Month: July 2020

BIDEN’S VP LIST: A WHO’S WHO OF HIGHLY SKILLED WOMEN LEADERS

Joe Biden’s commitment to name a woman as his running mate has drained the boredom out of one of the more unremarkable rituals in our quadrennial election pageantry.  Instead of filling the summer with coy no-comments from a predictable cast of ambitious white guys, Biden has introduced us to an ever-growing list of strong, accomplished women generally unknown outside of their states or districts.

Critics of this women-only selection process have pontificated about the evils of filling such an important job on the basis of gender. How silly is that? For the past 231 years, all of our presidents and vice presidents have been men. The argument is vanquished by its own speciousness. Biden’s veepstakes are expanding, not limiting, our notion of what presidential looks like.

Other than Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Kamala Harris (CA), who competed alongside Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, most of the potential veep names bandied about are those of female leaders whose skillsets have been hiding in the shadows of national obscurity. 

They include:  Senators Tammy Baldwin (WI), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH); Congresswomen Val Demings (FL) and Karen Bass (CA); Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano; Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; former Georgia legislative leader and candidate for governor Stacey Abrams; and former national security advisor Susan Rice. 

These candidates have been the subject of considerable news coverage these past few months. Most of them went from a Google trending flatline of zero to the top of the search metric within days of being identified as a possible vice presidential nominee.  Never has there been so much focus on highly skilled women leaders. Of course, in a government dominated by white men, there hasn’t been a lot of competition for that distinction.  After all, we’re talking about a country where women account for less than 25 percent of the Congress and 18 percent of the governorships.

Yet, this protracted national conversation about the comparative skills and backgrounds of a dozen or more top notch women leaders doesn’t, in itself, bend the aging arc of patriarchy into a magic wand of gender parity.  But it’s a much needed start, particularly compared to where we were at the conclusion of this year’s Democratic primary process.  

Only months ago, the Dems were rightly boasting about their unprecedentedly diverse cast of presidential candidates. They were male and female; young and old; gay and straight; white, black, Latino and Asian. Yet, when the dust settled, Joe Biden,  a 77-year-old icon of the white male establishment, assumed the mantle of the party’s presumptive nominee. 

So when Biden announced in March that “there are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow,” and that he would select one as his running mate, eyes were understandably rolling in many feminist circles. After all, the guy had just kept the glass ceiling intact by securing four more years of a “Men Only” sign for the oval office.  There was no mood to break into a round of the Hallelujah Chorus for the veep consolation.

The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse perfectly captured this sentiment when she adroitly wrote: “Most feminist voters I know don’t want ‘a woman’ in the White House just because an older man announced in advance that he’d earmarked a special lady-slot for someone wearing a pantsuit.” 

We are now four months past Hesse’s touché moment.  Biden’s lady-slot move seems to be having a sustained positive impact on actually getting to know the strengths and skills these women bring to the table.  Until recently, most of them were seen first as representatives of their gender, and secondarily – if at all – as serious thought leaders. 

Social and organizational scientists have been tracking this phenomenon for decades (here and here).  Those who are the demographically few among the many in any organizational setting have a difficult time freeing themselves from their gender, race, or other identity status. They find it much harder to be taken seriously by the many, typically a male majority.  

For example, we knew Rep. Demings was the “black woman” named as a Trump impeachment manager. Now we know her background as a social-worker-turned-cop who served as Orlando’s police chief. We also know her ideas about dealing with the ongoing issue of police violence in the black community.  The same goes for every name on Biden’s list.  The news these past few months has been filled with stories about their backgrounds, including details of their accomplishments and policies they have supported.  

Think back four years ago. Who were the women Hillary Clinton considered for her running mate? There was only one: Elizabeth Warren. The other eight were men. How about Barak Obama in 2008? Again, only one woman: Kathleen Sebelius, then governor of Kansas. The other seven on his short list were men. Warren and Sebelius were both the few among the many, and neither received serious or substantive attention as a possible veep pick. 

As cheesy and patronizing as Biden’s no-men-allowed standard might have looked in March, the process nevertheless delivered a stunning antidote to the perverse leadership numbers game that has kept the national spotlight away from the few women among the many men.  When it comes to “Joe’s List,” women have gone from the few to the only. For the first time in their careers, most of them have appeared on the Sunday talk shows and have written op eds for the New York Times. Freed from being tokens of their gender, we get to know them for their character and substance.

The openness with which these women have approached their vice presidential candidacies stands in sharp contrast to the annoying male norm of publicly feigning interest while jockeying for the job behind the scenes.  Stacey Abrams captured the reason for such an assertive, straight-forward approach when she told the New York Times: “We know extrapolations are made from single moments,” she said. “Part of my directness in answering the question about V.P. is that I don’t want anyone” — whether a Southerner, an African-American, a woman, or all of the above — “to ever look at my answer and say, ‘Well, if she can’t say it, then I can’t think it.’”

