1984. 2008. 2020. What have American voters and political commentators learned in 36 years from Ferraro to Palin to Harris?
When Geraldine Ferraro was picked to run on Walter Mondale’s presidential ticket, in 1984, the media did not know quite what to do with her. The political press experienced a female vice-presidential candidate as a kind of processing error. Journalists expressed suspicion of Ms. Ferraro’s use of her maiden name and confusion about how she would take care of her children. “What does the inside of her house look like?” one reporter wanted to know. Image consultants advised her to “dress like a woman” and “choose natural fabrics instead of synthetics.” NBC’s Tom Brokaw, broadcasting from the floor of the Democratic National Convention, reported: “Geraldine Ferraro, for the record — and this is not a sexist remark — is a size 6!” When Ms. Ferraro took the stage at the convention to formally accept the nomination, she did not say much about being a woman, a wife, a mother or a wearer of natural fabrics. Instead, she fashioned her gender into a metaphor, floating it as a symbol of broader change, progress and the realization of the American dream. “By choosing a woman to run for our nation’s second highest office, you send a powerful signal to all Americans: There are no doors we cannot unlock,” she said. “If we can do this, we can do anything.” Or as Mr. Mondale put it, “When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro.” In the wake of the 1984 campaign, this registered not just as a rhetorical flourish but a premonition. The Ferraro pick “may lead to the vice-presidential spot being ‘the woman’s spot,’” Lee Atwater, a Reagan strategist, said. Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas wondered that year whether he would be the “last white Anglo-Saxon male to be considered for the vice presidency.” Not exactly. Tonight, Senator Kamala Harris will become just the third woman, and the first woman of color, to be nominated for the vice presidency on a major party ticket. Since Ms. Ferraro’s run,Hillary Clinton broke a higher barrier, becoming the Democratic nominee for president, and a historic number of women ran for president this year, including Ms. Harris. Still, the expectations and fears around this moment have been tumbling around the American psyche for more than 35 years. The identity of a vice-presidential candidate is, research suggests, unlikely to swing voters, but that has not dampened its force as a media narrative, a historical event, a television spectacle and an assessment of America’s relationship to gender and power — one that culminates in the candidate’s formal acceptance speech, which Ms. Harris will deliver from Wilmington, Del. The speech is an intensely stage-managed feat of party political messaging, and when a woman delivers it, her gender is mined for its full metaphorical weight. Ms. Ferraro, a congresswoman from Queens who took the stage as a brass band blasted “New York, New York,” fused her persona with the American project, framing herself as the “daughter of working Americans” and “the daughter of an immigrant from Italy.” At the 2008 Republican National Convention, Senator John McCain’s running mate, the Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, appeared before a kind of screen saver montage of Americana — golden light dappling Mount Rushmore, sun setting behind a Ferris wheel — as she leveraged her gender to position herself as the ultimate political outsider, rebuking “the Washington elite” that had waved aside her candidacy with a markedly sexist tone. (Both speeches were steered by male speechwriters.) The vice-presidential pick lifts a mirror to the would-be president. She heightens the candidate’s deficiencies while also assuring the public that he is self-aware enough to correct for them. When Mr. Mondale tapped Ms. Ferraro, she was judged the most interesting thing about him: “He’s not Ronald Reagan and he picked Geraldine Ferraro,” Alan Baron, a Democratic analyst, said.
