Girls! Girls! Girls!

This is the second in our three-part exploration of how Americans came to pick as presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain – candidates who, now that the sheen has started to fade, seem more institutional than inspirational, both more inclined to view government as part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

In case you missed it, you can read about Force # 1 – the under-informed electorate – by clicking here.

Now for Force # 2:

Universal suffrage elects a government determined to end universal suffering – an invitation for excessive intervention.

Recently, we analyzed the differences between the Democrat and Republican parties through the lens of a Mommy/ Daddy metaphor, concluding that boundless government involvement is a result of the “Mommy” politics of the Democrats.

Of course, there’s another dimension to that metaphor, one that goes beyond what “Mommy” means to government … and one that helps explain how “Mommy” keeps getting reelected (well, not discounting all the “Daddy” Republicans’ bad behavior).

Anyway, moms in the electorate beget moms in politics.

Today, this notion seems tinged with misogyny. To dare to question women’s suffrage is tantamount to indicting women themselves – when actually it is suffrage we’re putting under the microscope.

Once upon a time, politicians and activists – even feminists! – understood the distinction.

Countering the suffrage movement was anti-suffragism – a movement led by some of the most respected, thoughtful, and liberal Americans.

Anti-suffragists wisely looked past the sparkling sentiments of equality and focused instead on the practical consequences of such contrived egalitarian ideals. With remarkable prescience they warned that women voters would, because of their innate gift to nurture, create a meddling government.

Iconic feminist Emma Goldman spearheaded anti-suffragism on the grounds that women are prone to dictate morality through law. Underlying her position – ostensibly anti-woman, by current standards – is a determined celebration of womanhood. Goldman understood the female inclination toward goodness and morality, but she also understood that it is not the place of man nor woman nor government to prescribe goodness and morality.

The former U.S. President Grover Cleveland opposed suffrage, writing in the Ladies’ Home Journal that it would upend “a natural equilibrium so nicely adjusted to the attributes and limitations of both [men and women] that it cannot be disturbed without … peril.”

Though his maleness kept him from stating it as directly as Goldman and her ilk – forcing him to couch his ideas in broad language – a reading-between-the-lines look at his words reveals that his reasoning was similar to Goldman’s. That is, that women voters would, because of and not in spite of their goodness, elect an intervening, interfering government.

And that’s exactly what we have today – and what Obama and McCain offer more of, particularly Obama, member of the “Mommy” party that he is.

It’s a tale of road-to-hell good intentions, really – both suffragism itself and the reasons against it.

Suffragism sought fairness … of course it did; it was led by women!

But that’s just it  … as anti-PC as it may be to say it, America’s particular brand of governance (i.e. autonomy, self-reliance) is ill-suited to the hand-holding ways of women.

Which is why – to borrow a term from term limit advocates – politicians need to be changed almost as often as diapers.

**Tune in tomorrow for the final segment of this series.

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