Preface and Chapter 1 Crippled America/Preface and Chapter 1 Hard Choices

This is the first in a series of blog posts on Donald Trump’s Autobiography, Crippled America, and Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, Hard Choices.  Look for weekly updates on each book in these months before the election.

In Donald Trump’s 193 page book, which includes a 6 page ‘about the author’ section at the end, and no index, Crippled America, he opens the preface of the book with the headline “You Gotta Believe” and describes the reason he chose an angry book cover. He noted that there were “some beautiful pictures taken”  that his family wanted him to use instead, but he chose the angry faced photo because there is “nothing nice” about America right now, we are “crippled” and the cover photo should represent the state of the country.   He wanted a photo that represented the “anger and unhappiness” he feels over the state of the country.  He went on to describe how people think he has self confidence and the the incompetence of the president and executive branch is “beyond belief.”   He went on to explain that when he started to speak out about running for president, he had “no idea” what the reaction would be.  The reaction is much greater than he though and he wants to turn America around from despair.  In chapter one, Donald Trump asserts that “America needs to start winning again.”  He begins by saying “Nobody likes a loser and nobody likes to be bullied.”  He writes that he became a candidate because “We don’t need more political rhetoric, we need more common sense” and that he has proven everybody who doubted his candidacy wrong, “EVERYBODY” he writes.  He sums up the first chapter with a continued series of short, declarative sentences:  “Winning matters.  Being the best matters….We need to ensure America starts winning once again.”

Hillary Clinton’s 634 page book, Hard Choices, (which includes an epilogue, acknowledgements and a comprehensive index), opens with an author’s note that is a brief biographical sketch explaining the titled for the book and how over the course of her entire life she has been faced with difficult choices — many of which involve the juggling the demands of work and family, such as caring for a sick child or an aging parent, figuring out how to pay for college, finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it.  She explains to the reader that in making her decisions she has listened to both her heart and her head.  She wrote:  “I followed my heart to Arkansas; it burst with love at the birth of our daughter, Chelsea;  and it ached with the losses of my father and mother.  My head urged me forward in my education and professional choices.”  She went on to explain that “My head urged me forward in my education and professional choices.”  She makes the connection that what is “true in our daily lives is also true at the highest levels of government.”  She concluded her author’s note with: “One thing that has never been a hard choice for me is serving our country.  It has been the greatest honor of my life.”  In the first chapter, titled “2008:  Team of Rivals,” Hillary Clinton recounts how close she came to winning the nomination in 2008 and how disappointed she felt because she “came up short.”  She described the first after campaign meeting with President Obama, held at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s home, over a glass of chardonnay and noted the similarities of she and Obama:  “both lawyers who got our start as grassroots activities for social justice.”  Their first meeting was awkward but “the candor of our conversation was reassuring and reinforced my resolve to support him.”  She reflected on the criticism she received as a candidate and said, “One silver lining of defeat was that I came out of the experience realizing I no longer cared so much about what the critics said about me. I learned to take criticism seriously but not personally, and the campaign certainly tested me on that.”  She also reflected on how difficult it was to accomplish the goals of her speech of concession at the Building Museum and how she composed her speech for the convention where she said, “Whether you voted for me, or you voted for Barack, the time is ow to unite as a single party with a single purpose.  We are on the same team, and none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines.”  As she mulled over the decision of whether or not to accept President Obama’s invitation to become Secretary of State, she kept “returning to a simple idea:  When your President asks you to serve, you should say yes.” She noted upon reflection of her work at State, “The President fully lived up to his promises.  He gave me free rein to choose my team, relied on my advice as his chief foreign policy advisor on the major decisions on his desk, and insisted on meeting often so we could speak candidly.”  She concluded the chapter with “Our rivalry, once fierce, was now over.  We were partners.”

 

 

 

Geography Matters – Go n-éirí an bóthar leat!

We are our places.

That’s why I can’t wait to see and experience Dublin, Ireland to get a sense of the Marys who have served as presidents, to visit the archive at University College, Dublin and to talk with older locals about the two women–the only two ever–to serve as president of the tiny island always looking to brand itself as a more independent, progressive place, and not a place in the shadow of Great Britain.

