Sunday Discussion Group

December 10, 2006

It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that every person to ever run for president in U.S. history has been a wealthy white Protestant male. We’ve had some Catholic candidates (Al Smith, Kennedy, Kerry), some Mormon candidates (George Romney, Hatch), some Jewish candidates (Lieberman, Specter), some African-American candidates (Jackson, Sharpton), and some women candidates (Chisholm, Liddy Dole).

But we haven’t quite seen a single field of candidates like the one we’re about to witness for the 2008 race. On the Democratic side, the top two candidates in the field are Hillary Clinton (woman) and Barack Obama (African American). Moreover, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (Latino) is likely to be a major player. Whereas Roman Catholic candidates used to be relatively unusual, the Democratic field in 2008 will likely have at least five (Richardson, Wesley Clark, Tom Vilsack, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden).

Among Republicans, which is obviously the more homogeneous of the two major parties, there’s far more traditional male WASP candidates, but even for the GOP, there’s some diversity — Mitt Romney is Mormon, while Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki are Roman Catholic.

Have we reached a point in which diversity issues no longer matter on the national stage? Or will non-wealthy-white-Protestant-male candidates struggle with an additional hurdle that “traditional” candidates won’t have to deal with?

For that matter, are some qualities likely to be more problematic than others? For less-tolerant Americans, would it be harder to vote for an African American or a Mormon? A Latino or a woman?

For what it’s worth, the political establishment in DC seems to have largely come to their own conclusions.

National Journal published the results on Friday of its latest “insiders poll,” which is probably the ideal way to get a sense of the establishment is thinking. The poll not only gauged which ’08 candidates the insiders thought had the best chance, they also explored some of the issues facing non-wealthy-white-Protestant-male candidates.

Insiders were asked, for example, whether Hillary Clinton’s gender would help her, hurt her, or have no impact in the general election. The results were similar in both parties — 33% of Dems said it would help, 28% said it would hurt, and 39% said it would have no impact, while 28% of Republicans said it would help, 28% said it would hurt, and 44% said it would have no impact.

The same was asked about Obama’s race. 26% of Dems said it would help, 48% said it would hurt, and 27% said it would have no impact. Among Republicans, 33% said it would help, 39% said it would hurt, and 28% said it would have no impact.

The poll also asked regarding Romney’s religion — and he did the worst. 4% of Dems said it would help, 47% said it would hurt, and 50% said it would have no impact. Among Republicans, 2% said it would help, 52% said it would hurt, and 46% said it would have no impact.

So, what do you think? How far as the United States come in judging candidates on the merits first, and on their personal characteristics second?

How far as the United States come in judging candidates on the merits first, and on their personal characteristics second?

Not that far, really. But it’s going to get broken up- all it takes is getting some new types of people elected, and seeing them demonstrate their competence- which we already have. The people who can only see things the old way are, as usual, people we just have to push along to the future. We can’t let them run the show, otherwise we’ll get poor leaders again and again.

  • Diversity is America’s strength. Think of all the things you use, think of all the things you see every day- all the things you read. How many laws you follow or that shake things out in a way that is just were written by a Jew? How many roads you travel down, or bridges you cross, or software you encounter were written by an Irishman? How many TV shows you’ve watched were helped developed by a woman? How many black doctors have saved lives, or delivered babies, how many blacks have written the song you like or made your sports teams successful? How much of the technology you see around you, all the gizmos and improvements in food, machines, transportation, healthcare, everything, were developed not by a w.a.s.p. but by some non-traditional type of person? All these things bring in money and make peoples’ lives better. The reason we’re so economically and militarily strong and dominant over the world is because we let each of these people assert their leadership and their talent. We let everybody contribute and we would be very poor in comparison if we wouldn’t let people contribute just because they’re a woman or a hindu or a black. If some people would let more of us contribute, we’d be better off. Imagine what I’d be like if I was running something, and what kind of better decisions I’d make than do get made. But we’ve still got some people, a lot of people, that can’t see things the way they are.

