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Musings on the First Female President Lost in aPatriarchal America

The prospect of the first female United States president has already went down the drain,with the Hillary Clinton campaign over and done with, while the possibility of the first

 black president looms, with Democratic Presidential nomination winner Barack Obama

seemingly faring well in the early surveys against Republican contender John McCain. In

retrospect, however, one wonders whether the results of the Democratic nominationcampaign were a product of much more than the usual workings of political forces and

the strength of the candidates' charisma or personality.

One thing that stood out in the Democratic nomination race was the fierceness of the

campaign between Hillary and Barack--a level perhaps not seen in many decades.

Actually this fierceness was more of 'extremes'--rather lopsidedly in favor of the one whoeventually clinched the nomination. What were these 'extremes'? Simple, these were

Obama mania and Hillary bashing.

Hillary bashing

While the supporters of Obama can speak endlessly of the virtues of their candidate and

of a future Obama presidency, the raging Obama mania can't justify nor explain theseverity of Hillary bashing that went on in the media and much of America. Just a cursory

view of news headlines on the American political scene got across the image of Hillary as

one punching bag figure. Her political statements, views and record must have earned her 

the bashing. But to what degree? The fact that she started strong in the democraticnomination campaign must also account for the fierce anti-Hillary propaganda. It is but

logical for the Obama adherents to launch a demolition campaign with the strength levelcorresponding or exceeding that of the opposition.

Barack's strong charisma and youth appeal are of course advantages over Hillary but did

these significantly account for the denigration of Hillary and the magnification of her negatives? Admittedly, Obama's rhetorical advantage has been a big factor. On the other,

Hillary's performance as former First Lady and senator are not actually bad either.

Something to do with their public service records? Nope, because not one of the two hasthe monopoly of integrity problems. The wide difference in policy platform, perhaps?

Judging from the socialist tones in some of their speeches, both seemed to have good, populist tendencies so that could not have been it.

Patriarchal America

The fact that America, the supposed bastion and protector of Western-style democracy,never had a woman chief executive nor even a vice-president in all 200 or so years of 

existence might explain a culture that does not tolerate or welcome female leadership. A

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number of countries in the Eastern part of the globe that had been influenced by

democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries have already produced women leaders. It's been

 puzzling for outsiders why America has yet to taste the presidency of a woman, even as ithas been conveniently using the rhetoric of democracy to pursue major international

interests for well over a century now.

A possible Obama win in the November presidential race should be, without a doubt, also

a good thing in so far as giving another disadvantaged sector of the American society a

leadership voice. The black Americans, after all, had to go through a lot before attainingsome level of equality with the whites and other races in society.

Black men got the vote first than the women

However, a cursory study into U.S. history would show that the blacks actually gained

equal rights earlier than the women. Yes, the blacks--well, only the black men--gained the

right to vote earlier than the women by virtue of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution.

Of course, this amendment virtually did not apply in the Southern states that employedvoter intimidation, grandfather clauses and even poll taxes to disenfranchise the blacks.

The fact remains, however, that within the constitutional framework, the black vote didcome earlier than the women's vote.

This author has learned quite late in her life that good old America is a patriarchal land

where the female is the "other" sex and the male is the norm. Is it patriarchal democracyat work in the U.S. or simply, patriarchal bias? Did this same patriarchal bias work so

much against the Hillary campaign?

If the magnitude of the Hillary bashing and/or bias is to be the indicator, it seems that

women are in for a long haul. It could very well be that history will repeat itself not in

terms of voting rights but rather, what underdog sector of American society can first senda representative to the White House. As the black men got the vote first over the entire

women's tribe, it doesn't seem surprising at all that the recent Democratic presidential

nomination race concluded with the first black male nominee instead of the first female presidential candidate. If Obama will be able to hurdle the presidential elections in

 November, then history can very well record how the first black U.S. President came first

 before the first woman President.

It took half a century from the passage of the 15th Amendment before the 19th

Amendment granted women voting rights. How long the waiting for a female U.S.

President?