Ferraro forgot it’s not 1984

Marsha Mercer
Published: March 16, 2008

Geraldine Ferraro was right about one thing: She would not have been the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984 had she been named Gerard.

Democrat Walter Mondale chose Ferraro as his running mate because she was a woman. Democrats saw gold in the gender gap, the trend for women to vote Democratic in presidential elections while men vote Republican.

Ferraro, a congresswoman from Queens, was supposed to mobilize women voters in such strength that Democrats could oust the popular Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan.

Putting a woman on the ticket in 1984 was strategic. It was a calculated move when political calculation was, if not cool, at least expected.

Last week, I reread Ferraro’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984. It was my first national political convention, and my boss assigned me (as the woman on our convention team) to cover Ferraro’s night.

As I sat in the hall, I was sure I was watching history in the making.

“America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us,” she said.

She introduced herself as the daughter of immigrants and the working class.

She noted that women made just 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. She talked about the Equal Rights Amendment, which was still in play. She even mentioned affirmative action positively. It was a very different time.

That’s what Ferraro, now 72, forgot as she tried to win support for Hillary Clinton by dismissing Barack Obama. It’s not 1984.

While she never would have suggested that Clinton is succeeding because of her gender, Ferraro credited Barack Obama’s phenomenal success to his race.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is,” Ferraro famously said in an interview with the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, Calif.

Wrong.

Obama says it was hardly his good fortune to have been born black and named Barack Hussein Obama.

He has fought the persistent myth that he’s a Muslim, and lately his mouthy Christian pastor has made astonishingly intolerant comments about the Clintons.

Still, Ferraro’s remarks were offensive and they crumble under scrutiny. Obama took heat early on for not being “black enough.” Now he’s where he is only because he’s black? He can’t win. His success in primaries and caucuses is precisely because he has reached across race, age and gender lines.

To be sure, there has been a racial gap in primaries in the deep South, where Obama has won a vast majority of black votes and Clinton the vast majority of white votes. In Mississippi last week, Obama won 90 percent of the black vote and just 25 percent of the white.

But that’s not the trend nationally. When her remarks hit the national news, she insisted her words had been taken out of context. In fact, she is looking at today’s campaign through a prism of her own experience 24 years ago.

Ferraro rightly stepped down from her honorary role in the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton has apologized for Ferraro’s remarks. The last thing Clinton needs is for voters to see her and her husband — who offered a similar, dismissive analysis of Obama’s victory in South Carolina — and their supporters as out of touch.

It’s worth remembering that even in 1984, playing the gender card was a poor decision.

Ferraro quickly turned into a disappointment. Her husband, John Zaccaro, balked at releasing papers about his real estate business dealings. Under pressure, she did release the papers, and they reported a net worth of $3.8 million. Ferraro admitted she owed more than $53,000 in back taxes, although she said it was just a mistake when she paid the bill.

It was hardly the up-from-nothing success story Democrats had imagined.

Reagan won re-election by a landslide, 59 percent to 41 percent. He even won the women’s vote.

But that was 1984. It’s over.

What do you think? Comment at http://www.mgwashington.com or e-mail .