Tom Matlack looks at the mess we’ve made of American politics and wonders if it isn’t time to step aside and elect a female president.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been trying to duck the whole Presidential election, and specially the arms’ race of negative campaigning. I live in Massachusetts so other than Obama’s connection to Harvard Law School and Mitt’s to the state health care system that cannot be named, we are unlikely to get the ads unless someone decides New Hampshire is worth the effort.
But like the rest of the free world it’s hard to avoid Ryan and Medicare, tax returns, the environment, the deficit, and Supreme Court sponsored super PAC trench warfare. Out of the corner of my eye I see enough to make myself sick to my stomach.
If we can all agree that the system is broken—really broken—then why does watching the Presidential race feel like some kind of train wreck?
Before I say something that I am sure I am going to regret, but I am going to say anyhow, let me just make one thing clear. I’m the guy standing up on a soapbox repeating again and again about how despite what you may read about Charlie Sheen and Tiger Woods, there are in fact good men in this country and on this planet. I’ve interviewed scores of them, from a Sing Sing inmate who turned his life around to a combat journalist risking his life to shoot images depicting the truth of our wars abroad.
The issue isn’t a lack of good men, it’s that our best men are running from politics. Heck, more than a few are leaving the country. A good friend has moved to New Zealand to build a bunker because he is so worried about the state of our country.
So how about us guys step aside and let the women take over for an election cycle or two? See if they can’t sort out some of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves in.
I’m not talking about Sara Palin or Nancy Pelosi. I’m thinking Hilary Clinton, or better yet, a modern day Shirley Chisholm.
I remember sitting on a homemade foam rubber couch with my dad, an English professor and political activist, watching Chisholm on Meet the Pressjust after she had announced her Presidential candidacy in 1972. The problems then seemed just as big as the problems now: Vietnam, Watergate, Munich Olympics, ERA, inflation, and emergence of OPEC.
AP Photo/Carolyn Caster
Yet Chisholm didn’t back down. She made clear that these were solvable problems as long as one didn’t attack them with hidden motives. I was impressed and inspired by her words so turned to my dad, who had gone to Mississippi during the summer of 1964 and been a leader of the anti-war movement, to ask if she had a chance. “I don’t think so but maybe one day,” was his response.
I voted for Obama and probably will again. I happened to be in California during the democratic primary four years ago and walked down to the polls with my college roommate, who intended for vote for Clinton, lobbying him to change his mind (not that it much mattered since in the democratic primary California delegates are elected based on some archaic system which rewards past voting by county and his was a Clinton stronghold) . I was moved to tears by our collective willingness to elect the first African American to the White House. But maybe that just isn’t enough.
My enduring memory of the last four years are the still shots of our President waiting nervously to hear whether or not a team of elite warriors had succeeded in killing Osama Bin Laden coupled with the images taken by my friend Michael Kamber on the ground in Iraq and then Afghanistan.
I am for massive deficit reduction, completely restructuring Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. I’m for focusing on education first and foremost, for actually providing the 2 million men currently in prison a way out of trouble, and for protecting the environment.
But we never get to these issues in any meaningful way. There’s a certain machismo with which our leaders frame the question of our collective future, whether military strength or tax policy or how to finally deal with ballooning entitlements. Mitt the corporate raider, Paul Ryan the consummate deficit hawk, and Barack the peace-maker who doubled down in Afghanistan all remind me a heck of a lot more of a Bud Light commercial than Dove for Men.
Maybe gender has nothing to do with our national political failings. Maybe we’ve built up an edifice of patronage and denial so strong that even a woman wouldn’t be able to break through the mess.
But could we do worse than we are now?
Lead Photo: AP/Pablo Martinez
About Tom Matlack
“So how about us guys step aside and let the women take over for an election cycle or two? See if they can’t sort out some of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves in.”
But don’t they already though? Women make up ~53% of the vote. We’re regularly informed that women will “decide the election”. So, why do we insist on crediting women with power over the electorate and then hold the electorate innocent for the consequences of the election? I tend to think the voters get the leaders they deserve.
I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary and Obama in the general election. I’ve always voted democratic, but don’t know if I will this year. I find myself in the same position that minorities and the LGBT community found themselves in for several decades. I just became MRA last year and though I believe that the democrats are better for America, they’re not necessarily good for men. Should I hold my nose and vote for them anyway or demand change as the price for my vote?
