Dare to Compete

Have you been as mesmerized by the HBO series on John Adams as I have? The visual banquet of historical details is reason enough to watch the life and times of our second president, his family, and the men who were alternately his friends and his foes among the founding fathers. It is tempting for me to want to put the spotlight on his wife Abigail whose plea that he should “remember the ladies” in writing the new nation’s laws fell on deaf ears despite her place as Adams’ top and most erudite advisor. But I find most striking the sense of history. Adams was almost obsessed with defining the legacy that he knew he as a leader of a new nation would be creating for the generations to come.

Today, we also live in times that will define us as a nation. Watching John Adams spar with his nemesis, the calculating and complex Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, it struck me that while technology has changed a great deal, critical elements of political leadership have changed little if at all. Nor have the challenges of cobbling together an electoral majority in our cantankerously diverse country become any easier.

This video look at the courage it takes to compete in a presidential election was sent to me by a reader of Heartfeldt Politics, KD. She or he noted the importance of this historic moment, and I thought it worth sharing.

Thanks to Vicky for posting the video…text is Gloria’s opinion.
See Media page on this website for some photos of other daring girls.

INTENTIONING

Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good

The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.

12 Comments

  1. Stout House on April 16, 2008 at 11:32 am

    The lilting strains of patriotic music throbbing in the background of this slapdash piece of amateur propaganda can’t mask the essential truth. Hillary Clinton has run an ugly, dishonorable campaign and has become, in turn, a dishonorable candidate. Anyone, female or male, who can say with conviction that this is untrue hasn’t been following the race closely or objectively.

    How about this for a follow-up film? To the same music — so inspiring, so patriotic, so freighted with the weight of historical portent! — set the same pastiche of images interlaced with audio excerpts from Hillary’s lies on the stump, the ones she’s admitted to and the ones her campaign has been unable to obscure. The result would tragic and heartbreaking, just as her once-promising campaign has been.

    I, too, hope that we have a female president in my lifetime. The sooner the better. But it must be an honorable woman, not merely the only woman who happens to be viable at this moment in our history.

    • Gloria Feldt on April 16, 2008 at 11:33 am

      Tell me a little about yourself, Stout House, and why you harbor so much animosity. I’m really interested to know.

      • Stout House on April 17, 2008 at 11:33 am

        Animosity? I think righteous indignation is a more suitable description. Hillary insults my intelligence and yours when she panders, parses, insinuates, misleads and lies, sinking faster and deeper every day into the same political muck the Republicans have been dwelling in for nearly eight years — and yet you continue to support her. Why? Like Barack, Hillary Clinton is a person of exceptional intelligence, and yet she repeatedly and knowingly twists Obama’s words when she can, and when she cannot, she dismisses them outright as high falutin’ and elitist, devoid of substance. Evidently she thinks the average voter is quite stupid.

        In answer to your question, and for what it’s worth, here’s the brief pollster-friendly profile: Registered male Democrat, Caucasian, mid-’30s, a university graduate earning under 50k annually and living with a lovely young woman in a major city in the desert Southwest. More relevantly, though, I’m a former Hillary supporter who watched, heartbroken, as her campaign grew increasingly desperate and cynical, becoming all but indistinguishable in its talking points from Senator McCain’s own sorry campaign.

        That said, if Hillary should somehow win the nomination through coup by superdelegate, she’ll have my vote in the general election. I’ll feel dirty casting it for her, but the Republican alternative is too unthinkable. I only hope that you’ll encourage Hillary supporters within your sphere of influence to vote Obama should the contest go his way, as I think it will.

  2. stacy on April 18, 2008 at 11:34 am

    There does seem to be a lot of animosity on the democratic side and at this stage of the game, all I can do is shake my head in disbelief as the battle between Hillary and Obama is getting so much attention that John McCain is essentially getting a free pass from the media- well, McCain usually gets a free pass from them anyway.

    Precious time is being wasted with the prolonged nomination process- time that could be spent convincing the American people that Bush has presided over the worst economy in recent memory, managed to get us bogged down in a vietnam-style war where the resident population doesn’t want us there, and squandered anything even resembling a domestic agenda. Worst. President. Ever. The Republicans, as always, are on message but the message of the democrats is all over the map and consists on unrelenting in-fighting. To think that Hillary said only she and McCain are capable of answering the now-infamous red phone in case of national or international emergency, is mind-boggling. No wonder the GOP is loving this.

