been so reticent in discussing the significance of their own reporters' brutalization at the hands of the Egyptian demonstrators?"

Such questions distract from the facts. This wasn't some kind of uncontrolled response to persecution. The mob wasn't angry about unfavorable representation in the media. What happened to Logan was a crime, and the people who were responsible should be treated like criminals. No one should justify their acts because their acts cannot be justified.

I am reminded of a scene from the Jack Lemmon–Sissy Spacek film "Missing," in which an American has disappeared during a coup in Chile and his father, played by Lemmon, and his wife, played by Spacek, try to find him.

Lemmon believes his son must have done something to lead to his arrest, and he keeps asking people to tell him what it was. Then a native scoffs at the idea. "You Americans," he says, "you always assume you must do something before you can be arrested."

"Isn't that the way it usually works?" Lemmon asks.

"Not here," the man replies.

And that isn't the way it works in Egypt, either. I've read many reports on the attack on Logan, and I have found not a single word that suggests that she was doing anything other than her job when she was attacked. Meanwhile, the men who did this to her have been protected, their faces blurred to hide their identities in broadcasts of videos showing Logan with her assailants just before the assault.

Here in America, there are still people who think a woman brings such an assault on herself, usually by dressing and/or behaving provocatively. But even if Logan was wearing a short, tight skirt and a low–cut blouse and grinning suggestively at the men who attacked her, that would not make what was done to her all right — by any stretch of the imagination.

Logan's attack presents an ugly picture, and it tells a twisted and shameful tale of media coverage in foreign lands. Many foreign journalists have been intimidated by their treatment in the Middle East, and they have been eager to avoid rocking the boat.

The absence of courage among Western journalists has been, to use the most charitable term possible, disappointing.

But what this says about the treatment of women is, if anything, even worse, because it isn't the kind of thing that is confined to Egypt or other places teetering precariously between freedom and repression. The subjugation of women is often tolerated in supposedly free nations.

In essence, journalists (who have always been willing to risk their lives to bring the news to their readers and listeners — but who could usually count on a certain amount of support and protection from their employers and governments in return) are being left to, in the words of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, "twist slowly in the wind."

That may be an unfamiliar sensation for many journalists. But the women in their ranks have long felt that way in Egypt and elsewhere.

What happened to Logan may yet yield some good things because it shines the spotlight on the appalling treatment of women in Egypt. As Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe, "Perhaps the most shocking thing about the despicable sexual attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan ... is that to those who know Egypt, it wasn't shocking at all."

Nearly three years ago, the BBC reported that 83% of Egyptian women — and nearly all foreign visitors — had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment. The BBC called it "Egypt's cancer."

Mary Rogers wrote about sexual harassment at CNN.com nearly four months ago.

While I'm on the subject, a good place to begin moving past the "socially acceptable bigotry" (in Glick's words) that is permitted to exist would be to start calling that attack what it was.

I don't mean to insert a note that is too frivolous for the subject, but I have long been a fan of the late George Carlin — and I particularly enjoyed his observations about language.

Carlin didn't care for euphemistic language. He said Americans had invented a "soft language" to help them avoid dealing with reality, and he was right. Sometimes, as he pointed out, the euphemisms were fairly innocuous — like saying "bathroom tissue" instead of "toilet paper." No harm, no foul, right?

But sometimes euphemisms are used to hide really ugly truths, and this case seems to be loaded with euphemisms like that.

If Logan was sexually assaulted (by approximately 200 men, I have heard) and the attack went on for 20 or 30 minutes, she was raped.

I know the Wall Street Journal disagrees with that. The Wall Street Journal, quoting an unnamed source, insists that she was not raped. But could such a thing really be possible?

"Sexual assault" sounds like it was not as bad as it almost certainly was. It makes it sound like it involved everything but penetration (which wouldn't be particularly good, either, but some people could use that distinction to minimize what happened).

