The Woman Question: Can Women Lead America?

by Victoria A. Brownworth

 

 “Michele Bachmann is unhinged.” A man said this on NPR the day after Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll. The reason given for Bachmann being “unhinged” was that she voted against the debt ceiling bill. But she was far from alone in that: 63 other Republicans and 97 Democrats also voted against it.

Were they all unhinged, or just Bachmann? What about the fact that more Democrats than Republicans voted against it, even though it was the President’s bill? What about the fact that the man calling Bachmann unhinged apparently didn’t know that President Obama had himself voted against raising the debt ceiling twice and a third time abstained from voting to raise it?

I guess Obama was against it before he was for it, to paraphrase a previous campaign, although Obama did explain his previous votes against it as being “uninformed.”

So perhaps Bachmann and the 160 other Democrats and Republicans who voted against the bill were “uninformed” like Obama was. Or maybe they just were standing up for their principles, regardless of which side of the aisle they were on; they thought the bill was lousy, which it was. That doesn’t translate to “unhinged.”

It’s become a commonplace for pundits and voters alike to substitute name-calling for discourse. It’s a way to diminish the opposition without actually presenting an argument. And it is applied with rather robust frequency to female

politicians.

My disclaimer comes in here: I am a socialist. So I don’t have a dog in this fight, per se. Which makes it much easier to see with clarity how wrong the discourse is.

Michele Bachmann isn’t unhinged. She isn’t an idiot, she isn’t stupid, she isn’t crazy. She’s a right-wing ideologue and even there she isn’t the furthest right Republican running for president. She doesn’t have my politics and she may not have yours, either.

Bachmann does, however, have a vagina. And therein lies her main flaw.

Thus far there is  no room for a vagina in American politics. Yes, Hillary Clinton smashed 18 million cracks into the glass ceiling of American politics and as her door prize she got handed the Secretary of State position, which she has handled brilliantly with an approval rating of over 80 percent from people who used to hate her. But it wasn’t the job she worked for.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2008 primary but was not the nominee. The nominee got chosen by the super delegates who saw hope and change in Barack Obama and a “shrill” and “polarizing” character in Hillary. The same woman who is now our country’s representative in foreign policy.

Hmmm.

In the Iowa debate last week, Tim Pawlenty, whose lack of a platform or voter support forced him to withdraw from the Republican field a few hours after Bachmann’s win was announced, implied that Bachmann had achieved nothing in her congressional career and was not fit for the presidency.

Literally five minutes after he withdrew from the race, Pawlenty was telling ABC’s Jake Tapper in an exclusive interview that he thought Bachmann was definitely qualified.

Why the big shift? Because Pawlenty hopes to be her running mate? Because she just beat him by more than two to one?

It was Pawlenty who raised the specter of Bachmann’s migraine headaches–which afflict women three times as often as men--even though Bachmann has the most rigorous campaign schedule of any of the candidates. Pawlenty saw Bachmann as his biggest adversary, which she has proven to be, and he thought using the gender card would be an easy way to diminish her credibility. 

This happened with Hillary Clinton, then Sarah Palin and now Bachmann. Women candidates are “polarizing” and “shrill” and beset with female-centered issues. Hillary was accused of being too cold, then she was accused of crying. Palin has been accused of being too concerned with her wardrobe and “flighty.”

Recent discussion of whether Palin will enter the race in addition to Bachmann has led to commentary on a “catfight” because two women can’t run for the same office that nine men are running for.

But “catfight” is only part of the derogation.

Hillary was repeatedly called the b word  while Palin was called a MILF. Bachmann has been called both. These are disrespectful terms to use against any woman, let alone one running for the nation’s highest office. But that hasn’t stopped the media, pundits or the blogosphere.

And then there was the Newsweek cover.

Last week Bachmann’s face–in a dramatically unflattering photo--stared out from the cover of the nation’s most popular news magazine with the headline “Queen of Rage.”

This was so over the top that even Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) found it an outrage as did many other feminists, myself included. O’Neill castigated Newsweek for the cover and the magazine’s response was that the editor, Tina Brown, is a woman.  As if that answered the charge of sexism.

Anyone who has seen Bachmann on the campaign trail can see that she’s energized and disciplined, not rageful. It’s clear this was how she managed five children of her own as well as 23 foster children while also working as an attorney, prior to her years in politics.

