My
most recent jeremiad against the presidential ambitions of Sen. Clinton got me thinking about the identity politics of the presidency.
While my quibble is with her ideology, a number of posters said she'd never make it because she's a woman. Others said she could never be president because she hails, of late, from the East Coast, and would therefore lose the South, the West, the Midwest, the Box States and possibly even the Lesser Antilles. Similarly, many have argued that Russ Feingold cannot be taken as a serious candidate because he's Jewish.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I really don't think there's that many broad, categorical barriers to the presidency, or at least, they're not what they were not long ago, and they're much more situational than people might assume.
Continued...
For example, if Condi Rice were to secure the Republican nomination, does anyone doubt that bigoted angry white guys would turn out in force at the polls for her? You bet they would. They'd say to themselves, paraphrasing LBJ, "She may be a blank and a blank, but she's our blankity-blank."
After all, they're in on the joke. They know that a Black Republican president would work overtime to undermine Black interests, and in any case, they're party-line voters. What're they going to do, vote for a traitorous liberal solely because he or she is the same pallid shade as them? Naw. We're all So-vee-yet red underneath to them, while their blood runs red, white and blue (albeit in stars and bars rather than stripes). Condi might be a blankity blank, but she's a safely domesticated blankity blank as far as they're concerned.
The question is different on the Democratic side, simply because there's less ideological consistency among Dems and Dem voters are, as a group, far less homogenous, loyal and motivated. Take my homie Russ. Jewish friends in New York say to me, "Ah, he's great but he's toast. Iowa's going to vote for a Jew? And North Carolina?" As a goy from Wisconsin, I can tell `em: You betcha. Because Russ oozes conviction. He wears his earnest, square-jawed Midwestern sensibility on his shirtsleeve, and once more, he's the real deal. Straight shooter. Or he would be if he hunted (which, note to any Feingold staffers that might be reading this, would look very fetching in a candidate from Da Nort - even, and perhaps especially if he racked up more 16-oz. Buds than 12-point bucks). The point, though, is that your average small town borderline-anti-Semite (who's probably never seen a synagogue and who only knows Jews are bad because Old Ned down at the bait shop is always ranting about Hollywierd and New York ee-leets) isn't gonna look at him and go "Yeah, he speaks my language, but he's Jewish." They're going, "What a nice guy. Is he still single? He should meet my daughter. He should meet my daughter and lead the free world. Oh, and hunh, he's Jewish. Whatever."
On the other hand, Russ just got divorced, which might be a real problem. It's just not done. People of many faiths, colors and creeds would recoil at the notion of a single president. Sure, it'd be a regular full employment program for gossip columnists and glossies, but what if his Nerve ad were to turn up in Page Six? Wouldn't that jeopardize our national security? And you can be damn sure we're not ready for an out gay president - even if his name were Ken Mehlman or Rick Perry.
But a woman or a Jew or a Black or a Mexican? Sure, if the candidate and his or her opposition were right. Hell, I reckon if Barack Obama had run for the White House instead of the Senate last year, we'd be debating his picks for the Supreme Court today.
The main barriers, which Republicans long ago figured out, are those of class and charisma. A successful candidate must first pass the beer test - would hardhats want to knock a few back with you? Can you talk about the issues without ten-dollar adjectives and winding detours through the arcana of Senate procedure? When you talk, do you sound like you mean it? Are you forthright and forceful? Do you have a sense of humor? None but a handful of Senators could answer yes to those questions, and that's why they tend not to elect them to higher office. It's not that they're too compromising and consensus building in their jobs - it's that they're too compromising and consensus building in constructing sentences.
Social class is no barrier in and of itself. Witness Howard Dean, the straight-talking Park Ave. WASP who won the hearts of many a blue-collar worker in the Midwest with his incorrigible bluntness. John Edwards, for that matter, hasn't been poor in many years, and while he may have been the first in his family to go to college, he left his class behind when he did. But he, like Bubba Clinton, emoted and spoke to working people in plain language. John Kerry, for all his finer points, seemed unable to make an assertion or answer a question without posing another, and had a sweet tooth for legalistic terminology, the badge of his class and of the Senate Club.
Bottom line: if you walk and talk like a Beacon Hill silver spoon, you're fucked at the ballot box. If you don't already know how to connect with voters, its too late to learn. And if you underestimate the influence of class on candidate selection, stick with the stock market.