Why Not a Woman?

By LANCE MORROW

Toward the end of 1919, Woodrow Wilson's health broke down and he went into a kind of exhausted twilight. He withdrew to his bedroom upstairs at the White House. He saw almost no one. Edith Wilson began receiving Cabinet members in the next room, relaying what she said were her husband's wishes. Wilson's enemies on Capitol Hill claimed that she had taken over the Administration. "Mrs. Wilson is President!" shouted Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico. "We have petticoat government!"

The idea, needless to say, struck Fall as an outrage. What offended as much as the usurpation was the sex of the usurper. The U.S. has always been a patriarchal arrangement, at least in its politics. Presidents were to be, in the racy formula that Queen Elizabeth I once used, "crested, not cloven." The American political style savored of saloons and cigars, and took its vocabulary (front runner, dark horse) from the race track. It was Founding Fathers, not Founding Mothers, who drafted the Constitution. Abigail Adams once wrote to her husband John, "I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." The Fathers were not. American women did not--could not--even vote for the first 133 years of the Republic.

American politics is still a predominantly masculine exercise. But today, as their lives have opened out into new careers and broader avenues of participation in American life, women are acquiring political power to a degree that they never have before. Relatively few women occupy major offices; there is only one woman in a Governor's mansion (Kentucky's), two in the Senate and 22 in the House. But women officeholders are proliferating at the state and local levels, steadily filling the channels of talent that lead to Capitol Hill and, eventually, the White House (see following story). As voters, women are now making themselves a potentially decisive presence in national politics. Indeed, some Republicans are afraid that Ronald Reagan's lagging popularity among women could cost him the election this fall.

To exploit that gender gap fully, some Democrats are flirting with an idea that has as much risk as logic: nominating a woman to run for Vice President. House Speaker Tip O'Neill is behind it. So are Democratic Governors Mario Cuomo of New York and Richard Celeste of Ohio. The National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus are scrambling to line up organized support for a woman Vice President. In recent weeks, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart have been asked at every stop whether they would run with a woman; Jesse Jackson already has promised to choose a woman in the unlikely event he is nominated. The thought of a woman Veep, which sounded a little farfetched just a few months ago, has suddenly acquired a life of its own. Says New York City Mayor Ed Koch: "A woman on the ticket would bring more women, and not just women. It would attract young people, because of the idea of a breakthrough. Let me tell ya, it would be better than chicken soup."

Democratic Party officials and leaders of the women's movement have assembled a sort of consensus short list of possible vice-presidential nominees: New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, Louisiana Congresswoman Corinne C. ("Lindy") Boggs and, sometimes, Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. The Republicans, of course, have their ticket assembled. But if George Bush were not already Reagan's No. 2, the President could try to repair the gender gap by picking a vice-presidential candidate from among the accomplished women in his party. Two standouts: Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum and Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole (see box with following story).

Putting a woman on the ticket would undoubtedly be a gamble. It is impossible to know how voters would respond to the idea in November. Their reaction would depend in large part on who the woman was. In the abstract, one poll last week showed that, by 54% to 37%, registered voters think it would be a good idea for the Democrats to have a woman on the ticket. A New York Times/CBS News poll last month, however, found that the advantages and disadvantages of having a woman on the ticket canceled one another out. It would pick up votes among younger women and Republican women, only to lose them among older men and men from suburban areas.

Women are potentially the strongest interest group in the nation. They will make up almost 54% of the electorate in November, and they are more likely than men to go to the polls. Women are hardly a single-minded interest group, however, and they do not vote monolithically. Phyllis Schlafly, who has spent years campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment, presumably does not pull the same levers on Election Day that, say, Bella Abzug does. But overall, women vote somewhat differently from men. The differences were conspicuous in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week. In a hypothetical race between Reagan and Mondale, men choose Reagan, 60% to 37%, while women picked Mondale, 48% to 44%.

Figures like that inspire Ann Lewis, the political director of the Democratic National Committee, to perform some hopeful arithmetic. In the 1980 election, 86.5 million voters turned out. Reagan's margin of victory was 8.4 million. There are 31 million women eligible to vote but unregistered. If the Democrats succeed in bringing out an additional 13.5 million voters in 1984, they should get two-thirds of those additional voters, or 9 million. Add 4 million more votes from the 5.7 million that went to John Anderson in 1980. Reverse Ronald Reagan's advantage with women in 1980 (they picked him, 47% to 45%, while men went for Reagan, 56% to 36%) and that adds 3 million or 4 million more. That is an imposing pile of ifs, but it is easy to see why Lewis and many other Democrats believe that the key to a victory in November is a large turnout of women voters.