It sounds to me like the attackers were in a frenzy. How many blows would have been required to render Logan unconscious and then strip the clothes from her body? Are we supposed to believe that her attackers suddenly stopped after fondling Logan and said to each other, "Stop! We can go no farther. We are already guilty of sexual assault. If we go past this point, it will be rape."

Let's call it what it was — rape.

Even if, technically, only one of Logan's attackers committed the rape. Or two. Or three.

Wouldn't anyone who stood by while someone else committed a rape be guilty of, at the very least, being an accessory?

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the fine points of the law so I could be wrong. But it would be consistent.

See, "sexual assault" is rather broadly defined and is often used interchangeably with "rape." But "sexual assault" could mean a lot of things.

"Not all sexual harassment is physical," Jacoby writes. "[B]esides groping women's bodies, grabbing at their clothing, and indecent exposure, it can also include blatant ogling, sexual catcalls, and stalking."

And, for the "I'm–too–sexy–for–my–shirt" naysayers, Jacoby has this: "More than half the Egyptian women reported being molested every day. And contrary to popular belief, most of the victims were wearing modest Islamic dress."

Different jurisdictions have different definitions for rape — or statutory rape. And they don't necessarily have to include intercourse. Even if Logan was not violated (which I still find doubtful), her assailant(s) could be charged with rape.

The sight of Egyptians protesting against their corrupt government certainly was stirring for many pro–democracy types, including those who aren't especially worried about whether freedom really is inclusive.

But, as Miranda Devine writes in Australia's Herald Sun newspaper, a free Egypt will mean nothing to its women ...

... And it will mean even less to its foreign visitors.

Surely, there must be some way for justice to be served — and for Egypt's newfound freedom to have real meaning.

Let's stop hiding behind words. Let's say what we mean and mean what we say.

And let's take a resolute stand against this kind of behavior, wherever we find it.

Death of a Pioneer

Seventeen members of the U.S. Senate are women. That's an all–time high. And all but four of them are Democrats.

But, in 1980, no woman had been elected to a full six–year Senate term — unless her husband or father preceded her. Republican Paula Hawkins changed that, winning a Senate seat from Florida with 52% of the vote.

This week, Hawkins died at the age of 82.

These days, female politicians are often regarded as feminists, but Hawkins rejected that label in 1980. She preferred to be known as "feminine," and her political views could hardly be regarded as feminist in nature. "Her opposition to abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment made her anathema to the National Organization for Women, which picketed her appearances and accused her of embracing positions strictly in accordance with her Mormon faith," writes David Stout in the New York Times.

Hawkins, though, made a significant contribution to child protection. She was a sponsor of the Missing Children's Act of 1982. She may have been motivated by her memory of being molested as a child, a fact she revealed to stunned colleagues during a congressional hearing.

In 1984, Hawkins co–chaired the platform committee at the Republican National Convention that nominated Ronald Reagan for a second term, even though she suffered a serious injury two years earlier that caused her neck and back pain afterward. She had surgery when she sought re–election in 1986, and the time she spent in the hospital and recovering at home was believed to cost her the election — although she may have lost the race anyway. The 1986 midterm election resulted in an eight–seat loss for the Republicans in the Senate, and Hawkins lost the race by 10 percentage points.

Hawkins never sought elective office again.

I didn't agree with her on many issues, but I respected her. And I believe most, if not all, of the women in the Senate (the most senior of whom was first elected to the Senate the year Hawkins lost her bid for re–election) would agree that she paved the way for their success.

A Case of Buyer's Remorse?

It's been about two weeks since Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware officially became the Democratic nominee for vice president.

But already, with just under eight weeks left in the presidential campaign and about three weeks to go before Biden's debate with his Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, there are signs of buyer's remorse in the Democratic Party.

Should Barack Obama have put Hillary Clinton on the ticket?

Based on his own words this week in Nashua, N.H., even Biden thinks he should have.

But, then, I contend, Obama would have found himself facing the same problem of persuading a skeptical electorate. Only, in that instance, the nature of the objection would be different. More on that later.

