[Mb-civic] A Supreme Moment of Ambiguity - Ruth Marcus - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Supreme Moment of Ambiguity

By Ruth Marcus
Thursday, October 13, 2005; Page A23

"Mom, how many women presidents have there been?" My older daughter, 
then 5 and maneuvering to delay bedtime, popped this question during the 
2000 campaign. I loved the innocent confidence of its premise; I 
remember, in the moment before I answered, the stab of regret that I was 
about to erode her post-feminist certitude.

I've been thinking about that conversation recently, first with the 
debut of the TV series "Commander in Chief," featuring Geena Davis as 
the first female president, and again with the Supreme Court nomination 
of Harriet Miers. Together the two events capture the uncertain position 
of women in public life today. This is an odd, transitional moment in 
which it is conceivable that a woman could become president despite her 
gender and evident that a woman was selected for the high court largely 
because of it. Neither situation is especially satisfying.

I found it off-putting, offensive almost, when I first heard about 
"Commander in Chief." It seemed likely to be a bit too Mr. Ed-ish -- a 
woman president! A talking horse! There are, indeed, some clunky 
can-you-believe-this-role-reversal moments, particularly involving the 
(giggle, giggle) First Man. Ewww, a pink office .

It's worth noting, too, that Davis is the Accidental President, thrust 
into the role when the real president dies. Maybe even in liberal 
Hollywood it's too much to envision a woman actually being elected to 
the job. And perhaps Davis, even with Those Lips, might be a little more 
believable as commander in chief if we hadn't last seen her talking to a 
mouse. Stuart Little, female president -- whatever.

But the show is growing on me, especially the matter-of-fact way Davis 
dispenses with the immutable twin facts that she is a woman and a 
mother. She assumes there will be discomfort about her gender but 
doesn't dwell on it; she treats her motherhood as a role to be braided 
into the rest of her newly complex life, not something to hide or 
apologize over.

After a briefing on her color-coded schedule, the president instructs 
her chief of staff to add a new hue -- this one blocking out time for 
family dinner. What working mother doesn't identify with the scene in 
which the new president, rewriting her speech in the limousine on her 
way to address her first joint session of Congress, has to cope with 
questions from her young daughter ("Mommy, did you get timeouts when you 
were little?") and a juice-box spill on the presidential blouse?

If "Commander in Chief" points the way, however faintly, toward the 
moment when a woman in the presidency will be the routine matter my 
daughter imagined it to be, the Miers nomination is, I think, an 
unfortunate step in the opposite direction. The idea of a female Supreme 
Court justice, unlike the idea of a female president, is no longer a 
novelty. No one, left or right, was balking at the notion of picking a 
woman for this vacancy; indeed, I think most people would have preferred it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101201565.html?nav=hcmodule
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