This time, the woman is in charge — and the man is by her side
There was no policy on kissing this time around. And while that didn’t sum up the whole of the difference when it comes to women in national politics, it certainly says a lot.
In the summer of 1984, after all, kissing was all the talk at the Democratic National Convention, as strategists tied themselves in knots discussing how Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro — the first co-ed presidential ticket in history — should interact.
“Mondale cannot, whatever he does, kiss her,” pollster Patrick H. Caddell told New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd, (then not yet a columnist) in a front page article titled “Goodbye Male Ticket, Hello Etiquette Gap.”
And farther down in that story — which surely would have gone viral had there been such a thing — political consultant Frank Mankiewicz mused that “Their spouses should always be present. They don’t want people to think they’re ever alone together. They can’t touch. They’ll have to stay separate for awhile.”
So in the department of keeping track of progress where you can find it, add the fact that it was all the embracing on the podium in Philadelphia, rather than the deliberate lack thereof, that was the takeaway theme. Obama hugged Clinton, and the photo went bonkers on Instagram, quickly becoming the most-liked Instagram photo of the campaign. Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine walked arm in arm across the stage with no one thinking for a moment that the two looked like “teenager(s) on a first date with that ‘how in the world do you pin the corsage on her’ problem,” which is the way Democratic consultant Robert Squier described Mondale/Ferraro’s early body language.
Instead, the power of the moment was how awkward it wasn’t. Two politicians stood on a stage, hands clasped and raised, and two things were true: a) that the woman was the lead candidate, the man her second, and b) it looked perfectly normal.
The fact Clinton is the first woman to lead a major party presidential ticket was oft-noted for its historical import, yes. And the gender-tinged critique of her with such loaded words as “shrill” and “strident” is still ripe for commentary. But it’s the lack of gender-talk in so many ways that may well be the most historically notable fact of this history-making nomination.
Hillary Clinton is a woman, and in more ways than not, it makes no difference.
Certainly it doesn’t to young women, who have no direct memory of Ferraro, who favored Sanders over Clinton in the primaries, and who would probably be be utterly confused by talk of whether a male candidate should open the car door for his female running mate (yes, consultants fretted about that in 1984).
To them the Clinton-Kaine ticket should act like, well, a presidential ticket, and a female candidate for president should act like, you know, a female candidate, or secretary of state, or speaker of the House or any of the other women politicians they have come to accept as the norm.
Gender relations in the U.S. are certainly not perfect at the moment. There is not wage parity. Misogyny is rampant online. Still, it is a huge step that a woman in charge and a man as her second is so familiar as to need no choreography.
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