  • I suspect that there are likely to be so many factors involved in selecting presidential candidates for 2008, and again in the general election, that that the effects of religion, gender, race and age will be extremely difficult to measure in a meaningful way. As far as this poll, who knows to what extent Washington insiders are subject to the phenomenon (its name escapes me) whereby voters deny prejudice in polls but act differently behind the curtain.

    There is also the matter of degree to which a particular candidate pushes his or her individual characteristics. A Catholic who makes a big deal of his Catholic beliefs, or a black candidate who appears “too black” would most assuredly face resistance.

    I certainly hope that the right woman could be elected, but I don’t think that Clinton is that woman for reasons other than gender. A Mormon might be capable of being nominated, but probably not on the Republican ticket. I would hope that a candidate of mixed-race such as Obama, or an African-American, would find race not to be an issue; although he would face pockets of resistance, I would hope those would only be consequential in an otherwise tied contest.

    As for an atheist, I hope Rege’s great-great-grandchildren live long enough to see that happen.

  • For years I’ve thought we should replace our outdated WASP label with WORM (white old rich men) since Catholics, without the Latin Mass, have basically morphed into a branch of Evangelical Protestantism (who’d-a ever thunk it?). And if Roman Catholics are willing to defy their Pope on eternal salvation issues like war, abortion, homosexuality and even birth control, why do we even care about what religion someone professes in public life? Many of them seem hardly sincere believers or even regular practitioners, which I think might have led the founder of Christianity to label them “pharisee”. Nevermind, one’s religion should be of no interest in the public arena (do you even know the religion of your kid’s teacher or the person who writes your newspaper copy?).

    I think we’d all be much better off if we could bring ourselves to drop race and ethnicity from our thought altogether. It serves only to divide us, and with increasing mingling the stereotyping becomes increasingly foolish (what’s the race of Tiger Woods?). Anthropologists overwhelmingly agree that the category race has no meaning (we’re all colored), and they should know. Retaining it in our political thinking is silly and hurtful. Ever since the failed “religious censuses” of the early 20th century, we don’t list religion in our official census publications (or at least we didn’t prior to the Shrub’s faith-based dictatorship), so why list race (black, white) or ethnicity (spanish surname)? Do we really want to get to the point where, as with Germany in the ’30s, we must know our racial identity down to values of 1/16th? We should just end the practice outright. If certain race groups have an interest in studying themselves, let them pay for it and do the categorizing, not the government before which we are all, supposedly, equal.

    I’m all in favor of listing the sex (gender if you prefer) of a politician. Aside from the fact that, in most cases, sex can still be guessed from names, there’s at least (for now anyway) some biological (genetic, anatomical) and social (child-bearing) basis for it, as there is with listing age (family life-cycle position, lifespan issues). That said, I think we’d all be better off electing women anytime we have a flip-a-coin choice, so it’s good to have that information. At this point in history (it could change) I don’t think women have so many “macho” issues to create problems for the rest of us to deal with. I must admit that I can’t tell whether the Shrub’s problems stem from an unhealthy macho need to swagger through life or from the fact that he’s never grown up … probably both; maybe it’s his domineering mother. Hopefully we’ll never see the likes of him again.

    Are our candidates becoming more diverse? I’d like to think we’re moving in a direction where no one will ask such a question or even notice. We’ve obiously got a long, long way to go, but that should be the target. Maybe it’s because we’ve already enough of winter in the Pacific Northwest, but I’m thinking baseball. Not a bad model to follow in racial matters — if you play the game by its own rules, you’ll be divserse as a consequence.

  • I’m with rege and beyond. Until we remove references to religion and religious affiliation, race, gender and sexual preference from the template we impose not just on political candidates but on everything else, America won’t really be a world leader.

  • At the moment I think all of these candidates have a relatively clean slate as far as bias against them. However, the pundits, the right wing freak show and negative campaigners have yet to weigh in.

