Guilt By Association

My Chicago connections keep rearing up and biting me on the bottom, this time when Hillary Clinton’s attack machine clubbed Barack Obama with his not-for-profit connection to Bill Ayers. In the 21st century Bill and wife Bernardine Dohrn had become mainstream political fixtures in Chicago, doing good work around education and children’s issues. They have led a positively tame life. Bill and his late father frequently took Bill’s kids to Cubs games, and Bill and Bernardine burst with pride when their kids made it to the Ivy League–and won a Rhodes Scholarship. But in the eyes of media and political scandal-mongers, mere “association” with aging radicals is enough to taint one for life. This has me worried. It also has me grinning at the irony.

I worry because my husband Monte recently “associated” with Bill Ayers at a dinner in Chicago. The host is a relative of Bills, and Bill had dropped by for a visit. Recalling the dinner, I immediately fretted that Monte’s recent “association” with Bill might imperil my chances of election to the PTA .

I grin, however, at the irony of at my own long-ago “association” with Bill and Bernardine. I met them at an election night party in November 1992 celebrating Bill Clinton’s Presidential victory returning a Democrat to the White House. Bernardine was distracted by residual pain from a wisdom tooth extraction, but Ayers was ebullient, and chucked our infant daughter under the chin. Both cheered elatedly when the networks called it for Clinton.

Oh, and where was Barack Obama in 1992? Spearheading a voter registration drive in Chicago–to help elect Bill Clinton.

Gloria Gets It Wrong

Gloria Steinem’s rant in yesterday’s New York Times, apparently written over the weekend, may have been the second most popular op-ed piece in the Times this week, but not because she was right–or accurate. Except for the brief few days of post-victory bounce enjoyed by Senator Barack Obama between the Iowa caucus and yesterday’s New Hampshre primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the front runner in nearly every national and local poll of likely Democratic voters. Forget her high negatives; never mind nagging voter concerns about “electability;” Clinton has been the top choice of the plurality, if not majority, of self-identified Democrats for many months. So Steinem’s tirade about women “never” being “front-runners” rings false, and sounds whiny.

Steinem also misses the mark with her attack on Senator Obama’s biography. In the guise of a thought experiment interrogating the role of gender, Steinem huffily demands whether a woman with an identical c.v. might claim the “biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate?”

Has Steinem now forgotten that in long-ago 1992, the same year Bill Clinton won the Presidency, the good people of Illinois elected an African American woman to the United States Senate? Remember Carol Moseley-Braun? Senator Moseley-Braun, a lawyer and former state legislator, was born and raised and made her political base on the South Side of Chicago. Unlike Steinem’s fictitious “Achola Obama,” Mosely-Braun boasted no Ivy League degrees, although she graduated from the top-ranked University of Chicago Law School. Also unlike her fictional counterpart, Moseley-Braun hailed from an intact, African-American family. Moseley-Braun was, however, divorced–from a white ex-husband, with whom she had a son. During her senate term she forged an exceedingly a close attachment to her chief of staff whose first name, Kgose, was at least as exotic as either “Barack” or Steinem’s made-up moniker, “Achola.” Finally, if memory serves, Moseley-Braun in 2003 formed an exploratory committee as she pondered a run for the presidency.

Neither race nor gender “restricted” Moseley-Braun in her race for the U.S. Senate. In fact, she was the beneficiary of widespread feminist and civil rights-activist based outrage at incumbent Senator Alan Dixon’s judiciary committee vote in favor of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. And, yes, her presidential trial balloon fell absolutely flat. No one ever touted Moseley-Braun for her charisma, but look how far she went nonetheless? No goose-cooking there.

