Emily Badger writes, Would Debt-Ceiling Circus Occur With Women in Charge?
[H]ere’s an intriguing question as Americans pick through the postmortem on the uncompromising politicians who dragged the country to the brink of economic uncertainty: Would women have done this?
Women make up 17 percent of the current Congress (the Gang of Six in the Senate had none, and the House, Senate and White House leaders who negotiated the final agreement included just one, Nancy Pelosi). Research that highlights the value of diverse voices in decision-making, as well as findings about the leadership styles of women from the boardroom to the state house invite the hypothetical as voters ponder how to avoid more of the same mess in Washington after 2012.
“If the numbers were flipped, if 17 percent of Congress were male, would this be different?” asked Debbie Walsh, director of theCenter for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “I think it would have been different. I think, first of all, there would have been more discussion and compromise, and compromise wouldn’t have been seen as a negative thing as much.”
A Congress with only 17 percent men is pretty tough to imagine. More realistically, the 2012 Project—which aims to get more women of both parties into office during the upcoming election—is hoping voters who’ve just witnessed the logical conclusion of macho confrontation will realize that values society may dismiss as “weak” in women (accommodation, compromise, listening) would come in pretty handy in Washington.
The 2012 Project is calling this a “teachable moment.” And Walsh, one of its leaders, ropes into that moment not just the debt limit debate, but also the 11th-hour suspense over a potential government shutdown in April, as well as recent sex scandals involving Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards. All of these incidents, she suggests, speak to an element of risk-taking that may mark one of the differences between male and female leadership styles. [...]
It’s been difficult to study women in Congress for the obvious reason that there just aren’t that many of them. But researchers at Rutgers have found a larger pool of subjects among state legislatures.
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
If you squint, you can see it. An imperial presidency that ends with disgrace and a president whose approval ratings are in the 20s. An oil crisis in which US dependence on imported oil has crippled our economy and exposed weaknesses in our national security. Rising unemployment. Uncertainty in the banking system. Housing starts at record lows. A dollar that's declined to the point where it's trading 1:1 with the Canadian dollar. White House staffers named Cheney and Rumsfeld. And an experienced Washington insider with war hero credentials facing an outsider running on hope and a smile.
Can you see it?
Of course, there were major differences between 1976 and 2008. Even as Richard Nixon was winning reelection in 1972, his coattails had already become nonexistent, with Democrats making gains in Congress. In 1974, with the new word "Watergate" front and center in American politics, Democrats surged to a 291-144 edge in the House and a 61-38 lead in the Senate. It might have seemed that the presidential election of 1976 would be a walkover. It wasn't.
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