Mary Robinson was upper-class and from the south, and Mary McAleese was a blue collar woman from the scrappy North, both fiercely Catholic and both questioning women’s place within Catholicism.  

When a new politician bursts on to the scene, one way to learn and know about them is to go to their home.  If you do that, you are likely to “get” them.   I’ve had some memorable trips to get the geography of women I’ve written about:   I recall a fun family road trip to Salisbury, North Carolina to see the childhood home of Elizabeth Dole (grand) and to wander around the downtown she warmly described in her biography.  A visit Skowhegan, Maine to see Margaret Chase Smith’s childhood home–the same one her mother had been born in– and you get a sense of the constancy and conservative nature of her upbringing.  Shirley Chisholm’s Barbados and Brooklyn roots were evident in her style, a ramrod seriousness combined with the hubris of city dwellings.  Pat Schroeder, who moved multiple times as a child, as her father pursued a career in aviation learned to make friends wherever she went and brought that sensibility to her adult life.  When I interviewed her she said bluntly:  “it’s all geography.  If you want to know about a person, ask where they are from and the circumstances of their lives.”   Elizabeth Dole, spoke “fluent southern” on the campaign trail (for better as a spouse of a candidate, but worse as a candidate herself) and Hillary Clinton, who was born to a “middle class family in the middle of America”  — was the only girl in her family, rejected from joining NASA because of her gender and avowing to right that wrong with her future career.

I research and write about women in non-traditional fields.  It is what I know so in a year that has brought many changes:  new career direction, new town, new house, it feels good to  do what I know best — read and write about women.   So today I’m thinking about geography as I work on a new book about women world leaders, and do some “make-this-house-a-home” maneuvers in our new home in State College. 

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat — May I the road rise up to meet you!

Diversity in Every Walk of Life is the Key to Hope and Fairness

I remember bringing my daughter Emily, who was about twelve to a dermatologist for some blemishes that were bothering her.  The dermatologist was a thirty-something woman with an authoritative, yet warm demeanor.  Emily had gone in teary-eyed and concerned about her appearance and walked out smiling, confident and declaring:  “I want to be a dermatologist!”    The experience strengthened my belief that we see ourselves in the people we interact with and we get a sense of fair treatment when we can imagine ourselves in the same roles.  Research backs up my anecdotal claim.   Nilanjana Dasgupta  wrote in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology  that exposure to  female leaders dramatically reduces the stereotypic beliefs about gender stereotyping.   Seeing women in positions of power will greatly enhance the acceptance of an election of a woman U.S. president.   

My research has focused on gender parity in non-traditional fields, including the American presidency and the  same “seeing is believing” thinking is part of the call to action by the Alliance for Justice, which has just released its report “Broadening the Bench:  Professional Diversity and Judicial Nominations.”  It argues that a truly diverse judiciary “is one that not only reflects the genders, ethnic, sexual orientation and the racial diversity of the nation, but is also comprised of judges who have been advocates for clients across the socio-economic spectrum, seeking justice on behalf of everyday Americans.”  

The report cites the advocacy work of Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Often when we think of diversity on the Supreme Court our minds immediately go to gender parity but diversity is much more comprehensive than that.   The Alliance for Justice calls upon:

• lawyers with public interest backgrounds to seek out and apply for federal judgeships
• advocacy groups, lawyers and others who work on judicial nominations to actively recruit judicial candidates
• state judicial selection commission and senator to encourage lawyers with professionally diverse backgrounds to apply for judicial vacancies
• President Obama to make professional diversity a priority

Indeed, the Supreme Court is more diverse than ever and there is still room for improvement.    Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said:  “I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.”  It is this sentiment that is at the heart of the Alliance for Justice’s report because a more inclusive approach to nominations to the judiciary will bring greater justice to the everyday Americans who come before it.  Sandra Day O’Connor concedes that “all of us come to the Court with our own personal histories and experiences” and Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent her life as a champion for gender equality.  As Harvard Professor Michael J. Klarman writes in a tribute essay to her, “Ginsburg was an organizer, mobilizer, publicist, and educator for the sex equality movement – just as Thurgood Marshall had been for the civil rights movement a generation earlier.”  She has earned the moniker “legal architect of the women’s movement.”