    How soon will it be before O’Reilly weighs in with not trusting anyone with a vagina on national security, before Glenn Beck says Obama is genetically predisposed to play basketball but not lead, before Rush casts the specter of Pope Benedict secretly pulling the strings of Catholic candidates or of the secret Mormom conspiracy to take over the US. After these knuckleheads have their say and the MSM dutifully reports on the “debate” that ensues, we’ll see how the American people stand. Our media can always be counted on to debase an election by judgng candidates on the most tawdry of issues.

  • How big was the dropoff from Harold Ford’s polls to the actual votes? I don’t believe any of these surveys (R or D); when people are alone in the booth they’ll do things they won’t admit to surveyors.

  • Well,let’s point out that in all thi “diversity” all the people mentioned have one thing in common: money. To a greater or lesser extent, every one of them is far richer than the overwhelming majority of folks reading this blog or participating in this conversation.

    Money = social class, and social class is what it is all about. It gets “masked” by the fact that certain ethnicities are found in greater numbers in certain social classes, but class matters. My middle class black friend down the street has a helluva lot more in common with me than he does any 20-something black gangbanger from over the hill in South-Central. We’re both educated to a similar (though different in “stuff”) degree, with similar life possibilities, and that leads to a similar outlook on many things. Yes, race still divides on certain issues, but by far, economics and social class unite more.

    Swan in his idealistic view of the way things are/should be (which I too wish were the way things are and should be) mentioned “How many TV shows you’ve watched were helped developed by a woman?” I will tell you for an absolute fact from insider’s knowledge that that absolutely has no bearing whatsoever on what gets made.The women in Hollywood nowadays come from the same social-economic class as the men who inhabit the office next door, have absolutely the same upper class overeducated Ivy League twit worldview, and presented the same information in a pitch will come to the same conclusion a man would. Trust me, that woman TV network creative president character on “Studio 60” doesn’t exist outside of the drug-addled fevered imagination of Aaron Sorkin.

    What will be radical will not be the day an atheist runs for President and wins, if what wins is a rich atheist. What will be radical is the day someone who hasn’t grown up in/been inducted into and swallowed whole the ideology, of the ruling class. What will be radical is the day someone gets elected President who has an understanding of what the majority of the people who voted him/her into office because they have the same life story as that majority. I’m not holding my breath, and based on 10,000 years of recorded human history planet-wide, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for my descendants as far distant from me as I am from the first Cleaver in America (ten generations) to be seeing that either.

    It doesn’t matter what the mask is, it matters what the bank account is. If that makes makes me a Marxist, make the most of it.

    The “golden rule” is: them who has the gold, rule.

  • whoops – she’s there. In the words of that great American, Emily Letella – “Never mind”.

  • In additon to experience, presentation, ideology and “the vision thing,” it comes down how well a candidate overcomes any existing bias held by many voters.

    If the National Journal poll (cited above) has any broad validity, it appears that Hillary Clinton would do better than Barack Obama (gender would be less negative than race).

    On a personal level, Obama’s media darling status obscures his measure for me. I want a presidential candidate who engenders a comfort level broadly with the public and, thus, someone who can win and defeat the Republicans.

  • This subject reminds me of the observation that “Soccer is America’s sport of the future — and always will be.”

    My feeling is that we will get to the point where such discussions don’t even have to include the term “diversity” because differences will be more comfortablely accepted than at present. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Still, there are positive indications.

    I think the Geraldine Ferraro candidacy was viewed as sort of a gimmick, which it sort of was. Hillary, on the other hand, is viewed as a realistic contender, but I think there is still a knee-jerk hesitation to vote for a female president, even among many women. More important in Hillary’s case are the significantly strong opinions — good and bad — of her. If Hillary is the Democratic candidate in 2008, I don’t think the Dems have a snowball’s chance of winning. But it’s significant that her position on issues overshadows debate over her sex.