Hart and Mondale have both made enthusiastic noises about the idea of a female running mate, but naturally enough, neither has made any commitment. Hart frequently mentions that he has picked Schroeder, his campaign co-chairwoman, to head his vice-presidential search force, and adds: "You can bet that there will be several well-qualified women on the list she draws up." Says Schroeder (who could not run with Hart because she is from the same state): "The odds are getting better [for a woman] because the polls are starting to show that a woman would actually help the ticket."

Until Mondale lost the Ohio and Indiana primaries to Hart a few weeks ago, it was assumed that he would choose a safe, "geographical" running mate--perhaps Lloyd Bentsen, to help him carry Texas, or Fritz Rollings, to give him some appeal in the South. But there is a certain bloodlessness in Mondale's campaign that leaves Democrats with a sinking anticipation of defeat in November. Some now believe that Mondale might put spirit and excitement into his race by bringing a woman onto the ticket. At least the right woman might bring a feeling of something fresh and new to a campaign that so far has sounded like a large, heavy suitcase being tumbled, slow motion, down an interminable flight of stairs.

Says one Democratic expert on Capitol Hill: "There are two imaginative choices for Mondale--a woman or Gary Hart." The idea of a Mondale-Hart ticket interests many Democrats. One problem is that Hart, if he loses the presidential nomination, might decide he would be better off sitting this one out. He could campaign for the ticket, but still separate himself from a losing effort--if it loses-- and thus retain his political integrity and be well positioned to chase the presidential nomination in 1988. In any case, many Mondale advisers are cool to the idea of having Hart on the ticket. They see him merely as an anti-Mondale magnet with little constituency of his own.

Some analysts believe that Mondale's political health at the time of the convention will determine his choice. If he appears to be running close to Reagan, they theorize, then he will play it conservatively and choose a man. But if Mondale is far behind in the polls, he may decide to take a chance on a woman's galvanizing effect. Says one political consultant: "If he's six or eight points down in the polls, he'll go with the conventional choice. But if he's 15 to 20 points down, he may say it's time to roll the dice. That's where Ferraro comes in at convention time."

The choice of a running mate is the first official act of a new presidential nominee, and the message that it communicates about the candidate is closely studied. Mondale, if he heads the ticket, would have to make a complex series of judgments. Ronald Reagan's choice of George Bush four years ago was a gesture in the direction of the party's moderates. Would Mondale, perceived as a thoroughly traditional liberal, need to make a gesture toward his party's conservatives? If he chooses a woman to be his running mate, would that reinforce his "soft" image? Further, would the choice of a woman suggest that he was, once again, giving in to a special interest group? (Of course, referring to more than half the American people as a special interest group is rather tellingly peculiar.)

Mondale would also have to calculate gender in relation to geography. Ferraro--ethnic, big-city urban, blue collar&151;appeals to the same sorts of voters that he does, and therefore would not broaden the ticket in the traditional way. Conversely, Ferraro would, in a geographical and ethnic sense, be an ideal partner for Hart.

If Mondale were considering Feinstein, he would have to factor in the "softness" image, and also think very seriously about the city over which Feinstein presides. To Americans who are not in the spirit of the place, San Francisco's polymorphous ways can be a little appalling.

There are other reasons why the Democrats may not, and possibly should not, nominate a woman for Vice President this year. It could backfire, in several ways. For one thing, if not handled well, it could come off as a political gimmick, a desperation gesture. "These aren't people who have achieved national distinction," complains a senior Democratic Congressman about the women mentioned as vice-presidential possibilities. "If we nominated one of them, we'd be saying, 'We nominated this person for one reason: she's a woman.' " In addition, choosing a woman could shift the focus of the campaign to the vice-presidential nominees, and the widely experienced Bush might outshine a less seasoned Democratic woman.

Some of the objections to naming a woman Vice President this year revolve around the vice presidency itself, and the qualifications one should expect a candidate to bring to it. The office is almost metaphysically bizarre. In some thin, Zen way, it is the most interesting office in American public life, a political antiworld: it is a condition of utter impotence that is a heartbeat away from the greatest power in the world. It is a form of political cryonics. The Vice President is, so to speak, flash-frozen and then, should the need arise, thawed out later. There is no such thing as a good Vice President or a bad Vice President--a Vice President is simply a hypothesis on hold. John Nance Garner, Vice President in Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms, said that the office "isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss"--a phrase the listening reporter bowdlerized to "warm spit."