We need to see ourselves reflected in the judiciary because it gives us the confidence that we are being treated fairly.  When will America be more balanced?  When will there be full participation?  When there is no “one look” for women leaders and not one profile for members of the judiciary, it gives our children inspiration, people interacting in the courts a sense of fairness and a future that promises full participation for everyone.   Diversity in every walk of life, including the judiciary, makes that possible.  

 

 

Seeing and Hearing Women Vital to a Female-friendly Organizational Environment

I recently read I am Malala, the biography by Malala Yousafzai, the young girl who was shot by the Taliban for standing up for education in Pakistan.  She opens the book by noting that in her culture it is a “gloomy day when a daughter is born.”  We like to think that our United States culture is far superior to that and that both male and female children are celebrated, which, for the most part, I think is true.  Our welcoming climate for girls and women begins to chill a bit later, when career choices and upward mobility are in question.

This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed has me thinking about the tremendous opportunities that academic institutions have at this moment to make the environment for women warmer.    Here is one small but meaningful way we can create a more welcoming climate for women:

Give women the microphone — at commencements, ceremonies, meetings, conferences and any other significant events.  Even if the top power positions are held by men (president, provost, deans), event organizers should make certain to include at least one woman at the podium–a woman on faculty, an administrator, an alum or a student.

Why?  Because to speak is to have power and it signals to women graduates, parents and all attending that women at the institution matter.  They matter enough to have positions of power that bring them to the microphone.  While we may not have as many women at the top of organizations that we should, we can create environments that support women by having women on the stage speaking at events, whether they are the top of the organization or not.

June Cohen of TED Talks, laments that it is difficult to get women speakers, and offers two main reasons, echoed in Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In.  Cohen says that would-be women speakers are more likely to shy away from speaking events because they claim not to be as well prepared as they think they ought to be.  She also states that women do not see speaking in public as one of the main parts of their jobs.    She offers some very good tips, including be persistent. Institutions need to be persistent about making opportunities for women to be seen and heard.  And, women need to understand the powerful impact they have on our culture and future women leaders every time they take to a podium.  Having women at the podium changes organizations for the better.

I want to encourage anyone who is responsible for organizing events to be certain to include women at the podium.  It sends a powerful message to your audience that women matter in organizations.  They are not just silent, bit part characters, they are leading actors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson noted:  “Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.”

By giving the power of speech to women, we take away the bad sense that women are not present and add the good sense that women at the podium profit everyone.

Dr. Julie Ealy, Penn State Lehigh Valley

This is what a senator looks like

Happy First Saturday in November! I love November for lots of reasons:

For starters, pumpkin flavor is everywhere, Thanksgiving and my family will be around the table, autumn leaves are beautiful and okay, I’ll admit it:

my birthday. I’ll be 49 in 10 days and I’m really excited about it. Really. Plus, I’m going to New York to celebrate! I love New York.

Recently, I was introduced at a meeting at work and the person doing the introducing did one of those “slurring of the sounds” when the introduction got to the part where it revealed how long I’d been teaching. Why slur it?

I’m proud of my age and experience! I’ve been teaching for 25 years and I’m almost 50!

Not only is gender holding women back in this country, there is also a age bias. Is it real for men, too? You tell me; I study women. If women are to be elected to the presidency, they probably aren’t going to be twenty-five when it happens. We need to get used to aging faces.

A wise mentor recently told me that in the few years leading up to her retirement she was called (behind her back) the “menopause” dean. I thought this kind of vicious name calling ended in middle school. If we want to level the playing field for our daughters we need to confront not just gender discrimination, but age discrimination, too.

I’m happy to see these two senators on the front page of my NY Times today debating military sex assaults in the senate. It is progress, but we have to confront the nasty stereotypes and bias against women aging in our society.