    Obama presents different issues. I think his inexperience is more of a question than his race. But I think race is still a factor , not so much from prejudice, but from a hesitation to embrace change.

    Ironically, I don’t think Colin Powell would have had that problem at an earlier time. He had great stature, and was perceived as somehow not black, or even Republican. Perhaps that’s because he’s rarely talked about race. But after his role in the Iraq disaster, I don’t think he will even try.

    There’s another positive side to the “diversity” question. Although Europeans see it more clearly than Americans, this country has made really great strides in acceptance of diversity. There’s always chatter that would try to convince us that slavery never ended, but the fact is that we have made astonishingly quick and deep progress in our attitudes and acceptance of civil rights and social inclusion of population segments that have long been excluded — minorities and women, for example. That represents a dramatic social change in a much shorter time than most.

    So, I think the kind of diversity needed to produce acceptable minority candidates for the highest office is not far away.

  • I don’t mean to reinforce stereotypes with my examples in my comment at #3, but I just wanted to mention contributions that everybody will acknowledge. A lot of people may say, “Ah, but are there really any women CEOs or black scientists…” if you start talking about hypotheticals. I’m just trying to acknowledge the contributions we all experience, and then we can start talking about the examples of the woman CEOs and black scientists and judges we know of- and how if those people are so smart, maybe we could be doing a little better once those people experience less barries to getting places in our society.

  • Guessing that Barack is thinking……Why would a person who is wise want to enter the sewer that is national presidential politics? The paradox is that those with the character and wisdom we need to guide our nation also has the foresight to realize that the Presidency is an insturment of foolishness that will destroy those who attempt to do good but don’t have the power to transform the office.

  • For less-tolerant Americans, would it be harder to vote for an African American or a Mormon? A Latino or a woman?

    As the old song goes, one of these things is not like the other. One of these is a choice of a belief system..

  • If you want the real answer, white rich male has replace w.a.s.p. as the new w.a.s.p. It’s a little more problematic in a way, because it may be a little harder to believe for some people that this person is for example a racist and is not really working for you. It’s a little harder to identify with that sectioned-off privelege than wa the old w.a.s.p. icon.

    If you want the more real answer, Barack Obama is the wave of the future. There’s no real way to tell how long the white rich male is going to last, but if you look to Europe, they have representatives from racial minorities in their parliaments. This rich white male thing could be a fleeting thing and it could be soon that we have public offices that are basically representative on the state level and the federal level, regardless of sex and race and things like that. Which is a great thing, but it can be helped along.

    But it’s something you’ve got to make work and a big part of that is acknowledging that there’s still a lot of opposition to that- they’re out there.
    We have Corker and Allen in these elections mouthing off about peoples’ race. We’ve really got to do all we can to say to people that that’s not right and that’s not what America is really about anymore.

  • People should be thinking more about proportional representation, it’ll help stop priveleged people from ruling everything.

  • What has annoyed me about the people who use labels (white/black/hispanic/christian/atheist adnausem) because they assume that the person who has similar characteristics to their preconceived notions of that particular group.

    I’ve lived long enough to know if someone keeps telling me that so and so is a good “fill-in-the-blank” then it sets off my asshole alarm because it seems to me a sign that this person is compensating for serious personal failings.

    It is my one wish that the W mess will make many of the Christers realize that being one doesn’t necessarily make you good (and hope that being an atheist doesn’t necessarily make you bad.) We have to do the Martin Luther King “I have a Dream.” Must judge a person by their CHARACTER.

    rege and Tom Cleaver make good points about atheism and class. It will be telling at how much America has changed if someone is elected Prez who is not a member of the establishment, atheist and not of serious means. But again, I have a greater chance of dating Natalie Portman (trust me, that is non existant) than that actually happening.

