Ponderings

If confession is good for the soul, we should be keeping the priests cloistered in the confessionals. Except that I’m not catholic. Without a compelling ritual to release my sins, save a perfunctory weekly prayer of confession, I find myself sharing my confession at the keyboard.

I confess that I wanted Obama to pick a woman. Given the rancor of the primaries, I wasn’t too keen on the Hillary choice; I couldn’t wrap my mind around how they could authentically lead together after so much bad blood. I was intrigued with Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas. With these the only two female Democrats in the conversation, I found myself wondering why there are only two qualified women in all of America. Surely there are more liberal leaning women that would be clean enough, smart enough, and experienced enough for the job.

I confess that I was disappointed, extremely so, with Obama’s choice of Joe Biden. Not that Biden isn’t a decent fellow, by all accounts he is. But at the end of the day, he is another white man. And I’m tired of white men in the white house. I am hungry for our highest office in the land to be reflective of the diversity that is America. I wanted a woman.

Far from feeling sheepish about this desire, I have assumed that every respectable feminist (female and male) share this bias. After all, 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling are impressive but not a break through. Like most American’s, I am truly proud that we crossed a historic threshold as Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for President. But a black man is not a woman.

Historically there are some tensions between white women struggling for freedom alongside black men in the struggle. Elizabeth Cady Stanton threw her incredible network of support to Frederick Douglass in the quest to end the holocaust in this country in the late 19th century, but she took frustration to her grave. Frustration was born of what she understood to be broken promises, promises that once black men secured the vote they would use the influence they had gained to secure the same rights for women, white and black. Conversely, when Affirmative Action was embodied (albeit halfheartedly) a century later, black men saw white women coming away with the paycheck while they continued to sit in the unemployment lines.

Nominating a not white man is historic and good, but it is not synonymous with choosing a woman. Hence I feel unabashed in naming my disappointment with Obama’s choice of Biden. Clearly McCain has the pulse of women’s frustration as he announced his choice for V.P., Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.

As the world blinked in disbelief, most of us meeting Sarah Palin for the first time, I was faced with a reality check that is at disconcerting. While it is clear the Maverick has chosen a maverick, one wonders at the logic. Unquestionably Palin brings youth to McCain’s age, but the only state she’s strategically positioned to deliver is Alaska with its 3 electoral votes. I have huge respect for her choice to bear a fifth child, as Governor of Alaska, knowing that the child would be born with Downs Syndrome, yet her dogmatic stance against abortion is not in keeping with most American’s more nuanced view. Quite frankly, aside from her good looks and gender, McCain’s choice is at best quixotic. Although she may have remarkable instincts and prove to be a strong leader, no one is even pretending to suggest that she has the education or the experience for the job itself.

Which brings me back to the troubling nature of the choice. The choice was to find a woman, any woman, preferable a decent intelligent one. Sarah Palin appears to be a fine person, a woman of sincere faith committed to overcoming gridlock and improving the communities where we live. The choice to find a woman rather than a qualified candidate is affirmative action in its most grotesque distortion. Choosing a woman rather than a qualified candidate is objectification, treating a person as a thing, the process of reducing personhood to object status. In this case it is the process of reducing the search for a Vice Presidential candidate to a gender match. When a candidate’s sexual attributes are held apart from the full personhood of skills, talents, and experiences it is sexual objectification. More simply put, it is demeaning.

To point an accusatory finger at McCain is, I’m painfully aware, to point one at myself. To fuss with McCain’s pandering to women is to acknowledge the objectification inherent in all of the public cry for a woman. Quite frankly, neither of us should be let off the hook on this one.

Candidates for President (and Vice President) of this or any nation should be chosen on the ability to lead not based upon their gender or any other object of their identity. After prayerful consideration and educated inquiry, our call as people of faith is to look beyond objectifications like gender and race in order to select the candidate with the ability to lead our nation. Only then will the dream become realized.