Hirschfield and Kula - Brad Blog Oct 10, 2007

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Brad Blog Oct 10, 2007

Thursday, 11 October 2007

My Worst Fears Confirmed
By Brad Hirschfield

Sometimes I really hate being right. And in the case of my claim on the show about why many people are supporting Hillary, I really mean it.

This morning’s USA Today features a piece by Emory University lecturer, Don Campbell that is more direct than many other pieces circulating in recent weeks about Hillary’s candidacy for the presidency, but sadly, it is hardly unique.

For Campbell and those like him, the bottom line is simple: people should support Hillary, not because of what she stands for, but because she is a woman. That’s an outrage, and whatever one thinks about the prospect of Hillary as president, the reasons for either supporting her or opposing her should not be based primarily on her gender. Doing so represents a colossal step backwards for us as a culture and we should say so now before this gets any worse.

It’s not that I am shocked, just disturbed. After all Blacks, Jews, Latinos and other have supported candidates for the same kind of reasons. But overwhelmingly, that tended to assure that the first generation of political leaders who rose to power on their race or ethnicity, were mediocre at best, and often far worse. It may be that it requires such people, tapping into ethnocentrism and racial or gender rage to break down barriers to members of their community participating fully in the political process, but this is the presidency were talking about.

Do I think it would be great to have a woman as president? How about an African-American? Indeed I do. But I think that having a great president is more important. Let’s not play cultural politics with the leadership of the world’s most powerful nation. Even for those folks who believe in affirmative action, is this the place to implement it?

Let’s elect the person that we think will move forward the best agenda for our country and for the world, and save our sexual and racial politics for another day.

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