No need to kill off Ike - running a woman against philanderer JFK may well give her the edge to win in 1960.
No need to kill off Ike - running a woman against philanderer JFK may well give her the edge to win in 1960.
Can you please tell me how much experience Margaret Chase Smith had in 1952?
to be the person to be selected as Eisenhower's VP
At that time, in 1937, there was considerable reluctance on the part of the American population to vote for either a Jew, a woman, or a Catholic:
46% said they would vote for a Jew for president
60% said they would vote for a Catholic for president
33% said they would vote for a woman for president
The acceptance of a Catholic for president took its biggest leap forward with the election of JFK, jumping from 71% in 1960 to 82% in 1961
(Somehow) Get Walter Mondale to win in '84. Geraldine Ferraro runs for POTUS in 1992.
Maybe you could get Eleanor Roosevelt president, she's the earliest possible contender I think...though that's a remote possibility
I always liked giving Clare Boothe Luce the job, but it's not easy.
So, good credentials for Margaret Chase Smith in a conventional sense. In addition, being born on Dec. 14, 1897, she was old enough in '52 to be either vice-president or president. Nixon arguably was not. He was a young man in a hurry. Sure, legally he was old enough. He was at least thirty-five years of age. But in real terms of enough experience, I tend to think not.She was a US Senator since 1949, a US Representative from 1940-1949, member of the House Naval Affairs Committee and later the House Armed Services Committee, and was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve in 1950.
From the graph, the biggest positive change seems to be from '69 to '74. So, chalk up a success to the women's movement. And steady progress since then.Sadly, the main problem is the bigotry of the American public at the time:
1. it was from gallup.com; not exactly this http://www.gallup.com/poll/8611/little-prejudice-against-woman-jewish-black-catholic-presidenti.aspx or this http://www.gallup.com/poll/8656/generational-differences-support-woman-president.aspx (I can't fin the original), but these also say basically the same thing, apparently in greater detail1) If you have it handy, I'd be interested in a link or reference so I could use it myself in Internet discussions.
2) and how do you technically include a graph?
So, good credentials for Margaret Chase Smith in a conventional sense. In addition, being born on Dec. 14, 1897, she was old enough in '52 to be either vice-president or president. Nixon arguably was not. He was a young man in a hurry. Sure, legally he was old enough. He was at least thirty-five years of age. But in real terms of enough experience, I tend to think not.
All the same, the above graph from Magnum is very significant.
And add to this, the common (?) view among political scientists that picking a vice-president is not about picking a positive. It's about picking the smallest negative.
And I think Senator Smith also worked with partial success so that women veterans received a fair shake regarding GI Bill benefits.
But all the same, per the above graph her negatives were off the chart. Simply because she was a woman.
Shouldn't be this way. But apparently in 1952 it was.
It was the damn Flexner Report in 1910 which furthered the trend to "professionalize" medicine in too narrow a way and actually started going the other way and reduced the number of physicians who were women.http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/6/1055
From 1880 to 1900, the number of female physicians doubled (to 5.6%), and in some cities such as Boston, Massachusetts, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, nearly 1 in 5 physicians was female.