The Biden project is by no means a cure-all for gender disparity in our political system. But it’s a worthy first shot at leveling the playing field.  If it gets more people to completely reimagine what a president or vice president looks like, to apprehend that they don’t have to come in pin-striped power suits and red ties, it will have been a step well worth taking. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA! THE WORLD WEEPS FOR THEE

Donald Trump rode into the White House on his high horse of protecting white America from the dreaded Other. He vowed to slay the dragons of otherness: Mexican rapists and drug dealers; black and brown lowlife losers from shithole countries; and, of course, his imaginary caravans of violent gang members invading our southern border.  

As the curtain rises on Act Three of this Shakespearean-like tragedy, King Donald is encountering an abrupt plot reversal.  After nearly four years of trying to remake America in his own white nationalist image, the King has come face-to-face with the real dreaded Other.  

And it is us. 

The world, it turns out, has taken a good, long look at America in this troubled summer of our discontent, and found it to be . . . well, a real shithole.  

Trump was counting on his hosting of a summit of G7 world leaders in June as a symbol of what he branded as “transitioning back to greatness.” The conference, in his mind, would mean that those nasty little blips of a pandemic and demands for racial justice were yesterday’s fake news, and that he had moved on to greater missions, like leading on the world’s stage.  German chancellor Angela Merkel, however, rained on Trump’s transitioning parade by calling the U.S. gathering a health risk in light of our country’s unbent coronavirus curve. Other G7 players agreed and the conference was called off.

It turns out that the G7 rebuff was a mere prelude, an appetizer if you will, in a nasty, karmic feast of crow laid upon Trump’s table for his dining pleasure.  As of Wednesday, American travelers are prohibited from entering the European Union.  This will go down in the annals of international diplomacy as an elegant act of the pot calling the kettle orange (orange, of course, being the new black). 

Trump thinks he invented travel bans. He spent the first months of his presidency barring Muslims from entering the country.  He’s still trying to build a wall to keep the Mexicans at bay. His only aggressive pandemic moves involved travel bans, first against China, then Europe. 

To this president, the coronavirus was just another vile foreigner to be kept forever offshore. The disease, of course, was deeply into globalization.  By the time Trump boarded up the country’s entry portals, the virus had already taken up residence in the homeland, quickly spreading to millions, and killing tens of thousands.  

Europe now has a handle on the pandemic, unlike America where COVID runs rampant while Trump runs for cover. Based on the metrics of the past two weeks, E.U. countries as a bloc have slowed their new infections to 16 per 100,000 people. For the same period, the U.S. stands at 122 new cases per 100,000 people, a ratio that that grows exponentially by the day.  Who can blame them from treating us as the highly unmasked, infection-prone fools that we are?

Yet, this startling new phenomenon of the world seeing America as the ugly other, is by no means limited to the coronavirus. We have been steadily losing value, prestige and power as a country since Donald Trump took office.  He has belittled NATO and military alliances in Asia. He pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord and tore up the Iran nuclear deal. He took the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years.  He has insulted virtually every foreign leader who’s not a ruthless dictator.  

But it has gotten so much worse in the past few weeks.  Just as heads the world over were shaking at Trump’s utter failure to lead on virus mitigation, a Minneapolis police officer pressed his white knee into George Floyd’s black neck for nearly nine minutes, killing him and setting off a series of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the world.   Nothing has been the same since.

Trump threatened to call out the military and have protesters shot.  He had mostly peaceful protesters in front of the White House tear gassed and sprayed with rubber bullets so the president could walk to a nearby church for a photo op.  He retweeted a video of a man shouting “white power” slogans.  In another tweet, he sent images of black-on-white assaults and asked why white people weren’t protesting. 

And the international community, our longtime allies, responded with a stunning sense of shock, bordering on disbelief.  The Guardian reported that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, paused for 21 seconds after being asked to comment on his country’s southern neighbor.  The silence was broken with these words: “We all watch in horror and consternation at what is going on in the United States. It is time to pull people together.”

E.U. leaders called out the Trump administration’s “abuse of power” and racism.  The Spanish prime minister expressed solidarity with the demonstrators and concern for America’s growing authoritarianism.  Another European official told a reporter that recent U.S. developments have left most political figures on his continent “shocked, appalled, and scared. . . they are locked in a Trump-induced coma.”

The world has long been fascinated with America. George Floyd’s death triggered massive protests all over the globe in large part because of that fascination, that connection people of all countries have with the U.S.  Here’s what former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt told The Atlantic: “Normally, when something happens – a war, an earthquake – everybody waits to see what the Americans are doing . . . and they calibrate their own response based on that.”

That protocol is no longer operative.  No country in its right mind is copying us today. As New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the other day, “We’re not leading. We’re not following. We’re lost.”

Sure, we still have the expertise, the world’s best universities and the most innovative companies. Our country has produced more Nobel prize winners, and has more organizations devoted to social justice than any other. But those riches, that helped mold what is best about America, lie dormant now because we have a president who rejects both science and justice.

Donald Trump is the personification of Green Day’s American Idiot, a cartoon character who sputters aphorisms about America First and a return to greatness.  He is a deeply broken man who has turned our country into the dreaded and diabolical Other.