Sooner or later, a woman as U.S. president

By DAVID WALTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

Clift and Brazaitis don't make any predictions in Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling, but their survey of leading female politicians, elected and defeated, since 1984, examines the hard realities for women advancing in American politics. Whereas in 1936, 65 percent of Americans said they would not vote for a woman for president even if she qualified in every other respect, polls now show three-quarters of Americans would not hesitate to vote for a "qualified' woman for president.

"But election after election," Clift and Brazaitis say, "demonstrates that voters trust women in legislative offices, where they are one of many, but not as executives of states, much less the country."

It's from state government, as governor or lieutenant governor, a woman could most likely emerge as a successful presidential candidate. Yet right now there are only three female governors (in Arizona, New Hampshire and New Jersey), compared to 9 senators and 65 women in the House of Representatives.

Brazaitis, chief Washington correspondent for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Clift, an established Washington columnist and commentator, are husband and wife and frequent collaborators. Analysts believe that the first woman president will be a "Sister Mister," the American version of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, "a woman who won't go wobbly in a crisis."

But this belief, Clift and Brazaitis say, was the undoing of Texas Gov. Ann Richards, defeated for re-election in 1994 by George W. Bush, illustrating the dilemma women face in the traditional rough-and-tumble of American politics. Richards, they say, "did what most women do once they get elected. She spent her time trying to establish credibility in areas in which she was presumed weak, and downplayed the issues that got her elected in the first place, like education, health care and child care."

This dilemma is underscored by the nature of women's gains. The celebrated "Year of the Woman," 1992, when women made significant advances in national congressional elections, was a year of redistricting following a census, when many seats had no incumbent, and a female candidate was not compelled to attack an incumbent's record in order to be elected.

The model of a credible presidential or vice presidential candidate, Clift and Brazaitis feel, is someone like New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who offers "proven executive experience, a record on issues of national concern and a confident media image." Other strong candidates include Emily Couric, a Virginia state senator and older sister of television anchorwoman Katie Couric, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, oldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, now in her second term as Maryland's lieutenant governor.

The virtue of this book is its lack of partisanship; the authors survey a broad scale of Republican and Democratic women in American politics, liberal and conservative, without any consideration of whether any one should or should not be elected. Their evenhandedness pays off especially in their chapters on this year's most visible female candidate, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the New York Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This candidate who's never run for office or even been appointed to public office, is the exception that proves the rule. Mrs. Clinton is running for a seat without an incumbent, and voter interest, Clift and Brazaitis say, springs from "her dignity and grace in handling the revelation of her husband's dalliance with a young White House intern."

New York, by the way, is the only state other than West Virginia that has never elected a woman to statewide office.

History takes many unexpected turns, and maybe a former first lady, Supreme Court justice, or Cabinet officer will make a successful run for the presidency in 2004 or 2008 or 2012. But for now, these authors say: "Electing women senators and governors may be the best way to nurture ambition and hurry history."

David Walton is a writer who lives in Pittsburgh.

Madam President:

By Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis

Scribner, $26

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