I missed Holly Yeager's January 11 column on the thin "bench" of potential female presidential candidates behind Hillary Clinton, but it's still all true two weeks later and worth reading. I found it, meanwhile, while reading this excellent post by Mark Schmitt (aka Holly Yeager's husband) taking note of the incredible run of bad luck that struck down a whole string of promising 1970s-vintage New York political women.
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23 Jan 2008 02:15 pm
Comments (21)
I like Sebelius, but she's 60 years old, her time is now as VP for a possible Presidential run in 8 years. I think she'd have a hard time running at 68 without the VP experience. To her benefit she's a very young looking 60 so she doesn't exude "old" like McCain or Thomspon do, who are 71 and 65 I believe.
Don't forget Ella Grasso, who was the first woman elected governor of a state (Connecticut) who wasn't the widow or wife of a former governor.
Shouldn't there be a group that's advocating for pushing viable women/minority candidates to the relevant national/state offices that really are capable of ascending to the presidency?
IMHO, they're VP, senator from a major state or governor of a Southern state. This shouldn't be that tough of a nut to crack.
I think the thin bench has mostly to do with the lack of female governors (or ex-governors). Most of the larger states have never had a woman governor.
The other thing that's prevented women from running is that we've had such a long period of stability in presidential politics: about to have the first back-to-back 8-year presidencies in the history of the modern party system, and one family accounting for 4 of the last 5 presidential nominations on the Republican side. And if Clinton gets elected this year, that means Sebelius and Napolitano will likely never run for president, and we'll need a whole new slate of potential names by 2016.
I hardly think that the generation Schmitt refers was unsuccessful through bad luck, except perhaps Abzug.
I'm just closer to this, when it comes to rooting for a woman president:
http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/66873
Sure, it'd be nice. It'd be historical. And when the right candidate comes around, I will vote for her. But just having ovaries isn't enough, or Margaret Thatcher would be a feminist hero.
And unfortunately Molly Ivins is deceased. No one else comes to mind.
Ann Richards, not Ivins, also sadly deceased. Major state, Southern, etc.
Speaking of promising New York women politicians of the 1970's, to this day, my mother is convinced that the Democrats put Geraldine Ferraro on the 1984 ticket in order to destroy her chances for higher office in the future. Apparently she was doing some good work relating to the post office.
Matt,
As thin as the bench of potential female candidates for president is, it is much thinner for black candidates. Last I checked, there were more female senators and female governors than black senators and governors (1 each so far). Why no articles about that?
Interestingly, on the Republican side, Yeager forgets about Condi Rice. She's always been fairly popular among Republicans, and had been included in a number of the test polls for 2008. Of course, she has never run for elective office, which (as supporters of Wesley Clark know), can be a probelm.
Adding onto ChuckE's comments, I think that the White House has been increasingly about propping up the president's PR no matter what. It seems that neither Clinton nor Bush 43 were successful at growing their party's bench. Senators and cabinet secretaries really haven't had a chance at the spotlight; in the case of the latter, they only get famous when their bureaucracies screw up.
Condi Rice would be a good candidate if she had held elective office before and if she were heterosexual.
Napolitano would be good if she were heterosexual, too.
Sebelius can run in 2012 at age 64, but will Democrats be reluctant to nominate a woman after Hillary loses badly to McCain in what would have been a great Dem year with any other D on the ballot? Will all women take the blame for the inevitable Hillary flameout? What if she costs us our chances at red state gains in Congress this year with her coattails? Most red state Dems fear she will be a drag on their local results.
I'm afraid that if we try Hillary now, we'll be putting off the chance to have a female president for twenty years or more. Too many people will be hurt by losing jobs, no access to health care, continued war, and the other effects of the McCain administration to risk it again, even though Hillary's femininity will have nothing to do with her loss.
Great googly moogly, this again?!? Do we have any proof (or evidence) that Rice is not a heterosexual? SCMT, is this your work again?
The idea that a liberal Democratic non-Protestant woman from New York City was going to become president in my lifetime has got to be one of the funnier thoughts I've had today.
Klug...a group to promote woman candidates? What do you think Emily's list is? Hugely powerful and likely won HRC NH...