    I will vote for whoever the democratic nominee is, but after talking to quite a few people (democrats) at work, friends, etc. this nasty nomination bid is going to have a negative effect- at least that’s my opinion- a lot of people who tend to be undecided could be turned off by a lot of this. I actually know people who are quite progressive and ardent Hillary supporters- they told me if she doesn’t win the nomination they will either a) not vote at all in the Presidential race or b) vote for McCain- I almost fell out of my chair. And these are usually reasonable people. Yet there is a pettiness and anger in the air that is becoming suffocating.

    I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t already know, but as for the video, it does indeed highlight this historic moment- a moment that Democrats should be unbelievably proud of! But I fear we seem to be squandering the moment in favor of petty infighting. Yes, politics can get dirty, but there is a point where it is self-defeating to the Democratic party and it certainly isn’t worth helping another Republican into the Oval Office as a result.

    As far as I am concerned, after all of Bush’s misdeeds, mistakes and outright lies, the election is the democrats to lose, so to speak.

  3. stacy on April 19, 2008 at 11:35 am

    I just saw this over on Huffington Post- this kind of thing isn’t going to fly well- after all, if Hillary gets the nomination she has to keep in mind that those of us who are members of the liberal ‘base’ are the ones who volunteer and lick the stamps. I honestly don’t know what she was thinking saying something like this- other than she’s bitter some liberals dare support someone other than her:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/celeste-fremon/clinton-slams-democratic_b_97484.html

  4. Gloria Feldt on April 21, 2008 at 11:36 am

    This is not a direct response to either Stacy or Stout House, but jumps directly to the endgame of this political conversation.

    As I predicted in a previous Heartfeldt post, Politico today has an article that lays out the facts and figures supporting my contention that women’s unwillingness to mass their political strength behind Hillary and other women running for office is having the result of women no longer being seen as a political force we were perceived to be when the election cycle started. And Nora Ephron, who started out supporting Clinton bur switched to Obama is to day whining in Huffington Post that white men will decide the race.

    It’s these larger political consequences for gender justice in our democracy that I have been attempting to highlight. I hope we don’t cut off our nose to spite out face with all these objections to a woman we all agree we will support if she becomes the nominee.

  5. Stout House on April 24, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Sadly, Gloria, Senator Clinton has already cut off our noses for us — slashing them to the eyebrows with her lies and transparent attempts to smear her opponent. To support her at this point is to become complicit in her guilt.

  6. Stacy on April 25, 2008 at 11:37 am

    With respect to Gloria’s comment from the 21st of April where she said,

    “..Politico today has an article that lays out the facts and figures supporting my contention that women’s unwillingness to mass their political strength behind Hillary and other women running for office is having the result of women no longer being seen as a political force we were perceived to be when the election cycle started…”

    But isn’t this the same as saying we should vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman regardless of whether we disagree with some of her politics and views or if we think the other candidate is more in line with our views? And isn’t there a danger in that? And if that is the case, should African Americans per se vote for the African American candidate lest they lose their political strength? Doesn’t that possibly put AA women between a rock and a hard place? It seems to imply that we should privilege one oppressive factor–race or gender– over another. I don’t like some of the racial implications in this election, like the Hillary camp’s (ie. Bill) Obama/Jesse Jackson comparison, which seemed geared towards one result- scaring some white voters. The last thing any of us need is for the Democratic party to embrace their own version of the ‘southern strategy.’

    I also disagree with the implication that by not supporting Hillary, women are somehow delivering a political blow to women’s rights. I just don’t see it that way.

    I happen to agree with some of both Hillary and Obama’s positions on issues, and disagree with others. Neither of them are as progressive as I would like. In the beginning, I liked Obama’s message of hope and liked the idea that things could possibly change in Washington- I liked the idea that the Presidency was not necessarily a family heirloom after years and years of Bushes and Clintons. Hillary supporters have called me naive for thinking that Obama could possibly usher in an era of hope rather than fear and cynicism, which I found rather condescending.

