Too Late for Our First Woman President

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When I was little, probably around 6 or 7 years old, I told my mom that I wanted to be the first woman president. And while my mom is very supportive of my many varied and changing aspirations, (hi, mom!) I'll never forget her response to this dream of mine. 

“God, I hope not.” 

Of course, it’s not that my mom didn’t want me to be president (though given how stressed she got when I played goalie in my youth soccer games, I’m sure she didn’t mind that I eventually moved on from that one). But she said that she hoped by the time I was old enough to be president, we’d have had a woman in the oval office. 

Well, folks, I hate to break it to you, but we officially missed the deadline. Last week I turned 35 - I’m officially old enough to be president and we still have not had a woman in the oval office. 

Nikki Haley is heading into Tuesday’s Republican primary in New Hampshire, hoping that this will be her shot. While Trump leads the polls in just about every state, his lead in New Hampshire isn’t huge and the demographics of the state are more favorable for Haley than they are anywhere else. However, it’s hard to see how, even if she did win the New Hampshire primary, (unlikely enough in and of itself) she could parlay that into enough statewide wins to overtake Trump’s tremendous polling lead. 

But imagine, for a moment, if Nikki Haley could make it all the way to the White House from her current position in a distant and withering second place in the Republican primary. Nikki Haley has a long history of fighting for abortion bans and as a candidate for President she’s said she’ll sign a national abortion ban. Of course women aren’t the only people who can get pregnant, and are certainly not the only people who would face immense trauma and suffering under such a ban. But it’s certainly worth noting that if Nikki Haley were elected first woman president, she would likely preside over one of the greatest reversals in women’s rights in American history. 

Nikki Haley was also happy to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations on behalf Donald Trump’s administration, a man who bragged about committing sexual assault, whose had multiple women come forward with credible accusations of rape against him. As governor, she slashed funding to services that support victims of domestic violence. And in her current campaign she seems to have little to say on issues that have enormous impact on women, like the child care crisis and the maternal mortality crisis facing Black women. This is no surprise since the party she seeks the nomination from repeatedly attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, prevent people from accessing abortions or birth control, block efforts to pass a national parental leave policy, and keep guns in the hands of those who have committed domestic violence. 

As first woman president, Nikki Haley would likely follow the example of the first woman prime minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, now widely reviled for her austerity politics, which included abolishing free milk for school children. 

On the one hand, we are lucky that President Nikki Haley is extremely unlikely at this point. On the other hand, the alternative is that President Donald Trump 2: The Reckoning is much, much more likely. 

We did come close to electing our first woman president in 2016, when Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote, but failed to get enough electoral college votes to secure the presidency, and we are still facing the consequences of our lack of follow through. Not just in the lingering stench of Donald Trump’s first term, like the three Supreme Court Justices that he appointed who enabled the Court to overturned Roe v. Wade, but also in the specter of a future second Trump term where we very well might lose the ability to have elections at all. 

Electing Hillary Clinton would not have fixed everything. We know that. Not only is it impossible for one election or candidate to fix everything, I am sure that Clinton would have enacted policies that we would disagree with, or take actions that harm vulnerable people here at home and around the world. We’re seeing that now, as our euphoria at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and pride in Biden’s domestic agenda faces the tidal wave of his administration's abhorrent approach to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Breaking the glass ceiling wouldn’t necessarily make parental leave or universal child care more likely, especially not with our fend-for-yourself at best Republican Party, at worst, we’ll make the obstacles worse. 

But we’ve never had a woman as president before, so we don’t know. We’ve never had someone who has experienced sexism as President, someone who has been asked about cookies when they’d rather be asked about policy, someone who hasn’t gotten a job because they are pregnant, or could be. We’ve never had someone whose reproductive health care decisions were made by men in courtrooms rather than doctors and bodily autonomy. We don’t know how those experiences might influence a person’s actions as president. We know how they might influence policy, behavior, demeanor, but we don’t know if or how they might change the way a president makes decisions. 

We deserve a chance to find out. 

I’m 35 now and I’ve only voted for one woman in a general election, and one in a primary. Assuming we get to have future elections, we’re on the cusp of a generational shift, the chance to vote for someone for President who hasn’t been a part of federal politics or public life for fifty years. Assuming we keep fighting for the future of our democracy, for the right to choose our leaders, we may very well have several women to choose from. We may find ourselves face to face with Nikki Haley again, or Kari Lake, or Elise Stefanik, or any number of women candidates who are happy to close the door of equality and opportunity behind them. Or we’ll get a chance to vote for Gretchen Whitmer or Kamala Harris or Tammy Baldwin, women who have spent their careers fighting for a world where we can all thrive. Hopefully we’ll soon prove that we truly can and will elect the best person for the job regardless of gender. 

But nothing will change the fact that my mom was right - we should have already.