Why Not Elect a Woman President?

The political pundits keep telling us we cannot, or will not elect a woman president of the United States. Since apparently there will be no contest for the Republican nomination, this message seems directed at the Democratic Party where a half dozen women have been in the race to become the party’s standard bearer.

A poll conducted by Time magazine last September is instructive with regards to this question. In it fifty-six percent of American women said they did not believe a woman could be elected in 2020. In the same poll fifty-five percent of Hispanic women and half of black women said they think a woman is likely to be elected President in 2020, while just thirty-eight percent of white women said so. That translated into a fifty-three percent majority of Democratic women who believe a woman can be elected in 2020.  On the other hand, only thirty-five percent of Republican women think Americans are likely to elect a female Commander in Chief in 2020.

The skepticism of Republican women is understandable.  The GOP has an incumbent male president who is running for re-election. Women are also virtually absent from significant policy making position in the Trump Administration. When Kirstjen Neilson proved not tough enough on immigrants for Trump, he sacked her, leaving only two Cabinet officers headed by women, Betsy DeVos at Education and Elaine Chao at Transportation.

Although DeVos has no education credentials, her family has been generous in support of Republicans.  Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been a member of the Cabinet under the last two GOP presidents.

The significant gains made by women in the 2018 congressional elections seem to belie the notion that a woman cannot win the presidency. One hundred and two women were elected to the US House, while there are now twenty-five women serving in the US Senate. Again, there is a stark partisan discrepancy. Women in the US House number eighty-nine Democrats to thirteen Republicans, while in the US Senate the split is seventeen Democrats and eight Republicans.

Still, overall women hold only approximately twenty-five percent of congressional offices.  A woman does occupy the speaker’s chair.  

In the business world American women have also made headway. Several major companies currently are led by female CEOs, including General Motors, International Business Machines, Lockheed Martin and Anthem. Women can be found at the helm of a number of smaller corporate enterprises as well and run a high percentage of small business operations.

However, among Fortune 500 corporations less than twenty-two percent of board directors are women.

 

Internationally, the United States looks misogynistic, ranking 51^st overall in progress toward gender parity. The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap Report grades 149 countries in four categories, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.  In the last category, the United States ranks 98th, even though women make up more than half the nation’s population and earn more than half of the college degrees.

Around the world, women have assumed significant leadership roles. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has been the most visible and consequential, but Margrethe Vestager, the European Union competition czar has also had a substantial impact, especially on the world’s tech giants. She has fined Google more than $9 billion for monopolistic activities and required Apple to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes.

French attorney Christine Lagarde has just stepped down as managing director of the International Monetary Fund after eight years. She leaves to take over the presidency of the European Central Bank. The former defense minister of Germany, Ursula von der Leyen has just been elected head of the European Commission.

Looking at the roles women are assuming around the world as well as within the US, it is hard to accept that Americans really are that reluctant to elect a woman president.

Part of the impetus for this idea seems to be the failure of Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. From the outset she had appeared to be a certain winner, but she lost six of the key swing states that Obama had won in 2012 and did not match his total vote. The fact that she received nearly three million more popular votes than Donald Trump is an indication that gender was not the likely cause of her loss.

Her acceptance of large speaking fees from corporate donors in the early stages of her campaign undermined her credibility generally, and she failed to establish a strong connection with key elements of the Democratic base, including African Americans and working class voters. According to an analysis of polling data by RealClearPolitics, Clinton’s approval ratings never matched her disapproval ratings during the entire election year. She was viewed by a majority of voters as dishonest and untrustworthy.

The women running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 do not appear to carry as much negative baggage and three years of Donald Trump has left a plethora of issues around which to craft a winning campaign. That is the challenge---identifying the right issues to emphasize and packaging them in way that is understandable as well as appealing.

            A woman can do that just as well as a man, maybe better.

Don’t Focus on the “Accidental President”

Admittedly, it is difficult to ignore Donald Trump. His irresponsible rhetoric and irrational approach to policymaking feed social chaos and economic uncertainty.  But while Trump’s narcissistic performance is maddening, he is only a major symptom of a deeply rooted political disorder that threatens to destroy United States as a democratic society.

