Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Women Leaders
In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria discusses the gains women have made globally in politics. In the past decade and a half, he writes, women have become heads of state in more than 30 countries. Rwanda leads the world in female representation, with women as 49 percent as its lower house.
Which leads me to ask: When will we have a female president? Are England, Germany, Liberia, and Mongolia really that much more progressive than we are?
I don't know what it will take for Americans to choose a woman to lead us. I'm afraid that the leading Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton, is unelectable. I've always been a Hillary fan; in 10th grade I went around adding "Hillary" to the Vote Clinton signs, and almost 10 years ago as a junior in college, I urged Hillary and Bill to switch places in '96. If only they had listened to me, they could have avoided a lot of problems.
Senator Clinton is a polarizing figure, though, and she could alienate too many voters in the middle. Sometimes I think the only way we'll get a woman president is if a conservative like Elizabeth Dole runs. Is sisterhood powerful enough to make me cross party lines to vote for a female president? Probably not. But it would provide some consolation if my party loses again.
Which leads me to ask: When will we have a female president? Are England, Germany, Liberia, and Mongolia really that much more progressive than we are?
I don't know what it will take for Americans to choose a woman to lead us. I'm afraid that the leading Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton, is unelectable. I've always been a Hillary fan; in 10th grade I went around adding "Hillary" to the Vote Clinton signs, and almost 10 years ago as a junior in college, I urged Hillary and Bill to switch places in '96. If only they had listened to me, they could have avoided a lot of problems.
Senator Clinton is a polarizing figure, though, and she could alienate too many voters in the middle. Sometimes I think the only way we'll get a woman president is if a conservative like Elizabeth Dole runs. Is sisterhood powerful enough to make me cross party lines to vote for a female president? Probably not. But it would provide some consolation if my party loses again.
posted by Tess | 12:09 PM
2 Comments:
Sisterhood should not exclude issues. If a woman runs on a platform that neglects or reduces the rights of women in this country and around the world (ie positions against funding certain planned parenthood style organizations because they do not teach abstinence only, or supporting the regimes that strangle feminine rights and expression), she forfeits her claim to the sisterhood! Let alone other, non-gender ideological differences...
But yeah, if Condi or Libby Dole ran for president, I'd have to vota against them, much to the despair of my young girl self who dreamed of having the opportunity to vote for a woman president.
I was voted most likely to become president in my senior class, so maybe America is just waiting for me to take the stage.... after I feed the kids.
Tess Thompson for President '08
She was raised in one swing state (Pennsylvania), lives in another (Missouri), and she can connect with middle America: teacher, mother, and active Christian. And, unlike Hilary Clinton, she has neither a pre-existing reservoir of unpopularity (unless there's something I don't about), nor an unnerving propensity to cozy up to corporate America.
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