  • Swan’s last three posts are important and interesting. One reason that Europeans can end up with non-rich people in public office is due to the way their politics are run. More than two parties. Short election seasons. Proportional representation. All three items being things that our system doesn’t have and would only get if imposed on it by an outside force, since adopting any one – let alone all three – of these things would put The Powers That Be at a disadvantage and maybe even out of business. How to impose it from the outside is something I can’t see either, given you would have to force a constitutional amendment through 38 easily-purchased state legislatures, all of whom would be voting to cut their own throats, too.

  • How far as the United States come in judging candidates on the merits first, and on their personal characteristics second?

    Not very, because people are still think the “packaging” determines what’s inside. When what’s inside does vary from what they expect, they become uncomfortable. I’m speaking about Washington, DC, which couldn’t be more mixed unless someone stuck us all in a giant blender and hit Puree. Based on my experiences in the mid-west it’s even worse in the rest of the country.

    It’s a lose/lose for the non-W.O.R.M candidate (to borrow Ed Stephan’s great acronym). If the candidate fits the stereotype, not enough people will take him seriously as a leader. If the candidate doesn’t fit the stereotype, people think there’s something wrong. The old “Men are straight forward, women are bitches,” thinking still holds firm.

  • A similar thing killed the Christian Nation amendment in Arizona. The main proponent was soon-to-be-recalled Governor Mecham, who happens to be Mormon. The amendment died when Fundamentalists said they appreciated the sentiment, but made clear that Mormons would not be covered by the amendment, because they weren’t technically Christians.

    Got to love it.

  • How is proportional representation not institutionalized discrimination? I’d like to see it happen but through evolution of the voters not dictated by the government. Any government position that is based on race, creed or ethnicity is discriminatory.

  • This is a bit off-question, but I think something that has had a terrible impact on the quality of candidates is the naive reform of the late 1960s. Taking the selection process out of the notorious “smoke-filled rooms,” although a wonderful, democratic idea in theory, has resulted in candidates who are crap. It’s made many of the host of new primaries irrelevant and increased the insatiable hunger for more fund raising. George W. Bush would have never been a candidate back then.

  • The merits aren’t going to matter so long as the Republicans insist on running their campaigns on fear and emotions. To the point where the individual charastics of the candidate play into fear and emotion of course they will use it. If it doesn’t, they’ll either make it up – or find something else to appeal to fear and emotion about – LOOK! THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR BIBLES!!

  • Not that it matters, but I think most people wouldn’t consider Clark a Roman Catholic candidate. He grew up Baptist I think, and I believe he converted at one point for his wife, but the word in the last election I think was that he was attending an Episcopal church. Of course, by “blood” Clark is half Jewish (like Kerry, I think).

  • I’m not talking about race-based or sex-based quotas for representation, although I think a few European countries have them and they do fine.

    Proportional representation is present in a lot of the Western European countries. We have a “past-the-post” system where a candidate who gets 50 % plus one of the votes in an election wins the seat. This creates a situation where it’s really hard to have more than two parties (and to have new ideas) because a third party acts just like the Green Party or Ross Perot have acted, as an anchor on the interests of groups of people instead of as a viable, electable candidate. Having only two parties means that power that influences the party becomes entrenched, so it’s really hard to get people who are the pullers of the strings in the parties to change their minds and people are controlling things based on their personal interests instead of just political interests of the group and what’s good governance on particular issues. Also it makes the two parties become more and more like each other, because they’re only competing against each other for votes, and what we actually have now where the parties are polarized politically is just an unusual situation- so this keeps new ideas from being available, also.

