LEAVE GERALDINE ALONE!!

Geraldine Ferraro is one of the most respected women in the United States, and rightly so. Before being elected to the US House of Representatives in 1978, Marymount Manhattan College’s most famous alum served as a teacher, and district attorney in New York City. As a member of congress she held several leadership positions, many of which had previously only been held by men. In 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate and Senator Walter Mondale tapped Mrs. Ferraro as his running mate and got a huge boost in the polls, and though the ticket lost big in the Electoral College, the race was closer than the map would indicate. During that campaign Mrs. Ferraro became one of the first people to say publicly (and certainly the first to do so with such a large megaphone) that President Reagan’s strategy of illegally funding and selling weapons to extremist rebel splinter groups and installing monsters as world leaders would come back to haunt us.

All that being said, in 1984 was she qualified to be the vice president? Absolutely. The world would be a much better place if the Mondale Ferraro ticket had won the 1984 election. But if she were a man, would she have been on the ticket? I don’t think so, and neither does Mrs. Ferraro who has said that many times publicly.

But so what? Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg likely would not have been appointed to the Supreme Court if they were men, and they were/have been exceptional in that role. Senator Clinton, though exceedingly brilliant would never have become a serious candidate for even the Senate were she a man. General Powell and Justice Marshall were phenomenal public servants but would not have been appointed to their positions if they were white. Every semester thousands of students make Dean’s List at schools they would not have been admitted to if they were white males. In fact, it happens all the time that people end up in positions with help from their race, sex or gender and excel, even though a more “qualified” person may have been out there. Some might argue that doing so disadvantages white men, but no more so than handicap parking spaces put non-handicapped drivers at a disadvantage.

All too often we look only at past performance when we ought to also be looking at future potential. Maybe Mrs. Ferraro is right and the biggest reason that Senator Obama has made it so far in this campaign is because of the color of his skin. Is there anything wrong with someone saying that? No. Especially not Mrs. Ferraro, so Obama supporters need to get over themselves, cool it with the racial talk and well, LEAVE GERALDINE ALONE!