(Cross Posted from The Blog Roundup).
Let's just play fantasy politics for a moment. Imagine if I were given the sole and unequivocal right to pick the next President of the United States, who would I choose, and why?
Let me, for a moment, separate from the likely individual candidates for the job, and just consider the question in abstract:
Would I choose a woman? Perhaps. I've always held the opinion that in general women have to be twice as smart and work twice as hard to get the same degree of recognition as a man. Hillary aside, there are dozens of women who are more than qualified for the job. More to the point, a woman might just have a slightly different perspective than a man on issues as diverse as the healthcare, education, the minimum wage, or abortion, to name but a few. To be sure, there have been women leaders who could carry more masculine energy ("balls" is the technical term) than many men; think Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, for example. But they are not necessarily what I'm talking about. Maybe it's just possible we could have a US President who depended on having neither a penis nor gonads, who would work through cooperation and consensus, who would rely on a constituency of approximately half the population -- women -- for their support, and who would be able to be a
real woman and run the country too?
Would I choose a person of color? How about a black person? Someone who only a few decades ago would be spat on in the street in many places if they even dared to ask for the vote, let alone run for public office... Don't minorities often have the inside track on what it truly means to be poor, to be disenfranchised, to be discriminated against in America? Sure, we have black Senators (such as Obama) and Secretaries of State (Powell & Rice), even Supreme Court Justices (Thomas), but is the country really ready for a Black (or any other non-white minority) President? I venture to suggest that the biggest issue facing any such candidate for the job would be avoiding the threat of assassination from racist bigots, white supremacists and others who would willingly die rather than allow a person of color into the White House. Despite the noble idealism I hear from some quarters, I think we're still some years from being colorblind on this subject.
Would I choose a Moslem? Only if I wanted to split the country asunder. Moslems make up a little more than 1% of US citizens, and yet they are generally regarded as gas station attendants, taxi drivers or worse, terrorists, by a large segment of the population. They may be suspiciously swarthy (see the paragraph above on people of color); they may be adherents to a religion which has a cadre of dangerous extremists who advocate the use of violence to further their goals (so is Christianity in some quarters). Only today I heard a white woman tell a blatantly racist anti-Moslem "terrorism" joke to a wholly white crowd of people at a fitness studio. The comment from one of the audience was "well at least we're laughing about this stuff for a change". Maybe I'm missing something, but if we were joking about Christian extremists bombing abortion clinics, would that be considered an acceptable avenue for the release of tension on the subject?
Would I choose a homosexual? Right now, I believe such a person would not stand a chance in the White House. I would fear that they would simply unite the country against gays and lesbians, and create the greatest backlash in American History, derailing their whole agenda and even causing open insurrection or revolt. Even a black or Hispanic President might have a greater chance of success. Of course, there's the distinct possibility that we've already had a gay President... there have been 43 (male) Presidents to date, and if one of them were gay would we even know? Certainly coming out would have been political (if not actual) suicide, so if it were so we can assume that the historians would have to dig very deep to find it... Some suggestions have already been made as to possible gay Presidents. I know no more about this subject than anyone else, but let's just say that an openly gay President is still a long way away, no matter how qualified the candidate.
Would I choose an atheist or agnostic? Despite the constitutional separation of Church and State in the US, it's still virtually impossible for any Presidential candidate to be even in the vicinity of the nomination without openly declaring their faith; in most cases, a Christian faith. Joe Lieberman aside (and he wasn't actually elected), no Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate has been a non-practising Christian in a long time, and in particular, no truly secular candidate has (or realistically could be) elected President anytime soon. So much for that First Amendment separation...
The point of this whole exercise is not simply to place myself in the position of appointing the most powerful leader on Earth (no matter how appealing that sounds to me!), or even to imagine an America without race, gender, color or religious bias (although I would welcome that); it's to consider the double standard in place. I mean really, why couldn't a woman, a black, Hispanic or Asian, a Jew, a Moslem, or a Hindu, or even a non-religious person just be the best person for the job of President?
I don't know the answer to that question, but I know that at this moment in time, in the eyes of a plurality of Americans, they can't.
I can dream of one day an atheist, black woman occupying the Oval office and doing a damn fine job of running the country. Most Americans refuse to even conceive of such a possibility, and while that's true it will probably never happen. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that I'm not.
- Trendar