Marianne Means writes, in the Houston Chronicle, that, while, in hindsight, Clinton looks like she might have been a better choice, it may never have risen above the status of "political stunt."

In fact, it may ultimately have damaged the Democrats' chances of winning.

Palin's candidacy, Means says, "is still a political stunt, but a successful one."

My belief was that such a "stunt" would not work for Obama. As the nominee for president, Obama is asking the American voters to elect the first black president. He needed a white male running mate to reassure the more traditionally minded voters (and there are many more of them than you might like to believe) — to act as an acceptable counterweight.

(And, with the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, Obama apparently felt the need to have a running mate with foreign policy credentials.)

Obama has campaigned on a theme of change in his bid for the presidency, and that's a noble concept. In light of the public's response to Palin, should he have made a purely political decision and pre-empted the Republicans by putting Clinton on his ticket?

I don't believe so. In our society, change comes gradually. It would be asking voters to accept too much change at once to ask them to elect a black man president and a woman vice president. I believed that before Obama picked Biden, and I still believe that.

John McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate redefined the dynamics of the campaign. Whoever wins, a barrier will be broken.

And, in an ironic twist, what happens may depend upon what Clinton's 18 million primary supporters decide to do in November.

Two weeks ago, when Palin was introduced as McCain's presumptive running mate, I wrote about many aspects of her candidacy, including her ideological differences with Hillary Clinton.

When the debates are over and the people go to the polls, Clinton's voters will have a big decision to make. Is it more important to them to break the "glass ceiling" than it is to elect people whose beliefs have more in common with their own?

Palin, Means writes, "is the anti-Clinton, opposed to every domestic and social policy for which Clinton has worked for decades, yet she is pulling away hordes of white female voters who refused to settle for Obama after he dumped Hillary."

I guess it depends on the individual. I've speculated that most of Clinton's supporters share her pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-feminist views. And, based on that speculation, I have further speculated that Clinton's supporters would be more inclined to support Obama than McCain.

But for some of Clinton's supporters, gender advancement was and still is the motivating issue.

I know some female Clinton supporters who insist that they will support the McCain-Palin ticket — even though they agree with Palin on very few issues.

It's a decision that 18 million individuals will be making.

As far as I'm concerned, the gender discussion is a distraction.

Politically, is it even relevant? I mean, in 2004, Democrats won the overall women's vote, as they usually do, but by a relatively narrow 51% to 48% margin.

Although they represented approximately 46% of the vote in 2004, men voted heavily for the Republican ticket, 55% to 44%.

So, based on the numbers from the last presidential election, the goals were clear for both sides. Obama's party needs to win over male voters. McCain's party needs to win over female voters.

On the surface, at least, both needs were addressed by the selections of the running mates — both of whom also happen to be effective advocates for their parties' agendas. We'll have to wait until November to find out how much the running mates have helped — or hurt.

Thankfully, this discussion distracts attention from race, at least temporarily. And it can serve a long-term purpose by forcing the public to finally confront the uncomfortable issue of misogyny.

David Harsanyi writes, in the Denver Post, that "'[e]xoticism' in the political realm is no longer an impediment, it's a significant asset. And Republicans, whether they admit it or not, were yearning for the excitement Barack Obama generated — that is, before Sarah Palin came along.

"Palin's frontier mystique has captivated conservatives. Both the lipstick and the pit bull. It's also discombobulated many Democrats, now fumbling to find a strategy to deal with a conservative woman."

But the gender discussion also distracts attention from issues we need to be talking about — like the economy, health care, unemployment, energy, Iraq.

Many of Clinton's supporters empathize with Palin on several levels, but how many of them share her views? My guess would be, not many.

And how many of Clinton's supporters who don't share Palin's views will vote for her anyway — even after they learn more about her ideology?

Harsanyi concedes that the campaign is about policy matters. But it's about more than that.

It's tempting, given the kind of news coverage we've seen lately, to believe that the campaign is about tokenism. But it's not. Look beneath the surface. Obama's current problems are not simply the result of Clinton supporters throwing a tantrum.

