Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University
Joe Bidenโs promise to name a woman running mate has prompted familiar debates about gender and power.
Are these potential vice presidents supposed to be presidential lackeys or understudies to the leader of the free world? Should they actively seek the position, or be reluctant nominees bound by duty?
After Senator Kamala Harrisโs name emerged as a short-list favorite, CNBC reported that some Biden allies and donors โinitiated a campaign against Harris,โ arguing that she was โtoo ambitiousโ and would be โsolely focused on eventually becoming president.โ
Claiming that people who want to be president make bad vice presidents might seem ill-conceived if your audience is Vice President Joe Biden. And pundits and journalists quickly pointed out that the argument was racist and sexist โ like, really, really sexist.
So why were Democratic party insiders spouting it?
One clue can be found in the way we tell stories about women politicians. In our book, โWoman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture,โ communication scholar Kristina Horn Sheeler and I examine how fictional and actual women presidential figures are framed in news coverage, political satire, memes, television and film. Our close reading of these diverse texts reveals a persistent backlash that takes many forms: satirical cartoons that deploy sexist stereotypes; the pornification of women candidates in memes; and news framing that includes misogynistic metaphors, to name a few.
But in our chapter on fictional women presidents on screen, we found something particularly relevant to the coverage of the Democratic Party โveepstakes.โ Women who are politically ambitious are presented as less trustworthy than those who donโt actively seek the presidency.
There have been six series on U.S. television that follow a woman president for at least one full season: ABCโs โCommander in Chiefโ; the Sci-Fi Channelโs โBattlestar Galacticaโ; Foxโs โ24โ; CBSโs โMadam Secretaryโ; Fox 21โs โHomelandโ; and HBOโs โVeep.โ
It may seem like a small point, but when showrunners want to create a โlikeableโ woman president, they go out of their way to demonstrate that pursuing the presidency isnโt her lifeโs goal.
The women presidents in โCommander in Chiefโ and โBattlestar Galacticaโ didnโt campaign for the office. They ascended to the presidency as a result of tragedy. In the former, the president dies of a brain aneurism; in the latter, a nuclear attack takes out the first 42 people in the presidential line of succession, leaving the secretary of education to fill the role. (To be fair, this did seem like a womanโs likeliest path to presidential power in 2004.) Each character is portrayed as an ethical and effective leader โ not perfect, but plausibly presidential.
Conversely, series like โ24โ and โHomelandโ feature women candidates who aggressively seek the presidency. In both cases, the women start out as principled politicians, but their true nature is revealed as weak and duplicitous. Their presidential tenures end up being ruinous for the nation, and order is restored by a white male โ โ24โsโ Jack Bauer and the male vice president in โHomeland.โ HBOโs โVeepโ takes the premise of a craven woman politician to an absurd extreme, with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus winning six consecutive Emmy Awards for her burlesque send-up of the familiar female trope.
Interestingly, both โ24โ and โHomelandโ have important connections to real-world presidential politics. Both series portray the first woman U.S. president as a veteran politician and middle-aged white woman. They bear strong resemblances to the only woman who has been a major-party presidential nominee: Hillary Clinton. Appearing in 2008 and 2017, respectively, the storylines were clearly planned to coincide with what could have been Clintonโs first term as U.S. president.
Yet โ24โsโ and โHomelandโsโ depictions of fictional women presidents align with communication scholar Shawn J. Parry-Gilesโ findings that the media framed Clinton as inauthentic, Machiavellian and, ultimately, dangerous.
That brings us back to our current veepstakes.
Criticisms of women vice presidential prospects echo cultural scripts that insist women who want to be president shouldnโt be trusted. Understanding the resistance to Harris โ and Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams and others who announce their eagerness to serve โ requires recognizing the diverse forms that backlash against womenโs political ambitions can take, which span from calling a congresswoman a โfโโ bโ-โ on the steps of the U.S. capitol to portraying women presidents as Machiavellian on television dramas.
Did pop culture cause those Biden funders to try to undermine Harris?
No. But the stories we tell ourselves on screen have taught us that women who actually want to be president canโt be trusted. That might be why people like Ambassador Susan Rice, whoโs never run for office, and Congresswoman Karen Bass, who said she doesnโt want to run for president, landed on Bidenโs short list to favorable coverage.
โAt every step in her political career,โ The New York Times wrote of Bass, โthe California congresswoman had to be coaxed to run for a higher office. Now sheโs a top contender to be Joe Bidenโs running mate.โ
Men who run for president typically have to demonstrate the requisite desire โ the so-called โfire in the belly.โ
Bizarrely, women are supposed to act like they donโt even want it.
Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.