Contacts:
John Kerr 901-843-3873, [email protected]
Ginny Davis 901-843-3470, [email protected]
Office of Communications
Rhodes College
Memphis, Tenn.
POLITICAL SCIENTISTS TO BUSH: NOMINATE A WOMAN FOR VICE PRESIDENT
By John Lyman Mason and Michael Nelson
Dear Governor Bush:
You have one big decision to make between now and the Republican National Convention in July: the choice of your vice presidential running mate.
Here's what people are telling you:
Choose a big state governor like Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania or John Engler of Michigan to help you carry his state's block of electoral votes.
Choose John McCain because he will reunite the party.
Choose Colin Powell because, well, because he's Colin Powell.
Don't listen to any of them.
Big-state governors lack what voters have come to expect on a ticket already headed by a big-state governor: experience at making the government in Washington work. Think how well former California governor Ronald Reagan did in choosing your father as his running mate in 1980--not to mention Jimmy Carter's choice of Sen. Walter Mondale in 1976 and Bill Clinton's choice of Sen. Al Gore in 1992.
John McCain? Do you really want a vice president who thinks he is much more qualified to be president than you are--and who is disinclined to hide that feeling?
As for Colin Powell, the conventional wisdom--namely, that you should get him on the ticket if you possibly can--is wrong. Powell himself has said it: the minute he leaves the realm of soldier-statesman and becomes a partisan political candidate, his popularity will head straight south.
Remember, too, that Powell has never run for office. Even the best rookies are bound to make rookie mistakes. In a national campaign, with the media spotlight shining on him round the clock, these mistakes will be magnified into major embarrassments.
So who should you listen to? Listen to us. Do well for your candidacy by doing good for your country. Shatter the two-century-old political glass ceiling of American government and choose a woman for vice president.
Hasn't this been tried? Yes, once--and badly--by Mondale when he ran for president in 1984. Mondale tapped Geraldine Ferraro, an obscure junior member of the House of Representatives, as his nominee for vice president. Voters liked the idea of a woman on the ticket, but they wanted a woman who had the kind of prominent experience in government that they have come to expect of all candidates for national office.
In 2000, as the result of sixteen years of women rising up the political ladder in historically unprecedented numbers, you have an array of Republican women to choose from who can help you get elected and help you govern.
Former cabinet secretary and presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole, who appeals to many women voters as well as to traditional Republican conservatives, is at the top of this list. But it is a long list that includes two senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and a second-term governor, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, among others.
Here is what you will gain politically by choosing one of them:
* You will distinguish your ticket from the monolithically male Republican congressional leadership that has alienated so many women voters from the party. Your father, when he ran for president in 1988, was the last Republican to carry the women's vote. Like father, like son?
* You're already trying to win back women voters to the Republican party with your agenda of compassionate conservatism. That effort is more likely to succeed if your running mate is--and looks--compassionate as well as conservative, as is the case with all of the women on your list.
* Being bold in the service of a good cause isn't just its own reward--it is politically rewarding as well. More than any other quality, Americans value strong leadership in a president. As things stand now, most voters don't regard either you or Gore as especially bold leaders. We're offering you a way to quickly open a boldness gap.
Here is what Gore, whose convention does not meet until August, will lose if you select one of the well-qualified women within your party:
* Today's Democratic party offers Gore a much thinner roster of women to choose from. His choice is pretty much limited to Sen. Diane Feinstein of California, a state that Gore is likely to carry anyway, and New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, who has less of a national reputation than any of the Republican women on your list.
* If you nominate a woman, the pressures on Gore from feminists within his own party to follow suit will be enormous. But a move that, in your case, will be applauded as bold because you act first and pathbreaking because you are a Republican will be branded both as reactive and as caving in to the special interests if he does it.
Make no mistake: our main motive in writing to you is not to see you win the election but to see deserving women move one giant step closer to the most important leadership position in the country. The fact is that you are more likely to achieve what you want--victory in November--if you do what we hope you will do.
Sincerely, Jay Mason and Mike Nelson
John Lyman Mason and Michael Nelson teach political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
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