Trump became our “Accidental President” in a tumultuous contest in 2016.  He did not win because of the quirks of the Electoral College. That institution is well-known, having been around for 231 years and 57 presidential elections. Trying to blame the Electoral College for defeat simply indicates an ignorance of history or a refusal to accept reality.

Trump won because of social and economic circumstances created over the past forty years by our country’s political and economic elites. Both major political parties have been complicit in letting the American people down. They have chosen to emphasize short term political gains instead of addressing serious issues that have persisted for too long.

Income inequity did not develop overnight and it has not occurred in some secret manner.  The Trump tax cuts are just the latest reiteration of policy preferences for the rich both parties have supported since the Reagan years. The capital gains discount and the carried interest travesty have allowed the wealthy to continue amassing great fortunes at the expense of the average American worker who is saddled with more and more regressive sales taxes.

All those jobs that were supposed to result from slashing taxes for already flush corporations, they have not appeared.  Some corporate elites were even rewarded for tax avoidance, but most of their tainted windfall went for stock buybacks, fattening even more their bulging wallets.

Neither party has been willing to take the steps necessary to restore reasonable balance between capital and labor. The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009 and some states, like South Carolina, still refuse to even institute one. Although a majority of Americans support the existence of labor unions, collective bargaining continues to be undermined at both the state and federal level.

Trade problems also have not just suddenly surfaced.  They have been festering for some time, intensified by the foolish decisions on the part of many corporations to create supply chains in other countries outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States. Their shortsighted quest for the lowest labor costs not only has impoverished American workers, but it has exposed the companies themselves to greater risk of intellectual property losses.

Globalization is a reality. But if US companies continue to insist that the interests of their shareholders must take priority over the welfare of the average American worker, they may wake up someday and find there is no one with the will or capacity to defend them.

Healthcare remains an unresolved problem. Obamacare was designed to address access to health insurance, but it primarily has reaffirmed the stranglehold various elements of the industry have on both major political parties. The corrupt behavior of the pharmaceutical companies in the opioid crisis is clear evidence that relying on the market will not produce safe and economical healthcare.

And the idea that most Americans “love” their private health insurance is a myth fed by the industry’s multibillion dollar lobby machine. Our current system of healthcare is the most expensive in the world today, yet it fails to serve the needs of millions of Americans, including nearly four million children. A carefully planned and adequately financed transition to a single-payer universal system will be welcomed by all but the most skeptical ideologues.

Restoring education to its rightful place at the heart of the American dream is should also be an important goal.  Both parties have been guilty of moving education from being viewed as a public good to being considered a private benefit with the resulting decline in priority. A college education does not need to be free, but it should be accessible at a reasonable cost--- one that is not a lifelong burden.

The country needs an educated and appropriately skilled workforce. In the period between World War II and about 1970, the US appeared to be on the right track in achieving this objective, but politicians in both parties started tinkering with the system without regard for the professionals involved.  Reinvigorating our education system is not going to happen overnight, but again the market has proven it cannot be depended upon to do the job.

Another area of concern has been the international arena. The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring the end of conflicts among nations and a “peace dividend.” Instead, the US has been continuously embroiled in foreign quarrels in which we have only a passing interest and little prospect for resolving.

The fear of terrorism, which has historically been a weapon of the weak, has been used effectively by the threat-industrial complex to justify enormous defense expenditures. In the name of seeking peace and secuity the US has become the world’s greatest supplier of military weaponry and is now feared more than respected.

Finally, much of what ails America today is the result of the demise of the fourth estate within our country. Free speech and a free press are basic American values and critical to maintaining a democratic government, but neither truly exists today in the mass media nor in social media.

Money rules in both. Commercials have pushed aside time and resources for legitimate news coverage on networks and cable. The business model of social media with its urgent demand for clicks has led to a focus on conflict that is counterproductive to representative government.  Some restoration of the fairness doctrine that ruled television from the 1940s until the 1980s is desperately needed.

If neither political party recognizes the real stakes in the 2020 election, the re-election of Donald Trump may be the least of our worries. And an election centered on him, similar to what happened in 2016, could very well create a situation in which his demagoguery proves effective again.