Under the Baobab: The woman who would be president

In my life I have witnessed the first Catholic and the first African American to be elected president of the United States. There is a chance that I will be blessed to see a woman serve as president.

In the history of the Republic, there have been 45 people who served as president and 48 who served as vice president. All of them were men. Except for President Obama they were all white men. There is the probability that the woman who Joe Biden picks as his vice president will become the first woman president. Whether she succeeds him because he doesn’t finish his term or because she wins the presidency through the electoral process, she will more than likely sit in the Oval Office.

During my lifetime, there have been 13 VP’s who could have reasonably become president: Truman, Barkley, Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Ford, Rockefeller, Mondale, Bush, Quayle, Gore, Cheney and Biden. Five of them did. Another one, Biden, is trying and may succeed. Five of the remaining seven never ran for the higher office because of age, perceived incompetency or prison record. One of the candidates, Gore, who ran, lost, but actually won the popular vote.

As of this writing, Biden has not chosen his running mate. There are a dozen women on the short list. Five of those are front-runners: Congresswoman Karen Bass, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Kamala Harris, Secretary Susan Rice and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Four out of the five of these extraordinarily competent folks are women of color. I have no problem supporting any of them.

Congresswoman Karen Bass represents part of Los Angeles, California. In addition to her regular duties in Congress, she is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and was Speaker of the California State Assembly.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth is the first Thai American woman elected to Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, and the first senator to give birth while in office. She is a combat vet and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel. On June 12, The New York Times reported that Sen. Kamala Harris was emerging as the front-runner to be Biden’s running mate. She is the highest ranking elected official among women of African descent. She is one of three of the five that was a candidate for president.

Susan Elizabeth Rice served as the United States ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and as the United States national security advisor from 2013 to 2017. Though she has never been elected to public office she has a great deal of international experience. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a former law professor who has served as the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts since 2013. She is one of the leaders of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

During my lifetime the men who have been elected as president have roughly fallen into two types: the warriors and the strivers. The warriors were members of the “greatest generation.” Most of whom served in World War II: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, the elder Bush. Johnson, Nixon and Reagan, did not serve in the military but matured during the war. These men defined their mission as protectors of the country and saviors of democracy. It was a bloody business, but they did it and the country needed them to do it.

The second group, primarily baby boomers, were strivers and striders. Clinton, Bush W., Obama, Trump and Biden — if elected — were men who saw their mission as expanding the American sphere of influence. They came to power when America was the most powerful, influential country in the world. In their own unique ways, they tried to internationalize the economy, proselytize the American political ideal, and evangelize American culture. Both styles of leadership require aggressive attitudes, confrontations, political pissing contests. Women can be aggressive. Check out our championship women’s soccer team or the WNBA or Serena. But most American men are groomed to a macho lifestyle, sadly. Maybe it’s time for a different kind of leadership.

I can’t count the number of times in the last three years, when I have fantasized about having a different style leadership in the White House. Do you think that a grandmother would have been so casual about the threat of a pandemic? Would a woman have allowed the confinement of children in cages? How chummy would a female president have become with Putin or Kim Jong-un? It is inconceivable that a woman leader would brag about grabbing anybody’s sex organs.

We need a woman president and not just because this is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment. Most of the world’s countries have had female heads of state. Some have had two or three. Here in State College, Elizabeth Goreham served honorably as mayor. Many of the ABC committees have been chaired by women. Though Penn State has not had a female president, several of the prominent deans are women. It is clearly time that the United States caught up and elected a woman as president. We need her.

This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 8:00 AM.