Next year I’ll be 50, and I want to have a big party to celebrate it. I’m proud of it and all you aging men and women ought to be proud of your ages, too. It beats the alternative.

Hats off to Bella Abzug for Women’s Equality Day — August 26th

The often hat wearing late Representative Bella Abzug (D, NY ’71-’73) turned a phrase that caught on when she declared, “This woman’s place is in the House–the House of Representatives!”  She was responsible for  the U.S. Congress designating August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.”  It isn’t a big, splashy holiday with greeting cards to go with it, but it is a day worth remembering, perhaps best with a little history and awareness.

The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.  It  also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality.

This is history that is important to remember.  Even though women outnumber men in college and graduate schools nationwide, many women still don’t have equal footing in the workplace and what’s also disappointing is that many women don’t often have equal footing at home.  Women still do most of the parenting and housework in many households, which creates a career barrier that, thanks to Sheryl Sandberg and others is being discussed and debated.  Discussion, debate, deliberation are all good steps toward progress.

There are also cultural boundaries that focus on a woman’s appearance more than her ideas and that’s another issue we need to push to the forefront.  See my TED talk that underscores the problem with women’s appearance and the US presidency.

I think it is important for us to remember and honor the women who passionately sought to create equality, not because they’d get to enjoy any of the freedoms in their own lifetime but because they knew we’d get a better shot at equality.   Our daughters and granddaughters should have it even better, but only if we remember that we aren’t quite there yet.

It is good to note the women who made remarkable achievements  in fields where they had no role models.

So here’s a little “Women’s Equality Day Quiz”:

This is a walking iris plant that I bought at The Farmers Market. The saleswoman told me if you leave it outside in the summer it will toughen up and bloom even better in late winter and early spring. I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere that fits with this column. Let’s think about it together.

(answers at the bottom–no peeking):

1. Who became the first female Secretary of State of the United States, appointed by President Clinton in 1997?
2. Who took over management of Columbia Sportswear Company in the late 1930’s, when it was near bankruptcy, and turned it into the largest American ski apparel company worth $4 billion in 1972?
3.  Who wrote “The Feminine Mystique” in 1968 and became a leading figure in the Women’s Movement?
4.  Who ran for US President on Equal Rights Party in 1884 and  1888 and was  an American delegate to the first world peace Congress in Paris in 1889?
5. Who is considered the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority in 1864, and who also campaigned vigorously for full woman suffrage?
6. Who was the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress and was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus?
7. Who was the ecologist writer whose path-breaking book, “Silent Spring” in 1962 initiated the environmental movement?
8. Who was the first black woman and the youngest poet laureate in American history when she was appointed in 1993?
9. Who was imprisoned and then hanged for her Quaker faith in Boston in 1660, and 400 years later her statue was placed in front of the state House?
10.  Who became the first woman vice-president candidate on a major political party ticket when selected in 1984?  And here’s even a bigger test:  encourage the women you know to “go for it” and men be an equal partner at home!

answers:

1.Madeleine Albright

2. Gertrude Boyle

3. Betty Friedan

4. Belva Lockwood

5. Olympia Brown

6. Patsy Mink

7. Rachel Carson

8. Rita Dove

9. Geraldine Ferraro

10. Mary Dyer

*My* Lunch with Mimi

Mimi Barash Coppersmith opened the lively lunch event with the exclamation: “I’m approaching my 63rd year in State College. I came in 1950 at 17 years and two months!”

Clearly this diminutive powerhouse with her trademark white hair longer than she has worn it in years has got to be the best public relations woman State College has ever had or ever will have.

I felt honored to have been one of twenty-four women invited to Lunch with Mimi at the Tavern. I’ve only been living in State College two months since I started my new dream job at Schreyer Honors College and this lunch and the several other warm invitations I’ve received have made me feel welcomed beyond my imagination.