  7. Stacy on April 27, 2008 at 11:37 am

    I just saw this over at newsweek.com and I think it’s a bit of an ugly truth that we feminists are going to have to digest once this nomination process is over- that race and gender are playing out differently in the campaign and the fact is, the PA primary gave us polling numbers that suggest many white Americans- or I should say, white Democrats, are uncomfortable with the idea of a black President. From the article:

    The unknown factor with Obama is how his race will affect the vote overall. Some 18 percent of voters in the Pennsylvania primary told pollsters that race was an important factor in deciding their vote. And of the 12 percent of whites who said race mattered, three fourths voted for Clinton. Obama stands to lose a substantial share of those votes in the general election. In an analysis of the Pennsylvania results, Gary Langer, ABC’s director of polling, points out that only 54 percent of those white Democrats who said race was important would support Obama instead of John McCain. The rest said they would either vote for McCain—or not at all. Race, Langer notes, operated in a fundamentally different way than gender. Voters who said the gender of the candidate was important seemed much less likely to choose their gender preference over their party.

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/134323

    Don’t we as feminists have to address the uglier side of the racial implications in this election, in addition to the obvious gender issue?

  8. Cyrille, from France on April 27, 2008 at 11:37 am

    All I hope, for you, Americans, and for the rest of the world, is that the democratic nominee (Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama) will in the end win the election against Mc Cain!

    In France, last spring, in our presidential election, the candidate from the “Left”, a Socialist, and a woman, Ségolène Royal, unfortunatly lost the election race against the “Right”, a man, Nicolas Sarkozy, that we now have to stand for 5 years. Well, 4 more years now, since 1 (very disappointing, as expected) year is already past!!!… 🙁

    • Gloria Feldt on April 29, 2008 at 11:38 am

      Good reminder, Cyrille. We definitely need to keep our eyes on the prize here.

      I am curious as to whether/how Stacy sees new issues around race given the events of the last couple of days with Rev.Wright, and what Omaba should be doing about them.

  9. Stacy on April 30, 2008 at 11:38 am

    Gloria- I was rather surprised that Rev. Wright has chosen to make himself the story in spite of the effect it might have on Obama and Wright seems to be using it as a platform to catapult his own publicity/celebrity as opposed to having a productive conversation on race or helping Obama. If I were Obama, I would be livid at how he’s chosen to go about this.

    That said, I can’t help but wonder if some of this controversy is being helped along by the media at this point. I think Obama did an excellent job in his speech on race after we initially heard the first of Rev. Wright’s views about a month ago- I think Obama deserves credit for dealing with some of the controversial racial issues head-on and in a way that should have fostered a constructive discourse on race while also explaining which of Wright’s views he did or did not agree with- and that’s where I think the ‘controversy’ should have ended- I am not sure how relevant to Obama’s candidacy Wright’s ongoing comments are since Obama basically addressed the crux of them a month ago when the story broke- make no mistake, in the beginning, there was a story there and Obama was called to answer for his friend’s comments and I think the media had every right to ask questions.

    Perhaps I am a cynic but I can’t help but wonder how much the hyped-up media coverage of the controversy at this point is in and of itself a result of a noticeably lily-white media establishment covering a story involving the views of *some* African Americans and which may play directly into some of the more irrational fears of *some* suburban white Americans. In other words, at this point it’s more sensational than constructive with respect to a dialogue on race. And it’s an ‘easier’story for the media to cover than, say, why we will be soon paying $5 a gallon for gas, whether or not John McCain will stack the federal courts with anti-choice judges and question how the candidates are planning on paying for a trillion dollar a month war going forward. I’m not alleging a huge media conspiracy but I think it’s a question worth considering- does the racial make-up of a large percentage of the media have any effect on the coverage of this issue?

    As for what Obama should do I think he should redirect attention back to his initial speech on the topic and try to refocus the media’s attention on a constructive dialogue on race, remind people that Rev. Wright is not running for President, he, Obama is, and that some of Wright’s comments do not mirror his own beliefs and that no, Rev. Wright is not and will not be his political advisor now or if he should become President.

    You might be surprised to hear that over the past three weeks or so, my support for Obama has been called into question and I am leaning more toward Hillary at this point- it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Rev. Wright controversy, however, but rather a result of how he has run his campaign recently and stumbled through the latest primaries and seems to be folding under pressure.

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