And when people ask – and some do – whether America is ready for a woman president, I’m tempted to ask: Ready how exactly? Among the countries that have had women presidents would be, uh, Pakistan. ~Mike Littwin

I could think of worse comparisons, I suppose.  Ms. Bhutto’s rise to power as prime minister was not entirely unlike the one that Clinton is trying to replicate, inasmuch as neither one of them could have plausibly come anywhere near holding executive power had it not been for their husbands.  Ms. Bhutto’s first tenure also ended abruptly with the intervention of the military and then her second was brought to an end because of charges of corruption against her government, so perhaps talking about Pakistan is not the best way to discuss this question.  From the perspective of those who would like to see a woman as President, it certainly doesn’t conjure up a large number of desirable comparisons.   

Liberia and Bangladesh have also entered the glorious ranks of nations that have elected women as heads of government before America, as have India, Israel, Britain and now Germany.  Don’t forget the Philippines–they’ve already had two women presidents.  We could make a list and see what sort of countries have broken through that particular barrier and then consider whether “Let’s be more like Pakistan!” is a winning slogan.

Mr. Littwin’s trenchant analysis continues:

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found a shocking result – that only 72 percent said they would vote for a qualified Mormon nominee. The number was 88 percent for a woman and 94 percent for a black.

Shocking!  Admittedly, when I first saw the numbers from that infamous Rasmussen poll seven months ago, I was stunned at the depth of anti-Mormon feeling.  I had assumed that it would be significant, but not quite so overwhelming as the 43% refusal to vote for a Mormon.  To discover that almost one out of every two American likely voters was so opposed to Mormonism that it prevented them from voting for one was rather surprising.  Today, months and months later, this is no longer shocking. 

Religious identity does seem to matter more to religious voters than it did forty years ago, because there are more political issues that engage religious voters today and make a candidate’s religious convictions a matter of concern for voters where they may have seemed less relevant in the past.  Additionally, the less common ordinary church-going religiosity becomes in the country as a whole and the more secular and indeed anti-Christian much of American culture becomes, the more important a certain type of religious identity will become to those who see increasing secularism as a threat.  This seems counterintuitive–rising secularism should, one might think, encourage greater political ecumenism among religious conservatives, but inasmuch as combating secularism means affirming a certain kind of religious identity (be it Christian or the more PC, meaningless designation of “Judeo-Christian”) there will be built-in limits to the possibilities of building alliances with non-Christian religious conservatives.  Mormonism straddles the line, to the extent that Mormons may call themselves Christians but not be accepted by most other Christians as co-religionists, so the controversy over Mormon candidates will probably be greater than that over much more clearly non-Christian candidates. 

Then Mr. Littwin moralises:

Suddenly, this election looks like a test – of tolerance. I wonder how we’d look to ourselves if we failed.

I resent this sort of not-so-subtle moral blackmail.  The rhetoric about “tolerance” only means anything if female and minority candidates are actually judged primarily according to their qualifications and policy proposals.  Otherwise, we will be acknowledging that we have actively chosen inferior individual candidates out of a desire to not give the impression that we think female and minority candidates are inherently inferior.  In other words, if Democrats “fail” by choosing Edwards and the Republicans “fail” by choosing, say, Fred Thompson instead of Romney or Giuliani, Mr. Littwin seems to be implying that these outcomes would have to be explained as the result of prejudice.  Mr. Littwin seems to be saying that the two primary electorates have to choose the “right” (i.e., female or minority) candidates or else they will have “failed” to be sufficiently tolerant.  This confirms that when people talk about “tolerance,” they mean, “You had better do what I say.”  Such “tolerance” is always set by default against whichever groups are or are considered to be the majority or the powerful.  “Failure” to give special consideration to someone outside those groups is deemed to be intolerance, rather than prudential judgement of the person’s ability, when allegedly the purpose of encouraging “tolerance” is to require that people give full consideration to a person’s ability without taking into account his majority or minority, in-group/out-group status.  In practice, “tolerance” is usually not the latter, but a scheme designed simply to transfer power from supposed in-groups to supposed out-groups.  It really exists for no other purpose.  

If we judged candidates purely on their merits, not only would Obama not be a “top tier” contender, but he wouldn’t have even declared for President, because he certainly lacks experience and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of policy proposals (and what policies he has proposed are rather terrible). 

Now, I’m not so naive as to believe that voters choose candidates based on anything as esoteric as experience or smart policies (where would George Bush be today if we did that?), but if we grant that identity politics is an unavoidable part of the democratic process (and it is), which can both harm and help women and minorities running for office, then we had better avoid cheap talk about the public’s intolerance when they “fail” to choose the “right” (i.e., female or minority) candidate in the primaries. 

It is close to certain that neither Clinton nor Obama would be where they are today in the polls if they did not have the advantages of being a woman and a black man respectively, as these are advantages with Democratic voters and are part of what gives these candidates their appeal and their edge.  (These things also help them with white and male voters who wish to demonstrate their political identity as progressive sorts through their support for female and minority candidates.)  To some extent, this gives them a certain appeal and an advantage with certain core Democratic constituencies that the others simply can’t duplicate.  Once they run in a general election, the things that have been advantages for them so far will be less obviously helpful and may prove to be a drag on the Democratic ticket in some parts of the country, which means that identity politics cuts both ways.  This is obvious, but apparently bears repeating.  This might be true even without Clinton’s (largely invented) reputation as a far-left liberal and Obama’s record of being just that kind of liberal. 

This result is a “failure” only in the sense that democratic politics is always a failure of the public to choose rationally the best qualified and most informed candidates, which is a central flaw in democracy itself.  Voters very often choose according to what they think their self-interest requires, but how they understand self-interest may be tied up with ideas of advancing “one of their own” to a position of power; there is a strong belief in democratic societies that you are best represented in government by “one of your own” who will in turn support your interests.  This is a question of being able to trust a candidate, and it is simply easier, as a matter of human nature, for people to trust those with whom they are better able to relate and identify.  That is the irrationality and folly of democracy.  That is also why it has an enduring appeal, even though it will consistently produce inferior government performance.  If Mr. Littwin has no argument with the way we select those who govern us, he really ought to leave the moral hectoring to someone else.