I was humbled and thrilled to be sitting with some of the most distinguished women in State College, including Debbie Linnes, the new Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer of Mount Nittany Medical Center who recently relocated to State College from Minnesota. She spoke about the great resources we have at Mount Nittany Medical Center and she is certainly the newest and perhaps greatest resource this community could have. Her medical acumen is obvious and her warm presentation style and kindness impressed all of us.

Once everyone ordered lunch we went around and gave a two sentence (some went way over) introduction of ourselves. I couldn’t wait to tell the small world story of how I met Mimi. Her daughter Nan sold me advertising for Where and When magazine in the late 1980s when I worked in public relations in Allentown. With obvious pride, Nan Barash told me of her “mother the publisher in State College.” Twenty plus years later I got to meet Mimi Barash Coppersmith and it has been such an honor to get to know her.

I research and write about women in male dominated fields and Mimi is a case study if ever there was one. A successful business owner, she was an advertising and public relations entrepreneur in an era when “Madmen” dominated the advertising scene. She became the first chairwoman of Penn State’s Board of Trustees in 1991 and has been a philanthropist and fundraiser for countless organizations, including The Pink Zone, a passion stemming from her own victory over breast cancer.

At 80, Mimi still goes to the office every day and perhaps this lunch was part of the “year long birthday celebration” she described.

It sure felt like a gift to me. There was a lot of sharing, smiles, and warm feelings. Mimi even gave each one of us a beautiful fabric journal to encourage us to record our lives. (That’s one of the reasons I love to blog–thanks for reading)!

I got ten steps away from the restaurant when I realized I had forgotten my Town&Gown mug and I turned right around to claim it. It is a piece of State College history I want to have forever.

Ever-prepared, Mimi hosted by sharing a few of her favorite quotes. From Pearl S. Buck she said, “To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

And, well, that certainly sums up Mimi Barash Coppersmith. She continues to perform her work with excellence and I get the distinct impression that she is still very much enjoying it.

Thank YOU, Ms. Thomas!

Thank you, Ms. Thomas

Her phone number was easy enough to find: it was listed in the DC phone book when I looked it up and called veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas back in 2007 to ask if she would consider writing the foreword for my book on women in broadcasting. I called back a few times when I did not receive a response but on the fourth or fifth try, her unmistable, gravelly voice picked up and said “This is Helen Thomas.” After I introduced myself she apologized profusely for not getting back to me and agreed to write the foreword after she read my manuscript. I shipped out my pages immediately and in a month or so the fax machine at Penn State started whirring as it received her thoughtful and insightful foreword.

She certainly didn’t need the fame and was no fortune involved (I couldn’t pay her), so why did she do it? I think because she believed in the project and she knew first hand what the women in the book had gone through to get the top of the heap as newscasters. She worked her way up at a time when most women were going to college to get their Mrs. Degree and few used the degree they got if they made it to graduation. Helen Thomas was a worker.

She loved staying active, and in the game, which is another reason she probably said yes. I could imagine her thinking: “What is more fun then helping another woman get ahead by writing a few pages for a book about women?” She also accepted an invitation to speak at Penn State Lehigh Valley’s graduation a year later and asked only that we pay her: “What you think its worth.”

Tributes to her describe her as “feisty” and a “firebrand” but I remember her as nice, warm and happy to have been asked to share her considerable experience as a woman who has had a front row to history in the making for ten presidencies.

In the foreword she wrote:

The women in this book toughed it out and fortunately were driven enough to insist on equity. It wasn’t easy. I’ve seen the best in the business sidelines in the networks’ avid accent on youth over experience and gravitas.

She added that she loved being a journalist because “it was an education every day” and that “you never stop learning.”

President Obama paid tribute to her by saying: “Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism. She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes.”

There is no denying that every journalist who came after her in the press corps owes Helen Thomas a hearty thanks. She elevated the role and brought integrity to it by holding her interviwees accountable, and she wasn’t intimidated by the presidents, quite the opposite, I think.

She was persistent and pointed but to me, Helen Thomas will always also be just plain nice.

Thank you, Ms. Thomas.

The Really Big Game: Will Hillary Clinton Run for President in 2016?