As an older woman, with a daughter I am repelled by HRC's candidacy.
First, she is the antithesis of the woman's movement, largely due to no fault of her own.
If she had not been an ex-President's wife, she would never have been elected to the Senate. She had no prior elected experience, had just recently moved to the state. It's not a slam, just a fact.
If she wins, she will not only be under the sure to come scrutiny of being the first woman President, she will also be scrutinized through the Clinton lens, including all the bad.
I hold no ill will toward HRC. I don't like the way she's running her campaign, but she's doing that through her own lens and she should be judged on that because it was her choice.
What I know is if she runs and fails to change DC the way so many are aching for, she will have set back the women's movement 30 years in politics. She will have confirmed the worst suspicions of so many that women are simply not up to the job.
She is hugely talented. There are women all over this country that are hugely talented that don't carry her downsides.
I can only hope my fellow women that vote for her do so knowing how seriously flawed she is for the very movement they seem to think should stand with her no matter what.
If you must vote for her, vote on her record, not her gender. It's what the women's movement is all about.
"We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate." Barack Obama
Vote hope, not fear. Vote unite, not divide and conquer.
The women Schmitt mentions in the NYC Metro area were predominantly Jewish, liberal, out-of-the -mainstream types that were as viable nationally at the time as Gov Lureen Wallace of Alabama in her own way....
All those women, except Abzug, were *awful* on the political talent front. No message ability whatsoever. Laundry list policy literalism, Leftist stridency. And not particularly warm, unless you think Stalinist red diaper babies like Abzug and Holzman were cuddly.
MattF - Ella Grasso of CT was actually competent, likable and not given to strutting around with lists of demands and questioning her opponents motives and character.
G Davis:
Sure, I know about EMILY's list. They seem to have exerted most of their influence towards getting pro-choice congressional candidates. Great. That's not getting a president for you, though.
There's gotta be a niche for a group that will push for a woman/minority candidate in (for example) 4 key high-profile offices: 1) Vice President, 2) SecDef, 3) Governor of Texas and 4) governor of Ohio. Get one of these offices and you have a real shot at becoming President.
Fuck female politicians. Nominate Angelina Jolie. If fucking Ah-Nuld the Gropinator can do it, so can she.
She already has more experience dealing with on-the-ground realities and politicians in more countries than Clinton ever will.
If you want to see a woman who can DO ANYTHING, view the Special Features on the "Tomb Raider" DVDs. That was the one thing everybody who worked on the movies agreed on - she can and will do anything and everything. She actually did certain stunts BETTER than the stunt doubles.
And she's only 32. If you wrote a bio of her now and listed everything she's done, it would be 800 pages long. By the time she's Hillary's age, it will be a four-800-page-volume set, "Angelina The Great"!
Brian, I think any woman in a position of power is going to get the lesbian tag, regardless. After all, Hillary's married and has a kid and she still gets it. For single women, like Condi and Janet, I agree that it would be a potentially more damaging 'slur', but only to the lowest common denominator who probably wouldn't be caught dead voting for a woman, period.
Nevertheless, I think they could(and already have to a certain extent) both model themselves successfully on the old-female-librarian-with-cats-spinster archetype with which Americans are comfortable and familiar. And I think they both have a way of appealing to a certain type of 'man's man'...they both are true sports nuts and are like the tomboys that many guys consider to be 'one of the guys'...note Condi's close relationship with Bush...there's something to be said for that. Thus, as long as neither Condi nor Janet are out there waving the rainbow flag I think they'd both do just fine.
Fuck female politicians. Nominate Angelina Jolie. If fucking Ah-Nuld the Gropinator can do it, so can she.
She'd be the hottest politician ever, that's for sure. And we could have Brad Pitt as first husband. That seems like a decent upgrade over Bill.
Comments closed February 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I think a number of Congresswomen show some potential. A friend of mine who worked a race in South Dakota thinks Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is going to be the first female President, for whatever its worth. Likewise Kirsten Gillibrand seems to have been tapped for great things.
The near total lack of Female governors seems to be the main bottleneck.
Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | January 23, 2008 2:45 PM