"Voters may struggle with their mortgage and curse those high gas prices, yet most of them won't surrender core values and policy beliefs due to the vagaries of the economy," he writes. "If roughly half of the nation's voters reject the serious, but collectivist, solutions Obama offers them, it doesn't mean they're racists, it means they're Republicans.

"Now, should Obama lose in November, it will be partly of his own doing and partly because the majority of voters are permanent members of their respective parties."

On a personal note, I do have to wonder why Palin will be here in the Dallas area the day after her debate with Biden.

Texas hasn't voted for a Democrat since supporting Jimmy Carter in 1976. And Dallas has a long history of supporting Republicans — even though there was something of a reversal in Dallas in 2006, when many local elections in Dallas County swung to the Democrats.

So what do Republicans think they can accomplish by sending Palin to Dallas the day after her nationally televised debate? Are they concerned about whether Palin can stand up to Biden?

If they are, does the fact that Palin will be visiting Texas the day after the debate mean the Republicans want to be ready to engage in some damage control on friendly turf?

They don't seem to be anticipating a victory — or even a draw — that they can capitalize on in a swing state. If they were, Palin's October 3 itinerary would be taking her to some place like Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania — or perhaps a smaller "swing" state, like Colorado, Nevada or New Hampshire.

I've seen nothing that suggests Texas will be in play in November. So why is Palin coming to Texas? What is there to be gained?

If there's nothing to be gained, isn't it an unconscionable waste of campaign funds to send the running mate to a state that's in the bag?

"Gender may have an initial appeal only," Means writes, "but it could last if Palin proves to be clever and softens her hard-line anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay rights, anti-everything modern positions of the past. She's running for the second spot, not the top one. We'll see."

Indeed we shall.

Lipstick on a Pig?

Once again, the voters are being distracted from the important issues.

The efforts by both the parties and the pundits to keep alive the battle between racism and misogyny got a lung full of fresh air with the Sarah Palin nomination.

And, apparently, that debate will continue until, as former President Clinton famously said, "the last dog dies."

Or should that be pit bull?

Either way, we now have less than eight weeks to talk about the real issues before we go to the polls.

Are we going to talk about them at all?

”Whoever slipped that Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee needs to be found and arrested by the Democrats,” writes Thomas Friedman in today’s New York Times, ”because Obama has gone from cool to cold.”

Friedman contends that Obama needs to connect with voters on a ”gut level,” in the same way he connected with them during the primaries.

Friedman thinks Obama lost that connection in recent weeks. And now, he writes, John McCain is in position to sprint to the finish line and win the 2008 election ”with a 50-pound ball called ‘George W. Bush’ wrapped around one ankle and a 50-pound ball called ‘The U.S. Economy’ wrapped around the other.”

He mentions what may be at the heart of the Democrats’ problem — the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

It’s true, as Friedman says, that Democrats should ”take her very seriously.”

In terms of demographics alone, Palin brings more to the Republican ticket than Obama brings to the Democratic ticket.

Blacks have been voting heavily for Democrats for generations. White women have been voting Republican for a long time, but their numbers have been dwindling in recent years.

Perhaps it’s the volatility of the women’s vote that is responsible, but there seems to be an extreme sensitivity to comments that might not provoke much response if all the candidates were male.

For example, Republicans have demanded that Obama apologize for saying that McCain’s promise to produce change was an attempt to ”put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.”

It was alleged to be an offensive reference to Palin’s line about lipstick being the difference between a ”hockey mom” and a pit bull.

But Obama’s line was not new — for either presidential nominee. Last year, Obama used the phrase in reference to the Iraq War, McCain used it to refer to the differences between Hillary Clinton’s 1993 health care plan and the one she advocated in her race for the nomination in 2008, and other well-known politicians have used the phrase as well, including Vice President Cheney.