It is a bit like playing parlor games trying to guess whether or not Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016 but I suppose journalists just can’t help themselves from asking Hillary Clinton  and anyone who has ever written about Clinton.

A journalist recently ask me the ubiquitous “Will she or won’t she” question and  “How do I know?” was my answer, though I said it as sweetly as possible so as not to seem annoyed by the question.

Instead of asking “Will she run?” a better question might be “Why would she or why wouldn’t she run?”

So, here is my take on those (better, in my opinion) questions:

Why Hillary Clinton would run:

1. Because she may win.  She knows what it is like to mount a presidential campaign as the candidate and now she’s prepared (or prepared as anyone can be) for the  abusive press treatment.

2. She wants to lead with her vision for America.    She has been a loyal soldier in Obama’s army, but she would do things differently.  This would be her chance.

Why she won’t run:

1.  To work on women and girls’ initiatives full-time.

She may be able to do more for the causes she cares about, such as fighting for the rights of women and children out of office. A review of her significant speeches show her passion for this mission field.  We can learn a lot from speeches.

A huge part of her farewell speech as Secretary of State was devoted to women and girls’ issues:

…where women and girls are treated as second-class, marginal human beings. Just ask young Malala from Pakistan. Ask the women of northern Mali who live in fear and can no longer go to school. Ask the women of the Eastern Congo who endure rape as a weapon of war.

And that is the final lever that I want to highlight briefly. Because the jury is in, the evidence is absolutely indisputable: If women and girls everywhere were treated as equal to men in rights, dignity, and opportunity, we would see political and economic progress everywhere. So this is not only a moral issue, which, of course, it is. It is an economic issue and a security issue, and it is the unfinished business of the 21st century. It therefore must be central to U.S. foreign policy.

One of the first things I did as Secretary was to elevate the Office of Global Women’s Issues under the first Ambassador-at-Large, Melanne Verveer. And I’m very pleased that yesterday, the President signed a memorandum making that office permanent.

In the past four years, we’ve made – (applause) – thank you. In the past four years, we’ve made a major push at the United Nations to integrate women in peace and security-building worldwide, and we’ve seen successes in places like Liberia. We’ve urged leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya to recognize women as equal citizens with important contributions to make. We are supporting women entrepreneurs around the world who are creating jobs and driving growth.

Read the whole transcript here. In 1995 then first lady Clinton gave a passionate speech on behalf of the rights of women and girls in Beijing, China

2.  We want a new drug, so to speak.

She isn’t an exciting, new candidate. We are a fickle voting public and Secretary Clinton’s star turn as the secretary of state will recede quickly from many voters memories.

I believe that one of the reasons Barack Obama was successful is because we were swept away with his new, fresh face and his compelling story which we hadn’t heard before.  We know (or think we know) Secretary Clinton’s story, almost by heart!

3.  Why go through it?

It is a brutal slog, that running for president gig. And though some of us think she got more right than wrong with her last effort, she still lost. What a pain.

4.  Help the party while having a life.

She can help the nominee more than almost anyone else in the Democratic party without taking it on as a full-time job.

5. Finish her formal career on a high note.

Hillary Clinton has transformed the role of first lady, been a respected senator, a highly effective secretary of state,  and the first non-symbolic female to run for president. She almost won the Democratic nomination.

Before we know it candidates for 2016 will begin to line up and perhaps Secretary Clinton will be among them.   OK, I took my turn at the parlor game of the moment.  Your turn.