No question, 20th century American voters traditionally discounted women seeking high political office, strong or not. I vividly recall the late Harriet Woods describing her 1982 campaign against [the phlegmatic] John Danforth for the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri. Her polling revealed that the majority of Missouri voters would never elect “a woman” at the head of a ticket, irrespective of “qualifications,” “charisma,” “experience,” or even party identification. By 1982 Woods was already an elected Lieutenant Governor, a post she had handily won, and had served with distinction in St. Louis county politics. Still, the voters had a visceral reaction against elevating her to the top. And Danforth, who was Missouri’s incumbent Attorney General (where he mentored a young Yale Graduate named Clarence Thomas; see above), sailed to victory.

So who now holds that very U.S. Senate seat in Missouri? A woman, former Missouri Auditor/Attorney General/Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill, elected in the Democratic sweep of 2006. McCaskill is one tough cookie, an ambitious, savvy, career politician who was already in the Missouri State House of Representatives back in 1982.

Like Missouri’s Democrats, millions of American voters act ready to knock back the phantom “sex barrier” Steinem divined in the Iowa results. Together with her friends and allies, Steinem, a fearless second-wave feminist foremother, achieved so much in the latter third of the 20th century. She rallied and organized and exhorted and cajoled women and men alike, to name, and then resist the sexism, patriarchy, and gender oppression that held women back and prevented a just society. Look how much we’ve gained! Here we are, with a woman front-runner! I just wish Steinem would step back and take credit for the successes her movement achieved.

Background Check

Joe Nocera’s column in Saturday’s New York Times focused on FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, formerly staffer to ex-Senator Bob Dole and more recently a professor at UMass. See the whole story here.

This aside stopped me in my tracks:

“The person the administration had hoped to nominate as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the nation’s primary bank regulator, was suddenly proving unacceptable. (According to the Washington rumor mill, that choice, Diana L. Taylor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s companion and, at the time, New York’s superintendent of banking, was nixed by the National Rifle Association, presumably because of Mayor Bloomberg’s antigun stance.)”

But a bit of research and reflection suggests that the story isn’t the grim tale of suffering-because-of-spousal assocations (or, non-spouse) it first seemed. The Times’ lengthy 2006 profile of Ms. Taylor when her FDIC nomination stalled also hinted at the possibility of an NRA veto. See the earlier story here.

 

But the FDIC Chairmanship is subject to Senate confirmation, and the Senate was evenly divided between Rs and Ds back in early 2006. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which the White House congressional liaison advised Bush that no one with anything to do with Bloomberg had a prayer of Senate confirmation. The NRA held tight rein in that chamber, and the White House probably lacked the votes, or the interest in the arm-twisting it would take to counter NRA opposition. Bair, the final pick, had Senate ties, presumably a plus for the 50 Republicans (and several pro-gun Dems) whose votes were key.

Yes, it’s annoying that Ms. Taylor’s nomination was withdrawn because of the actions of her friend Bloomberg, and nothing to do with her views, personal or public. There was no suggestion she ever personally lobbied for or advocated for or in any way spoke out about gun control. She’s no Sarah Brady or Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy. Taylor’s passionate policy pronouncements seem to have run the gamut from denouncing excess banking fees to urging greater access to banking services for immigrants. No, she was the victim of NRA payback to Bloomberg, pure and simple.

But the Bush Administration will happily name persons to influential policy posts irrespective of the politics or alliances of the person’s spouse, or “companion.” Mary Matalin, counsel to Vice President Cheney, and wife of notorious Democratic Consultant and pundit James Carville comes to mind. Josh Bolten, White House chief of staff is another example.  Libby Copeland reported in an Aug 29, 2006 Washington Post story last year that  Bolten’s live-in girlfriend Dede McClure was a Democrat. Neither Matalin nor Bolten’s appointment was subject to Senate confirmation. And there was no suggestion in either of these cases that either appointee was tainted by her husband or “companion.”

A quick Google search revealed that Ms. Taylor rebounded pretty well from the FDIC mess. She took a job in the private sector, and this June was been named to serve on the FDIC advisory board. Her skills, knowledge, banking experience and formidable talent are already put to good use in helping regulate America’s banks. Maybe the next president, a Democrat, will find a way to keep using her talents, despite her association with a notorious Republican.