If a Woman Becomes President

A great many Republican members of Congress oppose much of what President Obama has done and proposes to do, most prominently, the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform. Regarding the former, specific reasons for the opposition are seldom given, if to be a reason it is not enough to say that it kills jobs without saying just how it does that. As for immigration, many of those opponents have rejected what one might call the liberal (small “l”) measures that Obama proposes to take. But on the whole, the opposition to measures associated with Obama has been very stingy with explanations, not to mention justifications. On the other hand, there are columnists and reporters playing pundit who quietly point to an underlying reason for some politicians’ negativity about just about anything their president does or proposes, one that makes the discussion of issues quite unnecessary. They are unhappy about the fact that Obama is president at all, because they resent—are deeply offended by the fact—that the United States president is an African-American, that he is black. Race relations in our country have “progressed” sufficiently so that a Mitch McConnell or a Ted Cruz or any of dozens of others can no longer give public expression to anti-African-American opinions. But progress since Selma or “I have a dream” has come nowhere near to eradicating negative beliefs and emotions, making me quite sure that behind closed doors there is much fuming resentment about our having a president with a skin of the wrong color. Why, you may well ask, am I bringing this up at this time? Obama is not far from the end of his second term; during his remaining time in office Congress will continue to do its best to thwart him; nothing much will change until after the next election. I agree. Things will be different after November 8, 2016. Not in the House, where it would be a major upset if the Republicans were not to retain the majority, though possibly in the Senate. But we do know that we will have a different president. Casting an eye on all those who now put themselves forward as candidates, I am prepared to make a cautious prediction: the odds that Hillary Clinton will be the next president are distinctly better than 50%. And if she makes it, the first African-American president will be followed by the first woman president of the United States of America. That would be a big deal! She would be our 45th president—to be elected just under a century after women were accorded the right to vote by the 19th Amendment. Assuming my prediction comes true, it would be, to quote Schiller, Spät kommst Du doch Du kommst (You come late, but you have come), considering the iron rule of Margaret Thatcher or the nuanced governance of Angela Merkel. But if she becomes president, Hillary Rodham Clinton will surely suffer from an analogous handicap as does Obama. Male chauvinism has not vanished from the scene; what has receded if not entirely disappeared, is the respectability of explicitly expressing it. But there will be resentment that the president is a woman. But has male chauvinism disappeared from Great Britain and Germany? Neither Thatcher seems to have suffered from that handicap nor, these days, does Merkel appear to be so hampered? While I’m not reliably informed about current British or German mores, I suspect that regarding male attitudes toward women, there may well be little difference between those countries on the other side of the Atlantic and us. But what is different are the political contexts within which legislators act. In a parliamentary system there is considerable pressure to maintain party discipline. Other things being equal—and more often than not they are—members of the prime minister’s party vote in support of that officer; unexpressed personal beliefs have to be squelched in favor of the reasons explicitly put forward in parliamentary debates. But such discipline does not characterize the Republican and Democratic parties. While I venture to say without having any real evidence, that on the average Republicans are more macho than Democrats, that does not entirely explain current politics. Consider how often the move is made to “defund” Planned Parenthood and in some states successfully so. By now everyone who pays a bit of attention knows that Planned Parenthood receives no public funds to support its clinics that perform abortions. So if a congressman has moral or religious objections to abortion, that need not prevent him from providing funds for Planned Parenthood. But he may well have another reason. In a way the organization’s name is somewhat misleading. It’s not parents (father and mother) who tend to seek the services of the organization, it is mothers, would-be mothers, and would-rather-not-be mothers. In short, the clients are mostly women who act with or without their husbands’ or male partners’ knowledge or consent. In short, Planned Parenthood empowers women. The fact that this is not discussed does not mean that it is not noted. Indeed, I firmly believe that it is a major unspoken cause of the hostility toward what many think of as an organization that performs valuable societal functions. But let me now return to the subject of abortion. There is considerable noisy objection to the practice on the part of our politicians. Why? Religion is one reason. As is well known, the Roman Catholic church takes abortion to be a serious sin. But the Church also proscribes all birth control other than abstinence and the so-called rhythm method. I’d love to have a penny for every “pill” or diaphragm purchased by American Catholics in the course of a year. Clearly, some sins are more sinful than others. Abortion, you say, is morally wrong, whatever your religion: it is taking a life. To be sure, all abortion only if one subscribes to the dubious doctrine that life begins at the moment of conception. While I will stay out of the debate as to after how many months of pregnancy it is thought that abortion should be prohibited, abortion opponents tend not to make such distinctions. They are agin it and I have long been surprised that I have not seen it called murder. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Many of those moral opponents of abortions are gung ho supporters of capital punishment, where the state kills one of its citizens, albeit a criminal if the trial was just. In short, for many, taking a life is not wrong, just taking some lives. Accordingly, while I agree that there are multiple reasons for opposing abortion, I want also to maintain that for many it is an underlying reason that more often than not it is women who are the agents who decide on that path and that some of the men who oppose abortion resent that often it is women who have the initiative. What do I conclude regarding a possible Hillary Clinton presidency. That aside from arguments about this or that presidential move, there will be a substantial negative undercurrent emanating from politicians who hold that the country should be governed by a white male. Obama is not one and neither would Hillary Clinton be the right sort, should she make it to the White House. Genuine enlightenment is likely to come at a more distant future.