The uproar over the ”lipstick on a pig” comment is merely the latest example of how easily a campaign for the presidency can be diverted from a discussion of important issues.

Even so, there’s no denying that many women look at Palin and see someone whose life resembles their own in many ways — whether they agree with her on all, or even some, of the issues.

”As Neil Oxman, political consultant at The Campaign Group, put it to me,” writes Friedman, ”[f]or half the country, ‘Sarah Palin is Roseanne from the Roseanne show. Roseanne was the No. 1 comedy five years in a row and seven out of nine in the top 10.’”

The Roseanne analogy isn’t bad. Roseanne was a role model for working-class women in the 1990s. Her character demonstrated that a woman could be tough and still retain the caring, nurturing side of her personality.

It reminds me of something I heard frequently in George W. Bush’s campaigns for the presidency — he was the candidate, it was said, with whom voters would prefer to drink a beer.

Maybe Palin is the candidate with whom they’d like to go bowling.

Some Questions on Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend is the traditional kickoff for a presidential campaign (as well as the start of football season).

And, now that Sarah Palin has been designated to be John McCain's running mate, there are some new (or at least revised) questions to be asked — and answered — before November 4.

• On the matter of experience — it's true that Barack Obama has been in the U.S. Senate less than four years.
  
  It's also true that Palin has been governor of Alaska less than two years.
  
  And, back when he was a candidate for president, Joe Biden made a remark about how the presidency didn't lend itself to "on-the-job training."
  
  Actually, Biden was wrong about that. He's been in the Senate for 35 years, but he has no executive experience. Palin is the only candidate with executive experience. And that experience is comparable to the presidency — at best.
  
  This is something the presidency has in common with many professions.
  
  It has always been a job that its occupants had to learn as they went along.
  
  A new president may bring experience to the job that can be transferred to his/her new responsibilities — much like someone changing careers in the private sector (i.e., you may not have personal experience with the computer software that is used by your new employer, but perhaps you have comparable software experience in a previous job).
  
  But, really, is there any job (even the vice presidency) that can adequately prepare someone for the burdens of the presidency? Even the modern vice presidency, which has a more active role in the executive branch than it did even 40 years ago?
  
  In my lifetime, I've seen presidents who brought a wide variety of backgrounds to the Oval Office. They've come to the White House after working in the law, business, education, farming, acting. And most had served or were serving in government before they became president.
  
  He was before my time, but Harry Truman may have had the most varied résumé of any of our presidents. He was regarded as a failure in just about everything he tried before running for public office, and he wasn't popular when he left the presidency, but he is remembered as one of America's better presidents today — which is a tribute to the soundness of his decisions.
  
  (One of those decisions — to desegregate the armed forces — may have hastened the arrival of the day we recently witnessed — Obama's acceptance of the presidential nomination.)
  
  For a time, Obama was a "community organizer." Palin worked for a time in commercial fishing.
  
  Some of the presidents in my lifetime (including the president at the time of my birth, Dwight Eisenhower) served in the military — at least, for awhile.
  
  But I know of no profession that provides foolproof preparation for the presidency.
  
  Does anyone know of a job in which one can fine-tune all the skills needed to negotiate treaties, compile federal budgets, exercise vetoes, lobby for legislation, serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces — and perform all the other tasks required of a president?
  
  Syndicated columnist Richard Reeves addresses the subject of experience in his latest column. "Is Barack Obama prepared to be president?" he asks. "No. Neither is John McCain."
  
  And then he elaborates. "The presidency is an act of faith."
  
  Amen.


• Now that Palin has been picked to be McCain's running mate — and responses to the decision are coming in — Rebecca Traister wonders, in Salon.com, if Obama should have chosen Hillary Clinton to be his running mate.
  
  After reciting the litany of "pluses" Palin reportedly brings to McCain's quest for the presidency — and acknowledging that "Palin presents some stomach-churning possibilities for Democrats" — Traister opines that "even a cursory glance at Palin's positions should be enough to warn Democratic women (and men) to stay far, far away."
  
