Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Will the U.S. ever elect a lady president? I first thought of this query in a column I wrote in August of 2016. Hillary Clinton, Yale-educated lawyer, former first woman, former senator from New York and former secretary of state, was working for president. Her opponent was a man named Donald Trump, a actuality TV star and a businessman of detached success who had a repute for stiffing contractors, skirting the principles and getting in bother for declining to lease to Black renters.
Trump was additionally recognized for infidelity, divorce and a protracted sequence of demeaning remarks about girls. In actual fact, a few months after I wrote my column, Trump was caught on tape bragging about with the ability to commit sexual assault with impunity in the event you’re a celeb.
In brief, Clinton’s possibilities for changing into the primary lady president seemed good; America selected Trump.
However my column wasn’t essentially in help of Clinton herself; I puzzled if girls may deliver one thing to the White Home from which the nation may gain advantage.
I attempted to keep away from thorny questions on innate variations between women and men, however I urged that girls and boys are socialized in another way, which could imply that ladies develop up with values and qualities which might be completely different from boys’ and that may very well be helpful in our nation’s highest workplace.
For instance, it’s tough to think about a lady whose favourite film is “Patton” and who would watch it obsessively, as Richard Nixon did whereas he was pursuing a misguided battle in Vietnam, bombing civilians and invading Cambodia.
It’s arduous to think about a lady so infatuated with the legendary qualities of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie that she may say, as Lyndon Johnson as soon as did about Vietnam, “Hell, it’s identical to the Alamo.”
And what lady would say “Carry ’em on” to individuals whom she believes are intent on killing us, as George W. Bush challenged Iraqi insurgents to do.
In 2016, I urged that that is the type of swaggering, tough-guy bravado that’s realized by boys on the enjoying fields of their elementary faculties and bolstered on the soccer discipline, in boot camp or jet pilot college. Many males recover from it, however many don’t. And when those who don’t make their method into excessive public workplace, our international coverage can develop into hyper-aggressive and heavy-handed, a blustery macho check of who blinks first.
Girls leaders, after all, may be robust and resolute, as properly — Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir come to thoughts. However after rising up with much less bodily power, girls could also be much less more likely to flip to power as the primary resort; they might be prepared to speak reasonably than bluff or bluster, to barter reasonably than battle. This isn’t weak point a lot as it’s knowledge. Or so I naively speculated within the harmless days of 2016.
Now a lady has once more misplaced the presidency to man — in reality, the identical man! If something, that man embodies extra bullying machismo than he did eight years in the past. Within the meantime, he’s been adjudged chargeable for sexual assault and for defaming a selected lady whereas he continues to defame others.
Trump has nominated just a few girls for roles in his administration, however they have a tendency to mirror his model of manly values: Linda McMahon based the WWE, and Kristi Noem is finest recognized for bragging about capturing a canine that appeared, to her, untrainable.
And the lads coming into energy? J.D. Vance’s views on girls aren’t precisely enlightened. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to go the Division of Protection, says girls haven’t any place in fight. (I stay up for watching him rationalize that place to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ailing., a battle hero.)
Even Hegseth’s mom as soon as referred to as him a person who “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps round and makes use of girls for his personal energy and ego.” No less than Trump’s mom by no means mentioned that aloud.
Our sluggish, fitful progress towards electing a lady president has gone into reverse. My eight-year-old hopes for a brand new paradigm that favors negotiation over energy, group over battle and maternalism over machismo appear quaint or naïve and, for the current at the least, more and more elusive.
John Crisp is a columnist for Tribune Information Service.
