When you go to the polls and cast your vote in the Primary Election, I want to make sure you really think about
why you are voting.
You have the opportunity to create an historic first for America, electing either the first woman or the first African-American.
I want to take a moment and address the concept of electing a woman to the Presidency (the African-American thing makes absolutely no difference). First, the general fear is that a woman would be weak or soft, possibly typified by Clinton's crying jag just before the New Hampshire Primary. My first reaction in watching the clip is that she is frustrated by the fact that she really truly believes in what she is doing and everyone misreads her and judges her as false and insincere. Now if she was crying for this reason, I really do sympathize with her and she goes up in my estimation. However, an analysis by Dick Morris (who apparently knows her pretty well) that I saw later that night, pointed out that it is more in her personality to be crying at the fact that she is doing everything right and not succeeding and so she is frustrated. Now, to criticize what I am about to say as being chauvinistic is just misdirecting my point (If Obama had cried under similar circumstances, or any man for that matter, his candidacy would be over, it is very much more acceptable in a woman). Hillary Clinton crying out of frustration typifies everything the nation fears would happen if we elected a woman. This does not go to show that I am against a woman President, just that I am against Hillary Clinton.
Bhutto, for example, was a horrible Prime Minister of Pakistan, but not because she was a woman. In every aspect that people would associate a woman being weak on, she was very strong. In Plain English, she had balls.
All this being said, if I were voting in the Democratic Primary (I am not, Vote Romney '08), I would vote for Hillary Clinton (and if the Republican's stupidly nominate Huckabee, I will probably vote for her in the General Election). Here is my reasoning:
When people think back to the Presidents pre-1900, how many names do you think the average citizen knows? Two? Maybe Three? Washington and Lincoln (maybe Jefferson). This is not to say that no one knows about all the Presidents (I can name them all along with their terms, parties and major accomplishments if they had any), but only that the average jackass on the street knows nothing of History.
Let's be hypothetical for a moment here and assume that either Clinton or Obama gets elected in '08 (probably pretty likely if Bloomberg doesn't hop in the race). Both of these people have an automatic ticket to be remembered by every school child in two hundred years, simply because of their race and gender. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be remembered among the "greatest" Presidents of all time because they were the first woman/African-American to be elected.
This turns my stomach upside down, the honor of being the first woman or African-American should go to someone who is eminently more worthy, I mean realistically, Hillary is only in the race because of Bill (Condoleezza Rice isn't married) and Obama has zero experience, three years ago he was in the
Illinois State Legislature, really stop and think about that for a moment (if Colin Powell was running he would have more relevant experience than anyone on the stage).
In 200 years, people will remember JFK, not because he was the first Catholic President but because Democrats think he was a strong leader (in reality he was just very charismatic and then got assassinated). Granted, America needs to maintain its reputation as being the land of opportunity, so we need to elect a woman and an African-American, just not these two.
I guess in short my point is that we all can agree that to not vote for Clinton or Obama because of their Gender and Race would be wrong, but I am trying to convince you that
voting for them
because of it is just as wrong.
-Raphael Hythloday