  Traister goes on to observe, "If the Palin selection brings female voters to the McCain camp, there is likely to be a round of second-guessing about whether Obama read the tea leaves wrong and missed an opportunity to shore up his divided party more effectively by going with, or at least seriously considering, Clinton."


• Along a similar line, Republican activist Bill Kristol writes, in the Weekly Standard, that Palin frightens those on the left of the political spectrum.
  
  As the conservative Palin pursues the vice presidency in the next nine weeks, writes Kristol, "she'll be swimming in political waters infested with sharks."
  
  But Kristol goes on to observe that Palin's nickname, as the point guard for her high school's championship basketball team, was "Sarah Barracuda."
  
  "I suspect she'll take care of herself better than many expect," Kristol writes, although he acknowledges that there will be some "rocky moments" — as there inevitably are when a novice is thrust into the national spotlight.


• Tim Rutten writes, in the Los Angeles Times, that Palin's nomination may focus the debate on domestic issues — like abortion and gun rights.
  
  But even domestic issues can't be completely divorced from foreign issues, including foreign trade. Palin's nomination may also expand the debate on domestic oil drilling — an issue that clearly overlaps into America's trade relationships with the world's oil producers.
  
  Rutten suggests that the talk of McCain trying to appeal to Hillary Clinton's supporters by nominating a woman for vice president may be overblown. "Clinton's admirers feel about her as they do not just because she's a woman," he says, "but because she's a particular sort of woman."
  
  And he goes on to observe that "Palin is emphatically not that sort of woman."
  
  So, as I mentioned yesterday, perhaps this pick is not intended to appeal to women who voted for Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Perhaps it is intended to keep women who have been voting Republican in recent elections from bolting to the other side — as President Eisenhower's granddaughter did.
  
  There are many "perils of Palin," as Rutten says, and they're not all perils that Democrats face. The greatest peril for McCain, in gambling on a somewhat unknown quantity as his running mate, may be that "[i]f she isn't careful, Palin could emerge from [her debate with Biden] looking a lot like Dan Quayle in drag."


• It seems to me that, if nothing else, the 2008 election marks the emergence on the national stage of the two states that were admitted to the Union the year I was born — Alaska and Hawaii.
  
  Obama, of course, was born in Hawaii. And Palin is the governor of Alaska.
  
  Both states have been political afterthoughts for most of the nearly 50 years they've been states. Hawaii has 4 electoral votes and nearly always supports the Democratic nominee. Alaska has 3 electoral votes and nearly always supports the Republican nominee.
  
  No political observers are suggesting any shifts in allegiances in those states.

Who Will Win the Women's Vote?

Following Hillary Clinton's suspension of her presidential campaign, the question has been asked many times -- for whom will women vote this year, Barack Obama or John McCain?

I've heard and read a lot on this subject in recent weeks, and the two prevailing opinions appear to be:

1. Clinton's supporters will vote for Obama because Obama's record on women's issues is virtually the same as Clinton's. McCain's is not.
2. Clinton's supporters will vote for McCain (because the primary campaign was so bitter) -- or they won't vote at all (because the primary campaign was so bitter).

I think it's probably a little too early for many of Clinton's supporters to decide what they will do in November. Clinton's own campaign only came to an official conclusion a few days ago.

But that doesn't keep many in the media from speculating on what they will do.

And some of the speculation has centered on possible female running mates in both parties, although my personal belief is that Obama, as the first black nominee for president, can't afford to put a woman on the ticket, but McCain can.

Still, both Obama and McCain -- along with their surrogates -- have been courting the women's vote, as Juliet Eilperin reports in the Washington Post.

Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina is going to be speaking for McCain in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania in the coming days.

And Eilperin says Obama's supporters have been working on leaders of women's groups and their members lately.

"[W]hile the two candidates differ sharply on issues such as abortion rights and family planning, both camps probably will focus on economic issues to appeal to women this fall," Eilperin writes.

Is there any issue that is more gender-neutral than the economy?