I’m not sure I would vote for Clinton today. There is an article on AVFM that suggests that she intends on circumcising 28,000,000 men and boys in Africa. I could ignore the men if the information she was providing was accurate, but I think that it’s too flawed to act on. If they don’t have accurate information, they can’t make an informed decision so can’t give informed consent. If the U.S. provides the information, we’re responsible. Pushing circumcision on boys who cannot consent by our standards is a human rights violation in my mind. Until that question is answered, I couldn’t vote for someone who could be responsible for human rights violations on a massive scale. Does anyone have any information on this?
If women were superior to men in politics by virtue of being women, Brittan, India, Israel, Pakistan, etc. would probably still have women leading the country and/or female leadership would have been uninterrupted. If you want a woman president for the sake of getting that “first” out of the way, knock yourself out, but I don’t think there will be an improvement unless you got a better leader and not just someone because she’s a woman.
Have men really screwed it up that much? In just over 200 years we abolished slavery, a practice 1,000s of years old. We gave women the right to vote. We installed a social safety net (the new deal). We’ve come to recognize and protect civil rights (Civil Rights Act, Title IX, etc). Enacted child labor laws. Our capitalist markets have have created advances in science that would have been unthinkable 200 years ago. Many of these advances have reduced human misery. People who would have been reduced to begging 200 years ago can live their lives with dignity with the advances we made in accessibility.
It’s a process. I think you fail to see the good that man has done.
The only reason I would want a woman president for the US (I am in Canada) is because then finally we could get over the whole “if women ran the world , there would be no wars , blah blah blah” nosense.
We would see that even when women are running things, they still won’t change.
Not so fast. If there was a woman president and the “if women ran the world, there would be no more wars” didn’t come true in her four year term no matter what promised she flakes on, no matter what acts of indifference or aggression she acts on, no matter how bad her presidency is due to her being the first woman president she would get a free pass because she’s the first woman and the only reason her presidency didn’t work was because teh menz didn’t want to work for a woman.
Oh and if Congress doesn’t become a majority of women at the same time the chances of this excuse coming out would increase ten fold.
A woman could run the presidency, and she could manage a war. To suggest she would differ from a man substantially on policy simply because she is a woman is false. If one looks at science, the human anatomy of a woman’s and a man’s’ brains do not differ. They have the same components – e.g., a cerebellum, frontal and parietal lobes, a brain stem with cranial nerves, a cerebral cortex. It does not differ. To say there would be a substantial difference is unclear and not based on scientific evidence or the facts.
We have had 43 male presidents. I’m wondering if there is anything wrong with me, or anyone else, male or female, desiring a female president, when women are over 50% of the population? Given that ALL presidents so far have been male, is that ok? To want a female president? For me to believe that perhaps things would be better, but even if they were not, that I would personally like to see my own gender ascend to the Oval Office? Just as men have seen their own gender occupying the highest office in the land since the 1700′s? Is that really too much to ask?I am sure I will be told all the ways that it is, or that this question makes no sense, or is irrelevant because x,y,z. But, ya know, I still ask the question. Because the way I see it, it really is ok for me as a woman to want a female president, and have whatever feelings I have about it, given, you know, that there have already been 43 male ones. And I kinda suspect that if there had been 43 female ones, men might be wanting a male one, and thinking that was a good thing.
I’m wondering if there is anything wrong with me, or anyone else, male or female, desiring a female president, when women are over 50% of the population? Given that ALL presidents so far have been male, is that ok? To want a female president?
Simply wanting one? No.
For me to believe that perhaps things would be better, but even if they were not, that I would personally like to see my own gender ascend to the Oval Office?
Wanting to see your own gender in the White House isn’t the point of contention (at least not with me). The point of contention (at least with me) is the idea that a woman president would be make the country the better place solely because she is a woman.
Just as men have seen their own gender occupying the highest office in the land since the 1700′s? Is that really too much to ask?I
Personally seeing all male presidents doesn’t do anything for me. That said I’m not trying to say that as a way to cut down your desire to see a woman in the White House. It just sounds like you think that men get something special out of seeing all male presidents.
And I kinda suspect that if there had been 43 female ones, men might be wanting a male one, and thinking that was a good thing.
I would imagine that yes in that situation I’d want to see a male president but tell me with a straight face that if the line was “if men ruled the world there would be no more conflict and war” or whatever declaration that a male president would make the country a better place solely because he was male that women wouldn’t have doubts.
I want there to be a female president, I really want her to win by her merit alone and not because of novelty though. Who decides who gets to run for presidency? The parties themselves?
I’m glad we got our first female prime minister, although she sucks as a PM but not because of her gender. I really hope it doesn’t sway others to vote again for a woman, I will if their policies are good, I don’t care what gender is pm just don’t fuck up the country!