Politics

The Ferraro Fallacy

By Matt Cooper

At first I was willing to give Geraldine Ferraro the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was clumsily trying to say that a lot of Barack Obama's appeal is because he's a spectacular candidate and he's black and people are hungering for someone who can bridge racial divides. If she was trying to say that, it would surely make sense. But she kept digging herself in, saying that Obama's "lucky" to be black and that that accounts for his leading in the popular vote and delegates. Absurd, I thought, but thought maybe she meant something else. I was even willing to concede that she was trying to make a goofier but not necessarily offensive point: something like if Barack Obama was a white freshman senator from Illinois, it's unlikely he'd be running for president. Yes, that's true, I suppose, but it's an absurd conjecture. If Barack Obama was someone else he wouldn't be...Barack Obama. If Ronald Reagan lactated, he wouldn't be Ronald Reagan. If I wasn't Jewish, I might be a Buddhist. So what? If you start stripping away parts of people's biographies and substitute what ifs like it was some science experiment, it's just idle banter. As for the "luck" part, please. Let's leave aside centuries of racism. Obviously, being black is not enough to elevate one to the presidency or President Sharpton would be finishing his second term.

Ferraro seems so unwilling to concede the obvious, that this exceptionally intelligent, charismatic and winning senator is leading because he's a great politician and that , while race is surely part of his appeal, it is just one part and hardly sufficient in and of itself to propel him to this exalted place. As Obama keeps saying if you were to write a handbook on how to become president you wouldn't start by being African-American and having a funny name. Her asinine comments keep getting layered by ugly remarks. Ferraro says she's getting attacked because she's white. No, she's getting attacked because she's stupid.

I buy Dorothy Rabinowitz's argument today
that the Clinton campaign, for which my spouse works, is getting an unfair rap for running a racially charged campaign. But the Ferraro comments are ugly and the Clinton campaign's failure to fire her is pretty appalling given how exorcised it had become over the Samantha Power comments which the Obama team dealt with summarily. It can't be easy to jettison a once-admired feminist pioneer but still it's pretty amazing that Ferraro quit and wasn't fired and then wouldn't get off TV and shut up.

Full post as published by Portfolio.com: Capital on March 13, 2008 (boomark / email).