The Goodling GirlHow Monica Goodling played the gender card and won.
Posted Friday, May 25, 2007, at 2:37 PM ET
Monica Goodling and the "girl" card: Nobody seems to want to go there, so we will.
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StumbleUponLet's pretend for a moment that the world divides into two types of women: the soft, shy, girly kind who live to serve and the brash, aggressive feminists who live to emasculate. Not our paradigm, but one that's more alive than dead.
When she was White House liaison in Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, Monica Goodling, 33, had the power to hire and fire seasoned government lawyers who had taken the bar when she was still carrying around a plastic Hello Kitty purse. Goodling, in fact, described herself as a "type-A woman" who blocked the promotion of another type-A woman basically because the office couldn't tolerate infighting between two strong women. ("I'm not just partisan! I'm sexist, too!") That move sounds pretty grown-up and steely. Yet in her testimony this week before the House judiciary committee, Goodling turned herself back into a little girl, and it's worth pointing out that the tactic worked brilliantly.
Look past Goodling's long, silky blond hair, which may or may not have been a distraction. She's entitled to have pretty hair. Look past her trembling hand as she swore her oath and the tremulous voice as she described her "family" at Justice. What really shot Goodling into the stratosphere of baby-doll girls were her own whispered words: "At heart," she testified, "I am a fairly quiet girl, who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way." [Late-breaking discovery, courtesy of a sharp reader: Goodling used the word girl in the written rather than spoken version of her testimony.] The idea, of course, was to scrub away her past image as ruthless, power-mad, and zealously Christian. But—as professor Sandy Levinson noted almost immediately over at Balkinization—it was in calling herself a "girl" that the 33-year-old did herself a great favor. It was a signal to the committee that she was no Kyle Sampson. Or Anita Hill.
To be sure, plenty of twenty- and thirty- and eightysomethings refer to themselves and their friends as girls. Particularly when there are mojitos around. But they don't often do so before the U.S. Congress. The same Goodling who once wanted to be powerful, so powerful that she refused to relinquish her power to hire and fire assistant U.S. attorneys even when she changed jobs at the Justice Department, painted herself as helpful and empathetic and out of the loop. She testified that the biggest and most important part of her job was hooking up employees with tickets for sporting events. The little matter of firing assistant U.S. attorneys was a minor extracurricular. She testified that she went to a Christian school because of her devotion to "service." One half expected her to leap up out of the witness chair and start offering canapés to the assembled members of Congress.
And at the heart of Goodling's ingénue performance? The astonishing claim that while she broke the law, she "didn't mean to." This is the stuff of preschoolers, not cum laude graduates of law school. The images we can't shake: By night, the blond demon driver in the convertible who gets pulled over for speeding and charms the cops out of giving her a ticket with lots of hair-tossing and "I didn't know I was doing 90 miles per hour, officer …" By day, the busy-bee administrative assistant Girl Friday, beloved for responding to late-night calls with a winning "can do" flair. All of which would be sexist for us to invoke, had Goodling not gone so far to evoke it herself.
But heed the lesson, girlfriends. It works. Republicans on the House judiciary committee had only gentle words and lavish praise for this girlish Monica. Even as she testified to repeatedly breaking the law, these genial uncles lauded her "class" and her courage, falling over themselves to observe how hard testifying must have been for her. Kyle Sampson must be wondering where all this sympathy was when he was on the stand. For the most part, even the Democrats were too bamboozled to be effective. It's no accident that some of the day's most brutal questioning came from Reps. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif.; Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; who may well have been as annoyed by Goodling's Girl Secretary performance as they were by the underlying conduct. But even brutal isn't necessarily effective, and by and large, the Democrats let opportunities for key follow-up whiz by. On the few occasions in which they mounted a real offensive, their GOP counterparts came swinging in on their vines to save her. Dan Lundgren, R-Calif., was so desperate to rescue Goodling that he fought to get her a chat with her lawyer that she politely declined.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Dahlia thinks Monica Goodling was a player. She had the power and she recast herself as the helpmeet in her testimony to exploit sexist stereotyping and appeal to chivalry. Okay, I can see where she might think that, but...
Look at how young she was when she was hired far above where someone of her skill and experience would normally be placed. There are several hires in this Administration of quite young and inexperienced people placed in positions of power far beyond what they had any right to expect. It seems to me that the folks hiring them were hoping their relative inexperience would make them more malleable and more likely, as Goodling was, to commit criminal acts for partisan advantage. A more experienced person who had served under someone else in that role in their past would have the model of work they had seen to help guide them in what is and is not appropriate. I think there has been a concerted focus on hiring green recruits in order to more easily persuade them to abuse their positions -- perhaps with the argument that everyone does it. I sincerely believe that these young folks were hired directly out of college precisely because they would be less likely to question their orders -- and would not have had the prior experience to inform that what was an was proper and where the line is really drawn.
--Kija
(To reply, click here.)
One can't help but admire Goodling's display of Machievellian manipulation, even if her physical appearance made it less of a challenge. Let's face it, if Rosy has proven anything it's that verbally challenging a cute blond woman only injures the attacker. This is doubly true if the cute blond woman has established a reputation for vulnerability, by say crying during a prior interview.
Goodling reinforced the idea that she was weak and defenseless by using a soft childlike voice and appearing near tears early in the hearing. The purpose in this maneuver was twofold, firstly it reinforced the publics sympathy for her should her questioners be too aggressive and secondly it reminded the questioners that if they dropped the hammer, it would land squarely on on their own toes.
Goodling's questioners weren't clueless. They have been in politics long enough both to recognize an act when they see, and comprehend that the public does not. As a result, they spent the entire hearing soft pawing her in the hopes that she would say something or behave in a manner which would provide them an opening.
--TR_Populist
(To reply, click here.)
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