Why Not a Woman?

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Some feminists have noted the irony that the vice presidency is a sort of caricature of second-class citizenship. The office is, in fact, a parody of the subordination that women have endured in the past as wives and officeworkers. Again, the man would have all the power and responsibility, and the woman would sit around waiting for the phone to ring.

Every presidential candidate insists that he is choosing his running mate for one reason and one only—that he (or, now, she) would be the best-qualified person in the country to take over the White House should some disaster or assassin strike. That piety is a useful standard to keep before the eyes of the convention, and in a civics-lesson way, it should be true. But it is mostly nonsense. No presidential nominee wants a cretin or arsonist on his ticket, but otherwise the running mate is chosen, not for sterling presidential qualities, but because he (she) will help ensure victory in November. The exercise is often called ticket balancing. If nominees in elections past have chosen running mates for geographical balance, or ethnic balance, or religious balance, what is wrong now with choosing a running mate for gender balance, in somewhat the way that television's morning shows (Today, CBS Morning News, Good Morning America) are cast?

The vice presidency is such a hypothetical office that it is sometimes difficult to focus on what qualifications the candidate should have. Harry Truman looked unprepossessing when F.D.R. took him onto the ticket in 1944—a little haberdasher from Missouri paired with a giant of the earth. Truman turned into a good President. Spiro Agnew was regarded as a solid, promising Republican moderate, a one-term Governor of Maryland, when Richard Nixon named him to the ticket in 1968.

There have been characters of almost spectacular nonentity who have run for the office of Vice President. William E. Miller, Barry Goldwater's 1964 partner, made a joke of it in an American Express card commercial. Chester A. Arthur had been nothing more than head of the customs house in New York when James Garfield took him onto his ticket. After Garfield's assassination, Arthur made a competent and honest President in a dishonest age.

Still, one of the principal objections to putting a woman on the Democratic ticket this summer is that there is no one truly qualified—or, at least, no one better qualified than any number of available men—and that any woman who appears on the ticket will be there only because of her gender. Is that so bad? If Ferraro or Feinstein were a man, it is unlikely that either would be mentioned for the vice presidency. On the other hand, if Lyndon Johnson had come from, say, Rhode Island, instead of from Texas, John Kennedy would never have picked him for the Democratic ticket in 1960.

Is the nation "ready" for a woman Vice President? The answers to the question must be intuitive. It is possible that this barrier was passed some time ago, in the psychological sense, and that it is simply waiting to topple. Perhaps.