Looking beyond sex and race.
Looking beyond sex and race.
I have a “Barbie for President” doll in my office. EMILYs List — dedicated to electing pro-choice women to political office — sent it to me years ago. She could be mistaken for Condoleezza Rice. Though I suspect the toymakers didn’t have a Republican in mind.
Kamala Harris’s candidacy means that the prospect of the first woman president of the United States is plausible again this election season. But a critical question is: What do we want in the first woman president? It’s a question that matters to EMILYs List. For the organization, Harris fits the bill. She recently became the first president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic. Major box check.
But do we want anything else from the first woman president of the United States? Do we need something else?
There’s a powerful tenderness that women can bring to the table. In the Catholic tradition, it has been called “feminine genius.”
In his 1995 Letter to Women, Pope John Paul II thanked women who are at various stages of life — honoring mothers and wives and daughters and all women. “Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world’s understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic.”
Politics doesn’t necessarily avail itself to authenticity. And yet what an opportunity!
JPII was candid in a way that Christianity isn’t always recognized for. He wrote:
I know of course that simply saying thank you is not enough. Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. In every time and place, this conditioning has been an obstacle to the progress of women. Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity.
So, what is the nature of a woman (as has been asked even more recently)? John Paul proposed:
Perhaps more than men, women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts. They see them independently of various ideological or political systems. They see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them. In this way the basic plan of the Creator takes flesh in the history of humanity and there is constantly revealed, in the variety of vocations, that beauty — not merely physical, but above all spiritual — which God bestowed from the very beginning on all, and in a particular way on women.
This isn’t a commentary on Harris as much as a question. What is the nation longing for (if a nation can have a longing)? Perhaps a peacemaker? An encourager? I suppose both Donald Trump and Joe Biden claim to be these things. But, again, if you’ll allow me to borrow from some of what Catholicism has offered in the past century: At the end of the Second Vatican Council, and reiterated by Pope Benedict to me, it was said quite clearly and directly: “Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world.”
To Christian women more specifically, that message highlighted a vital call by Pope Paul VI and reissued by Benedict decades later: “At this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.”
What does that mean for presidential politics? That this back-and-forth about sexism and racism is a distraction. And that we are desperate for a new, courageous leadership that is not onstage.
My colleague Ramesh Ponnuru wrote years ago about how Hillary Clinton could have done something game-changing by making clear that abortion is not something we want. He didn’t put it this way, but she could have been a bold motherly presence, insisting on better, even without having to change her ideological loyalties as she reached out to a broader coalition.
I harbor no illusions that Harris will do anything of the sort, but at this moment of bizarre presidential — and other — politics, we ought to reflect on what that could look like. It would start on a local level. It would start in the home and in the schools and at the community level. Girls might be excited to see Harris run for president. Like my EMILYs List Barbie, women can do anything. But there are more-penetrating matters. Whether a president is a man or a woman isn’t as important as what he or she naturally and consciously brings to the table. And, yes, women are different. And that can be a tremendous blessing.
Harris is obviously a Democratic Party gal. She’s not going to break that loyalty. But we need to raise a new generation of leaders. To both girls and boys, women and men: How can we do better? We owe it to them as a matter of good stewardship and honesty and authenticity.
I don’t want Kamala Harris to be president (ditto Donald Trump!). They both present a civics challenge. And Harris, perhaps, does so in a radically new way that she doesn’t fully appreciate.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.