Some feminists have noted the irony that the vice presidency is a sort of caricature of second-class citizenship. The office is, in fact, a parody of the subordination that women have endured in the past as wives and officeworkers. Again, the man would have all the power and responsibility, and the woman would sit around waiting for the phone to ring.

Every presidential candidate insists that he is choosing his running mate for one reason and one only--that he (or, now, she) would be the best-qualified person in the country to take over the White House should some disaster or assassin strike. That piety is a useful standard to keep before the eyes of the convention, and in a civics-lesson way, it should be true. But it is mostly nonsense. No presidential nominee wants a cretin or arsonist on his ticket, but otherwise the running mate is chosen, not for sterling presidential qualities, but because he (she) will help ensure victory in November. The exercise is often called ticket balancing. If nominees in elections past have chosen running mates for geographical balance, or ethnic balance, or religious balance, what is wrong now with choosing a running mate for gender balance, in somewhat the way that television's morning shows (Today, CBS Morning News, Good Morning America) are cast?

The vice presidency is such a hypothetical office that it is sometimes difficult to focus on what qualifications the candidate should have. Harry Truman looked unprepossessing when F.D.R. took him onto the ticket in 1944--a little haberdasher from Missouri paired with a giant of the earth. Truman turned into a good President. Spiro Agnew was regarded as a solid, promising Republican moderate, a one-term Governor of Maryland, when Richard Nixon named him to the ticket in 1968.

There have been characters of almost spectacular nonentity who have run for the office of Vice President. William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's 1964 partner, made a joke of it in an American Express card commercial. Chester A. Arthur had been nothing more than head of the customs house in New York when James Garfield took him onto his ticket. After Garfield's assassination, Arthur made a competent and honest President in a dishonest age.

Still, one of the principal objections to putting a woman on the Democratic ticket this summer is that there is no one truly qualified--or, at least, no one better qualified than any number of available men--and that any woman who appears on the ticket will be there only because of her gender. Is that so bad? If Ferraro or Feinstein were a man, it is unlikely that either would be mentioned for the vice presidency. On the other hand, if Lyndon Johnson had come from, say, Rhode Island, instead of from Texas, John Kennedy would never have picked him for the Democratic ticket in 1960.

Is the nation "ready" for a woman Vice President? The answers to the question must be intuitive. It is possible that this barrier was passed some time ago, in the psychological sense, and that it is simply waiting to topple. Perhaps.

In Duluth, a retired 56-year-old fire fighter named Roger Armstrong says, "Ability and intelligence have nothing to do with gender. For an old blue-collar Polack [on his mother's side] like me, that's a hell of an admission." Workers in Chicago bars accepted Jane Byrne as mayor without any sense of trauma or endangered masculinity. Studs Terkel, anthropologist of the working class, explains: "The issue is dead. The guys in the bar have been conditioned by idols like Barbara Stanwyck. Now they're ready for a Gerri Ferraro or a Pat Schroeder."

There is disagreement. Says Don Sweitzer, an Ohio labor union consultant: "Labor people have that old macho attitude. They want a woman who stays in the home and the man outside working. It's a real serious problem if you have a woman Vice President." Roxanne Conlin reports something of the same trouble with farmers when she was campaigning for Governor of Iowa in 1982. "The sort of thing one does is campaign at grain elevators," she says. "I'd walk in and say, 'Hi, I'm Roxanne Conlin and I'm running for Governor.' People would stand there, like 'you're kidding.' One man just laughed for five minutes straight." Conlin lost, but most Iowa political analysts attributed her defeat to the disclosure that she and her millionaire husband paid minimal taxes in 1981.

Greg Dixon, the former national secretary of the Moral Majority, claims religious grounds for opposing both the Equal Rights Amendment and the idea of running a woman for Vice President. "I think God has a plan for men to be responsible for affairs of government," he says. "The Bible just teaches that the head of the man is Christ, the head of the woman is man, and that's God's order of things. God has made the woman, biologically and physiologically, keeper of the home. It is rare to find a woman to stand up to the rigors of politics."