Women and the US Presidency: Gains in the Pipeline and Shifts in Perception

2008 was a visibly progressive year for women in American politics. Hillary Clinton almost won the Democratic nomination for president and Sarah Palin was the Republican vice presidential candidate. The absence of women on a national party ticket in 2012 hardly means that women are losing traction in United States politics. A review of women presidential candidates from 1964-2012 shows a promising shift and the record number of women who will represent their states in the new U.S. Senate bodes well for equal representation of women in politics and the chance that a woman will become president of the United States. Elizabeth Warren will be the first woman senator to represent Massachusetts, and Mazie Hirono will be the first female U.S. senator from Hawaii and the first Asian-American woman in the Senate. Other women who won were Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin. No doubt, the path paved by previous women presidential candidates has enabled their trajectory to the halls of political power.
In 1964 Margaret Chase Smith, Republican Senator from Maine ran for president. Margaret Chase Smith wasn’t willing to neglect her work in the Senate in order to run for president. She was especially interested in the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, and much of her 1964 campaign season was spent hurrying back to Washington. Historian Janann Sherman noted: “Her refusal to leave her job or take any money made it very difficult to run a campaign.” At the time of her presidential campaign for president, Margaret Chase Smith had piled up an amazing, all time Senate record of 1,620 consecutive roll call votes. She also refused to take money! Anyone who sent her campaign contributions soon received their donation back with a kind, (often hand-written) note that stated she simply could not accept it. Without a lot of money, no one can be elected president.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm, Democratic Congresswoman from New York identified the biggest obstacle to her presidential race in a keynote address she gave before the National Women’s Political Caucus Convention in Houston in 1973. “One of my biggest problems was that my campaign was viewed as a symbolic gesture. While I realized that my campaign was an important rallying symbol for women and that my present in the race forced the other candidates to deal with issues relating to women, my primary objective was to force people to accept me as a real, viable candidate.” She also perceptively observed that voters were more “sexist than racist.” She was a novelty candidate.

In 1988, Patricia Schroeder, Democratic Congresswoman from Colorado got in the race late after Gary Hart stepped down because of an extramarital scandal. She was barraged with questions that pointed to her gender: “Are you running as a woman?” and “Why don’t look like the president?” She admitted, “Many could not get beyond the fact that I look so different from the others.” She added: “Nobody knows what to do with a woman (candidate): “ wear earrings, don’t wear earrings, wear bright colors, don’t wear bright colors.” Her appearance was the focus of her bid.
In 1999 Elizabeth Dole, former president of the American Red Cross made an exploratory bid for the presidency. She was repeatedly described as the “first” woman running for president and descriptions of her clothing choices often preceded her stance on issues. She was also criticized for her intense preparation, and her husband Bob Dole brought negative attention to her campaign by telling the New York Times he was donating money to John McCain’s campaign. Furthermore, her ardent campaigning for her spouse, Bob Dole, over the years indelibly cast her in the eyes of the voters as the spouse of the candidate, not the candidate. Was cast in the eyes of the public as a spouse, not a candidate,

Fast forward to 2008 — Hillary Clinton almost won the Democratic nomination for president. Sarah Palin was a positively awful vice-presidential pick for McCain because she was not ready for the national stage. On a positive note, she contributed to the much needed critical mass of women, even if her performance was poor. But no one doubted that Hillary Clinton was presidential in her 2008 bid and that she could have won. In her announcement speech she made it clear when she said, ”I’m in. And I’m in to win.” With these words, she told the world that she wasn’t just paving the way for more women to come forward in the future and run for president. She was determined to win and she didn’t back down until it was clear that Barack Obama won the nomination. Still her candidacy was non-symbolic and important in a number of ways. Hillary Clinton demonstrated powerful intellect, toughness in the face of harsh media scrutiny and ridicule, extraordinary stamina and perseverance. If she runs in 2016 she will be formidable.
In 2012, after Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann came in near the bottom of the Iowa caucus, winning only5 percent of the vote, she suspended her campaign, conceding that “the people of Iowa spoke with a very clear voice, and so I have decided to stand aside.” Her campaign, which suffered when the candidate misquoted historical facts and made the claim that the HPV vaccine can lead to mental retardation, also faced some of the barriers that other women in pursuit of the presidency have faced. Her appearance and motherhood were often the focus of press coverage, but her performance in debates and in interviews, was consistently strong.

So while there were no women on a national ticket in 2012, a forty plus year retrospective and a closer look at the campaigns of the women of 2008 and 2012 reveals a positive shift from symbolic to viable. And the gains of senate seats held by women bolsters the critical mass needed to elect a woman as president.

Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley and author of a number of books and articles on women’s rhetoric, including three on women and the United States Presidency.