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If there’s a lesson to be learned from Geraldine Ferraro’s fast-motion disintegration, it’s gotta be: Don’t fight it.
After her initial slip-up—Ferraro said that Obama was a successful candidate only because he’s black—she could have apologized and walked away. As a member of the fundraising committee, she didn’t rank particularly high on Clinton’s staff list. Instead, she decided to double down. She called back the Daily Breeze, the paper in which her comments first appeared, and accused the Obama campaign of “attacking me because I’m white.” In other words, she played what Ben Smith calls the race card card. That move ratcheted up the rhetoric another notch, all but guaranteeing her demise.
At the bottom of Ferraro’s rants, she had a kernel of a point: This election, like all elections, is largely about identity. As she herself acknowledged, “[I]n 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president.” But what then? Was she suggesting that Obama should “admit” that his race is a factor in his candidacy? If so, that’s a losing battle. Should John Edwards then have admitted he was getting some votes because he was a white male?
Ferraro prided herself on not taking orders from the Clinton campaign, but this time she should have listened. In a mere two days, she managed to resurrect the subject of race—relatively dormant since South Carolina*—and give the Obama campaign reason to take offense. It also let them twist the Clinton campaign’s logic about Samantha Power’s “monster” remarks. If Clinton hadn’t demanded Power’s resignation, Ferraro might still have a job on the campaign. Howard Wolfson’s rebuttal—that Ferraro wasn’t as big a part of Clinton’s campaign as Power was for Obama—held water at first. But once Ferraro lashed out again, it was over.
In an ideal world, neither Power nor Ferraro would have had to resign. But the logic that both campaigns have imposed on the race—that wanton (Update 1:47 a.m.: Sorry, not "wonton.") surrogates have to go—made Ferraro's demise inevitable.
*Correction: We originally said North Carolina. That would be impossible, seeing as North Carolina hasn't voted yet.
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The 2008 presidential election has perfected a new category of gaffe: the otherwise sane, rational person saying something utterly irresponsible. Bill Sheehan started it with his coy drug reference, followed by Bill Clinton's comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson, followed most recently by Samantha Power’s "monster" comment.
Welcome to the club, Geraldine Ferraro. Her inflammatory words, spoken to the Daily Breeze last week, were mostly lost in the frenzy over Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s dalliances yesterday. Here they are, ripped from context: “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. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
The Clinton campaign’s response was terse: "We disagree with her," said communications director Howard Wolfson.
Blog reaction has been combustible—how dare she suggest Obama is “lucky” to be black?—but focuses more on demonizing the former vice-presidential nominee than getting at where her words come from. But Ferraro bookends her unfortunate comments with two sound observations: 1) The media seem to dislike Clinton largely because of her gender, and 2) Obama is foolish to suggest that he will end partisanship. “Dear God!” she says. “Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship—that's the way our country is.” Good points, certainly. But she could have chosen a better segue.
Her remarks show frustration that a tough, hard-working, hyper-competent woman like Clinton can still be swept aside by a force of nature. Ferraro is correct that Obama’s race has a lot to do with it (just as Clinton’s gender has a lot to do with her appeal to women). But of course it’s more than that. Gail Collins put it best in a column she wrote before the Ohio primary. If Hillary doesn’t pull through, Collins wrote, she should understand this: “She’s done fine. And she’d probably have won the nomination walking away if Barack hadn’t picked this moment to mutate into BARACK! You do your best, and if things don’t work out, it just wasn’t your time. Life isn’t always fair.”
It’s this realization that has turned surrogates on both sides into gaffe machines. It’s also why staff members of both candidates may have trouble working together in the general. Clinton’s people understand they’re up against a phenomenon; Obama’s people feel like they’re on the right side of history. But I wouldn’t chalk Ferraro’s comments up to racism or bigotry. Rather, they’re the product of high tensions mixed with identity politics in a campaign that is driving everyone a little crazy.
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