    Proportional representation would be where 100% of the voters in New Jersey vote for representatives to 100 seats, and if 51% vote for one party and 49% vote for the other party, then you have 51 representatives from one party in the state congress and 49 from the other. This way, you could have more than one party getting elected. People don’t have to depend as much on a party to get elected. It’s a lot more populist. A few people who are really right wing or really left wing could get elected, because you can do whatever you want when you’re in a voting booth, but it would likely be so few if at all that they could not have an influence on the political process. Overall, though, the people who are the entrenched power brokers now would have a lot less control, and candidates for election would have to appeal a lot more to the people to win elections. In Europe it works out pretty well- you can watch question and answer with the United Kingdom’s prime minister and all these regular people are in public office there and they really care about the people and are really engaged in what they are talking about. They’re not a whole bunch of upper class persons. So I’m not even talking about race and gender quotas for representation in public office, which I think we’ll probably be fine w/o, but I don’t think they’d be wrong or anything and I think might be a good idea, anyway. But the thing to really think about is proportional representation because right now we’re getting a lot of stupid people elected to govern just because they can use money and politics to take advantage of the system and get away with it.

  • Tom–

    Money’s certainly a big problem in politics, but if you’re trying to make out that the entire field is rich and was born rich, you’re clearly wrong.

    We all know John Edwards’ family wasn’t well off.

    Wesley Clark’s mom had to work while he was growing up and he spent 34 years in the military only making middle class money. He also turned down the big bucks jobs from the contractors after he retired.

    Most of the others seem more upper middle class than outright rich.

  • Assclowns of the Week #53: “Junior, This is An Intervention” Edition is out. On the spit this week:

    George Bush (7)
    Ann Althouse (10)
    Neil Cavuto (5)
    The Iraq Study Group (1)
    The United States Gov’t (3) and much, much more!

    Personally, I think it’s my best one in months, if not ever.

  • “On the Democratic side, the top two candidates in the field are Hillary Clinton (woman) and Barack Obama (African American).”

    Neither one will survive the first primaries.

    Nor should.

  • ALL the Presidents have either been 1) VPs, 2) Senators, 3) Governors, 4) Generals, or 5) Congressmen (1 only).

    Both of these figures are Senators, and Senators with bad records– for Clinton, over the last seven years, for Obama, for the three years he has been in the Club.

    Both make me sick. Obama is as plastic a rightswinging Crucifix-clutcher as any, and Hillary is a stooge for the Israel lobby.

    1) Remove Bushco from office (2007)
    2) Nominate Gore by public acclamation.
    3) Dean or Feingold as VP.
    4) Kerry as Secretary of State or Defense, if he wants the job.

    or I’d be happy to vote for (President elect) Kerry and (VP elect) Edwards again, if Gore absolutely won’t run. Or Dean — who is vastly better than Obama or Clinton, and has proven he has the real intersts of the party in his heart.

  • Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand. The polling you cite is of inside elitests. And it asks them which potential candidates will have the greatest or least problems getting elected. That “s/he won’t win becase the (great unwashed) public will reject her/his candidacy based on her/his personal characteristics” is just the kind of guessing/gassing I find really annoying. Elites, being supposedly knowledgable people, should stick to discussing the policies and implications thereof of the candidates, and leave the analysis of the voter’s minds alone.

    “How soon will it be before O’Reilly weighs in with not trusting anyone with a vagina on national security, before Glenn Beck says Obama is genetically predisposed to play basketball but not lead, before Rush casts the specter of Pope Benedict secretly pulling the strings of Catholic candidates or of the secret Mormom conspiracy to take over the US.” – Petorado

    How long before the “liberal” press and blogs begins to point out the abusive subservience of women in Mormonism much less the prevasive existence of polygamy in Utah?

    “What will be radical is the day someone who hasn’t grown up in/been inducted into and swallowed whole the ideology, of the ruling class.” – Tom Cleaver

    Wow! Money is the scorecard of success in this country. You’re suggesting that we elect as President someone who can’t even do well in that one endevor?

    Tom, it doesn’t matter how well or poorly someone has done in life, the way you build your argument, you could claim that any potential candidate has “swallowed whole the ideology of the ruling class” even if they are still dirt poor. In fact every American earning less than $60,000 a year who votes Republican’t qualifies. On the other hand, how is it that John Edwards’ populism does not shine through enough for you to accept him as a different “anti-ruling class” candidate?

    • Comments are closed.