So the Newsweek cover was a set-up. A review of the photo array shows numerous more flattering photos as well as photos of Bachmann in action, instead of the static head shot. And why the “Queen of Rage”? Where is she raging? Is she raging with PMS, menopause or one of her now-infamous headaches that even the Congressional doctor said were totally under control?

Or is she just raging with being those words we can’t use in a family newspaper–the ones Hillary was accused of to such a degree that nutcrackers with her face on them became a popular novelty item during the primary.

Bachmann’s politics and mine couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. But when people start calling her crazy or saying she’s not smart enough to be president (it would seem that eight years of George W. Bush proved that claim

to be a canard), the feminist in me objects.

Regardless of what one might think of the Iowa Straw Poll, since it has no actual electoral value, Bachmann is the first woman to win it. But rather than salute that “first” for an American woman, the media discourse turned immediately to whether or not she was “qualified.”

Bachmann’s served in politics longer than some of her opponents and less than others, but she’s also younger than all but one other candidate.  She’s never been a governor, but then neither was Obama, nor most of the other candidates running against her.

She’s in her third term as a congresswoman and prior to being in Congress, she was in the Minnesota State Senate for six years. She’s a founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives and she is also the first Republican woman congressperson from her state.

So why all the detractions?

This disrespect and diminishing of female candidates for high office is irrespective of party. Green Party candidate for the 2008 presidency, Cynthia McKinney, got none of the media attention her predecessor, Ralph Nader, received. But McKinney was a former congresswoman, a leader in the Black Caucus and a strongly progressive voice–far more so than candidate Obama, certainly. But like Bachmann, she got the “crazy” label early on because she took some radical, principled stands.

A  political scientist from a local university, while talking about getting female candidates elected, said on NPR that no one questions minorities voting their race or ethnicity, but that women are actually supposed to challenge their own desire to vote their gender. She also noted that until women vote their gender just to get women in the political arena (53 percent of the population is female, but only 17 percent of Congress are women, and most states, Pennsylvania among them, have never had a female governor), there will be no gender parity in politics.

It’s a compelling argument. With so few women in politics locally and nationally, that glass ceiling is very much in place. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to achieve primary status in a presidential election from one of the two major parties. Sarah Palin was the first Republican woman to be a vice-presidential candidate and only the second woman to be a vice-presidential candidate–Geraldine Ferraro having been the first.

Now Bachmann is a real contender for the Republican nomination and Palin could herself join the race by next month.

It is the women on the right who have galvanized the Tea Party movement. Palin virtually founded the movement, doing for the Right what no one has been able to do on the Left–start an actual third party within an existing established party that has political clout.

 So if women’s ideas and energy can create change to such a degree–whether it’s your politics or not isn’t the issue–then why the continual perception that women are somehow too polarizing to be in the upper echelons of the political arena?

Women have run nations as diverse as the U.K., Germany, Australia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Liberia and Israel. There are currently 20 female leaders, including the president of Thailand, who was elected two weeks ago.

Why not America?

I admit, I would certainly prefer that neither Bachmann or Palin be the first female president in the U.S. But I question the validity of arguments that these women aren’t qualified just because they aren’t the most perfect candidates.

I heard one Iowan tell a reporter that he really liked Sarah Palin’s ideas, but thought her gender was an issue. Another said he really liked Bachmann, but didn’t think a woman could win.

If you like her ideas, her gender should have nothing to do with it and if enough people vote for her, she’ll win.

Perhaps the political scientist is correct: Women have to vote for women until we achieve parity. But the man on NPR who called Bachmann “unhinged” for her vote on the debt ceiling is definitely wrong, unless he also thinks Obama is unhinged, since he cast similar votes. Calling women candidates name for their stands is not a political answer but a political blind.

Gender is the last great divide in America. Whether or not that gap will be bridged in this election season or another remains to be seen. But for that gap to close, everyone–pundits, the media, voters–have to hold men and women candidates to equal standards. Women shouldn’t be held to a higher, different, less achievable standard than men. If George W. Bush could be president, then so can Bachmann or Palin. If Obama can be president, then so can Hillary or McKinney.

Equality isn’t about tokenism, it’s about leveling the field. How we get there, however, still remains to be seen.