Although it is not mentioned often, there lurks in some minds an atavistic suspicion that women are not stable enough to occupy positions of leadership. Fourteen years ago, Dr. Edgar Berman, a friend of Hubert Humphrey's, produced a baroque masterpiece of sexism when he proposed that women were unfit for public office because every month they were subject to a "raging hormonal unbalance." It is a pernicious and ridiculous idea that is refuted by experience (women in positions of power do not behave any differently from men) and by logic (presumably women of mature leadership age would have passed menopause anyhow). The suspicion about feminine instability seems especially silly in the light of some of the bizarre behavior that men have exhibited in the White House--during the last days of the Nixon Administration, for example, or during the time when Lyndon Johnson was beleaguered there. Why be concerned that a woman might, in the throes of some monthly lunacy, want to nuke Leningrad? Of more concern might be a man in the White House with six stiff Scotches in him. The so-called premenstrual syndrome (depression, anger, in some rare cases, violence, around the time of menstruation) has been used successfully as a defense in a couple of murder trials in England, and that reawakened a flicker or two of what is, in fact, a bigoted canard.

Some experts think the psychological barriers to a woman in the White House are still very strong. "The role of the President is the psychic reassurance of the American people," says Susan Reverby, director of Wellesley College's women's studies program. "A woman President can't psychologically reassure you that she is in control. Mommy isn't a father figure." According to a survey of 115,000 women conducted by Wellesley's Center for Research on Women, in collaboration with Woman's Day magazine, 89% believe the country is not yet ready for a woman President. But 72% said they would vote for a woman candidate.

It may be wrong to think that Mommy cannot be as strong as Father. Or that Mommy cannot be as militantly protective. The world has seen the examples of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi--all very tough characters. It has also seen that male leaders (Chamberlain, and in a different scale of things, Carter) can be unreassuringly passive in the face of danger.

The way that Americans view men and women as leaders has undoubtedly been altered by the experience of the Viet Nam War and by the pervasiveness of nuclear weapons. In Touched with Fire, an eloquent meditation on the future of the Viet Nam generation, John Wheeler sifts through some pertinent issues of the masculine principle and the feminine. "Femininity expresses the idea that there are things worth living for," writes Wheeler. "Masculinity expresses the idea that there are things worth dying for."

In a way, femininity as a political principle was legitimized by the failure of America in Viet Nam. The war was interpreted as male triumphalism gone disastrously wrong. War, the traditional testing ground and expression of male virtue, became not glory, but horror. Some Americans were filled with a revulsion at the kind of people who brought the nation to this pass--men--and began to think that maybe women have gentler instincts and might be able to lead humankind away from the precipice. It dawned on some people that women may be nicer people than men. Or, in any case, that as politicians they are less corrupt. That may be mere inexperience on the female's part, of course, or a mere fantasy altogether. But something of that psychology does ghost around the corners of the mind when women are considered as politicians.

More than the aftermath psychology of Viet Nam, it has been Ronald Reagan who has stirred a change. In a sense, Reagan is the most efficient agent that the National Organization for Women has working for it. In a negative way, he has helped to clarify a women's agenda in America, and to persuade women that they do have different priorities from men. After the 1982 elections, the Republicans began to analyze the gender-gap in earnest. Ronald Hinckley, a poll specialist with the Office of Planning and Evaluation, prepared a 12-page memorandum that concluded: "The gender gap vote favored candidates perceived to be more peace-oriented in foreign affairs and caring on social programs and the economy."

Women tend to disagree with Reagan's policies on the ERA, abortion, cuts in social services, peace and war, and the environment. In one poll after another, women have shown that they perceive themselves to be hurt more by Reagan's policies than any other group. For example: in 1981, $1billion was cut from the federal aid to dependent children. Most of the 3.7 million families on that program are headed by women. In 1982 and 1983, $5 billion was cut from the federal food stamp program. Women and children are 85% of the recipients. "The feminization of poverty" is a powerful catch phrase. It may haunt Reagan. "You can talk about the importance of union members, or the importance of blacks," says University of Michigan Pollster Michael Traugott. "But none of these groups compare in size to adult females."

A place on the ticket would have enormous symbolic power. Ann Lewis, like some other feminists, makes the Jackie Robinson analogy when she talks about a woman vice president. "If Branch Rickey had asked people whether to put a black on the field, would they have ever told him, 'Now'? Putting Jackie Robinson in a Dodgers uniform was good for the Dodgers, good for baseball and good for the country."

It may be that no woman will run on the Democratic ticket this year. In a sense, according to Ann Lewis, that does not matter. "The most important step in the revolution has already been taken," she believes. "We are no longer discussing whether a woman will be on the ticket, but when.'' --By Lance Morrow. Reported by Sam Allis/Washington, Barbara B. Dolan/ Detroit and John F. Stacks/New York

With reporting by Sam Allis, Barbara B. Dolan, John F. Stacks