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The Glass Ceiling, Cracked?

Sep 01

JeremyPolitics and Nation Election 2008, hillary clinton, Politics and Nation, running mate, sarah palin, vice president 3 Comments

A few years ago, I had the unfortunate experience of accidentally viewing the trailer for a Tara Reid movie. I couldn’t tell you what the movie is and I don’t have the ambition to go find it on IMDb (UPDATE: I went and found it and here’s a link to her look in the film). Our girl Tara was portraying a scientist of some kind in a horror movie, an anthropologist or paleontologist or something like that. To accomplish this remarkable transformation from party girl to intellectual sophisticate, the movie’s creative team used the opposite of the time-honored tactic that we have seen in so many teen dramas: they put her hair up in a knot and had her don dowdy glasses. It was hard enough for us to buy that she was a smart-and-sexy college reporter in Van Wilder, but this movie passed Tara into the ludicrous. A few days ago, I experienced an unfortunate sense of déjà vu when I saw my very first photo ever of Sarah Palin on boston.com. All I could think when I saw her was that someone had accidentally switched up a promotional photo of Tara with that of Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate, the governor of Alaska.

Now, I do not say this to disparage Governor Palin’s intelligence. For that matter, I don’t disparage Ms. Reid’s, since I don’t actually know her. I have no way of knowing whether one is more intelligent than the other. But when it comes down to image, the governor and the decade-younger actress both leave a lot to be desired. In fact, I would venture to say that I do know more about Tara Reid and who she is based on the media coverage she’s experienced in the last decade as an actress than I do about Sarah Palin’s less than a decade in politics. Despite days’ worth of media coverage, Palin remains much of a mystery. I know that she was the runner up for Miss Alaska, her teenage daughter is preggers, she hates polar bears, and likes oil. She sounds like a dirty old Republican man’s naughty dream. So far, though, I have yet to understand what role she would take on in a theoretical McCain administration and what qualifies her to take control of the Oval Office “just in case.”

The only conclusion that I’ve come to is that our suppositional Veep Palin would take on the old role of ceremonial tie-breaker, with no real participation in the heart of our nation’s government, far the opposite of the co-presidency current VP Dick Cheney enjoys. Effectively, the vice president has little more standing and authority than the first lady. Heck, 14th President Franklin Pierce’s VP William King died just a few weeks after inauguration, leaving the office unfilled for most of four years — and NO ONE MISSED HIM! While that may have been feasible in the small government of the 1850s, I don’t believe it’s desirable today. Hence, I’m not sure what a seemingly irrelevant Sarah Palin has done to truly crack the glass ceiling, rather than serve as a figurehead. She’s become the national scene’s version of former Massachusetts acting Governor Jane not-so-Swift, who bowed out of the race as soon as a suitable male candidate appeared. Geraldine Ferraro was our first token female Veep candidate back in 1984. I would have hoped that in 2008, a woman appearing on a national party’s executive ticket would be more than a symbolic figurehead. Instead, the best slogan the McCain campaign can put out now is “If you average their ages together, you get two candidates the right age to be president!”

On the other hand, Senator Hillary Clinton’s failed bid to become the Democratic party’s presidential nominee has shown us that a woman can compete with the boys on the national field and succeed just like they can. While she did fail, it is important to note that Hillary came in second among a field of men with their own impressive credentials. Not only that, but she also has established herself as a force to be reckoned with for the Obama campaign. I’m not, nor have I ever been, Hillary’s biggest fan, but the differences between the two are striking.

I can’t help but be impressed at the way Senator Clinton handled herself at the Democratic National Convention last week. Indeed, if she had shown that kind of spirit during her campaign, I may have voted differently in the primary a few months ago. Analyzing her tactics, Hillary had enough clout to get a plum spot in the speaking order and delivered a rousing speech of the kind that I was never sure she could give. In a masterfully orchestrated deal, she was able to have her cake and eat it too. Not only was she able to bargain for a role call vote, she was also the one who called for party unity in ending the vote (after receiving recognition from some delegates of states preceding New York). Such a savvy understanding of politics is rarely seen in anyone, let alone her male opponents.

Many speculated that Hillary Clinton was on the short list of vice presidential candidates for Barack Obama to choose from, even though he eventually went with Joe Biden. The main criticism of this possibility revolved around the fact that Vice President Clinton would prefer to be co-President Clinton, much like the Bush administration’s current political landscape. She clearly was not content to take a back seat role as First Lady in the 90s and even as number two in the White House, she would have been a positive political force. Chances are, though, that Hillary herself didn’t want to be Vice President. Why settle when she still has chances in the future?

Because she worked so hard and functioned so effectively as a candidate, Hillary Clinton gave a healthy kick to the glass ceiling, far more than Sarah Palin’s light tap. She showed us that women can be not just serious candidates, but serious contenders for the presidency of the United States. While she was not my candidate of choice, she gave me hope that future women will take seriously their duty to have a strong voice in American politics at every level. Despite her failure, she is the woman that history will remember as changing politics. Sarah Palin strikes me as nothing more than a misspelled footnote and fodder for a doctoral dissertation no will ever read. Anyone who thinks otherwise is surely…well…cracked.