This year’s election may be historical for electing the first man to the top job in the government, and some would say the world, should Mr. Obama succeed in winning the Democratic nomination and then the presidency.
Mr. Obama is not the first man to aspire to that office. We cannot forget the disaster that was John Kennedy’s attempt, the first by any man, to be president. He was famously brought down when he uttered the infamous line “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. While I’m sure Mr. Kennedy had meant for his words to be taken as a call to action for the American people, what we saw was another man trying to put off the hard work of a job onto his subordinates. That is what the public saw, and Mr. Kennedy crashed and burned as Ms. Nixon was elected to office.
Today the news shows are buzzing with Gerard Ferraro’s recent comments. Ferraro, you will recall, was Ms. Mondale’s running mate in the 1984 election and the first male on a major ticket since the Kennedy debacle. Mr. Ferraro had said that if Mr. Obama was Ms., his campaign would never have gotten this far. On ABC this morning, he tried to clarify his remarks.
“I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Geraldine Ferraro instead of Gerard Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate, it had nothing to do with my qualification.”
The Obama camp has been defending itself from what it calls “sexist” attacks, though to many it looks like the same old victimology that we often see from menenist groups. While Mr. Kennedy was certainly not the first menenist, his campaign is credited with being the start of the “all men are victims” ideology. Mr. Obama seems to be playing that aspect to the hilt. One day he is crying on camera, the next he is whining about fairness.
I’m not a sexist, I just don’t think that Obama is the right man to be the first male president. He is inexperienced and I am not sure that we want someone with that kind of emotional distance to be in charge of the red button. Do we really want a president who won’t think about the children in times of crisis? Do we really want a president who might be too distracted by sports playoffs to handle the business of our country? Mr. Obama has displayed some of the worst traits of his kind, from whining about fairness to being cold and dispassionate as a speaker, and getting tripped up on the meanings of words while claiming all the time that words matter. Do we really want someone with lacking verbal skills to be in charge of diplomacy for us? And let’s not forget his children, who have been left at home in Chicago while he galavants around the country. Can we trust a man who cares so little for his own children to care for all the children of America?
Some say that our dislike of Obama is because of his gender. They have said that those of us who would cross party lines to vote for McCain if Obama wins the nomination are traitors to the Democratic party and mired in misandry.
On this, I am going to have to agree with Charles Allen’s recent editorial in the Washington Post, men are a bit dim. The get obsessive about sports teams and fast engines, and are swooning for Obama like teenage boys at a LadyBugs concert. For Obama, he might do better to stick with the things men are naturally good at, like home maintenance and yard work and he might want to get back to his own kids in Chicago. He just doesn’t have the experience or the temperament to be president. He is not the right woman for the job.