Ripples Throughout Society

How putting Ferraro on the ticket opens big new possibilities

CONVENTION. Why did a campaign announcement, a tactical move, send shivers up and down the spines of so many American women, so many American men? Why, on Thursday, July 12, 1984, did a jolt run through American society, one that caused men and women to stop one another on streets and in offices across the country to discuss the news, one that generated bursts of good feeling—and nervous glances? Because a political taboo of two centuries' standing had finally been abandoned: a woman, at last, is an election away from being a heartbeat away from the most powerful job on earth. Because social structures and cultural norms had been forever amended: the notion of a woman's place, still deeply ingrained despite the long struggle of feminism, would never again be so limited, so confining. Because history had indeed been made.

Feminism has scored no more spectacular triumph since women won the right to vote. Even with universal suffrage, American women had enjoyed, until last Thursday, nothing more than the right to elect a man to the White House. With one swift stroke, however, the Democrats have made it possible for women to enter the final phase of their enfranchisement. Win or lose in November, Geraldine Ferraro is now emblematic of the truest, purest facet of the American dream: that every citizen is entitled to an equal chance. In this version of the dream, the idea is that every child can grow up to be President. Her immigrant father, Ferraro recalled last week as she stood alongside Walter Mondale in St. Paul, made her believe that "in America, anything is possible if you work for it...American history is about doors being opened, doors of opportunity for everyone, no matter who you are, as long as you're willing to earn it." Standing in the glare of television lights, excited and exciting, the woman from Queens made the platitudes seem powerful and true.

In large, stable democracies like the U.S., political landmarks are seldom so crisply delineated, so easy to pick out from a cluttered backdrop. Even the most circumspect observers around the U.S., ordinarily careful to qualify their generalizations, saw the news, whether it heartened or disturbed them, as profoundly significant, even revolutionary. The choice, said G. Mermen Williams, Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and the state's former Governor, "is at the cutting edge of history. Sexual equality is overdue by a generation. Changes like this have given courage to the fainthearted to do what they wanted to do anyway and has convinced those not favorably disposed that failure to progress will no longer be tolerated."

Ferraro came close to the mark when she spoke of "a sense of new possibilities and pride." A generation ago, for a fifth-grade girl to dream of becoming President was barely thinkable, but last week that was certified as one of the post-Ferraro "new possibilities." As Dr. Carol Nadelson, the Incoming President of the American Psychiatric Association, pointed out, male children will learn the new rules too. "A fifth-grade boy," she says, "also has a view of a woman as being in a kind of role. This change expands his view of women."