WaPo columnist Monica Hesse makes a case for “The unique harm we cause when we dissect a powerful woman’s love life.”
As of this week, women are running for president — multiple women — and lo, the country has been awarded the chance for a do-over. This time, we swear, we won’t order them to smile more if they really want our votes. This time, we’ll stop using phrases such as “likable enough?” when what we really mean is, “too many ovaries?”
While I agree with Hesse on the merits here, she’s begging the question. While there’s substantial research demonstrating that we apply gendered frames to political analysis, often unconsciously and usually in ways detrimental to women, it’s also true that we apply a “likability” framework to and comment on the physical appearance of men. Regardless, it’s a distraction from the question at hand.
Our collective consciousness has been raised and so we’ll begin by . . . excavating one of the candidate’s decades-old love life?
Sigh.
The candidate in question is Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), whose past relationship with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was confirmed for the national media when Brown published an op-ed: Yes, they’d dated. And, yes, he “may have influenced her career” by appointing her to two commissions. But then again, he’d boosted the careers of a lot of people, he wrote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom were examples. Kamala Harris? She was unique, Brown claimed, only in that, “after I helped her, [she] sent word that I would be indicted if I ‘so much as jaywalked’ while she was D.A.”
The two things were separate, according to Brown. 1) They dated. 2) He helped her career. The latter didn’t have anything to do with the former.
Whether you believe that probably depends on whether you believe one can separate someone’s professional qualifications from their dinner companionship. Plenty of critics did not believe this was possible: “Hey @KamalaHarris given that you’re so vocal about the #MeToo movement, what are your thoughts on sleeping your way to the top of your political career?” queried right-wing pundit Tomi Lahren in a representative tweet.
Is this just politics as usual? Is this just politics for women? Politics for men and women who knew Willie Brown — whose career was dogged by accusations of patronage?
Plenty of us have, after all, spent an awful lot of time discussing Bill Clinton’s willie and Anthony Weiner’s wiener: it’s not that we don’t talk about the sexual predilections of male candidates.
But we do talk about them in a different way. We talk about men abusing power. We talk about women not even deserving power. The distinction matters, because the conversation isn’t really about sex, it’s about legitimacy. It’s about who we think has earned the right to be successful, and what criteria we’ll invent, and who we’ll apply it to.
[…]
Does it help your career, to date someone powerful? I’d assume so. Does it also help to play golf with someone powerful, or smoke cigars with someone powerful, or belong to Skull and Bones? I’d assume that, too. But for decades we’ve accepted those relationships — many of which benefited only men — as standard procedure for how executives and politicians get ahead. In August, ProPublica published a story about a trifecta of Mar-a-Lago members exerting influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs. None of them had military or government experience, but they did have long-standing acquaintanceships with the president.
Was Harris the only appropriate candidate for the commissions to which Brown appointed her? I don’t know.
I do know that by the time she met Brown, she’d already graduated from Howard University, where she’d been elected to the student government and the lauded debate team, and she’d already graduated from law school, and she was already working as a deputy district attorney in one of the most populous counties in the United States — and maybe, just maybe, she was already going places on her own?
He wasn’t her boss. The relationship was consensual. Dating a technically still-married man 30 years one’s senior might not be the relationship choice that most of us would make, but it’s understandable that smart government officials in San Francisco’s political scene would end up socializing with each other. Was Harris supposed to date only morons with whom she had nothing in common?
Welcome to the 2020 campaign. I’m not saying there are easy answers to all of my questions. But the only way a woman is ever going to be elected to the top of anything is if we stop making insinuations about how she got there.
So, again, gendered analysis is a problem. In an ideal world, we’d judge the conduct of a woman the same as a man. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not allowed to scrutinize the conduct of women seeking high political office—let alone the Presidency of the United States—just as we do that of men.
The relevant portions of Brown’s op-ed:
Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago. Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker.
And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a host of other politicians.
The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I “so much as jaywalked” while she was D.A.
Hesses’ retort, “Was Harris supposed to date only morons with whom she had nothing in common?” is unworthy of a junior high debater. There are an incredible number of smart, well-educated, unmarried professionals for a young assistant DA to date in San Francisco. It’s absolutely reasonable for voters to consider why it is that Harris chose to date a married man 30 years her senior who just so happened to be one of the most powerful men in the state. And, yes, it’s reasonable for them to wonder whether Brown would have given her the career boost of appointing her to two statewide commissions had they not been sleeping together.
Given that she was successfully elected D.A. of San Francisco—with whatever help Brown may have been able to provide—and then not only re-elected to that office but elected twice to serve as California Attorney General and later U.S. Senator from California, I don’t find those questions particularly interesting any more. But others are free to disagree. And we frequently go back more than twenty years in examining the behavior of aspirants for high office.
Hesses’ larger argument is actually much more interesting:
Does it help your career, to date someone powerful? I’d assume so. Does it also help to play golf with someone powerful, or smoke cigars with someone powerful, or belong to Skull and Bones? I’d assume that, too. But for decades we’ve accepted those relationships — many of which benefited only men — as standard procedure for how executives and politicians get ahead. In August, ProPublica published a story about a trifecta of Mar-a-Lago members exerting influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs. None of them had military or government experience, but they did have long-standing acquaintanceships with the president.
So, on the one hand, this makes my point: we in fact routinely ask questions about these connections with respect to male politicians. We were asking about Skull and Bones thirty-plus years ago when George H.W. Bush—decades out of college and with the most impressive political resume of any presidential aspirant since the Founding generation—was running for President. We are and should be asking about the qualifications of Trump appointees with whom he has business ties.
It’s certainly fair, then, to ask the same kind of questions about former sex partners. But that raises two, related questions.
First, is a sexual relationship different than other types of relationship with respect to politics? One presumes a greater intensity of affection for a sex partner than a golfing buddy or fraternity brother. But do we naturally presume more malign intent on the part of the beneficiary of the favoritism if garnered through a sexual relationship that other bonds? Probably. Is that fair? I don’t know.
Secondly, given the direction these things tend to work—powerful men are far more likely to have sex with younger, up-and-coming women than powerful women are with younger, up-and-coming men—women are going to be far more likely to be criticized on this front. But, of course, this works both ways: men simply have far less opportunity to advance their careers in this manner. So, the fact that the question is asked more of women is hardly shocking.
At the end of the day, I can’t imagine this issue will have a significant bearing on the outcome of the 2000 Presidential election. The Democratic field looks to be quite large, with a plethora of well-qualified candidates. While Harris is relatively new on the national scene, having been in the Senate only two years, that’s exactly where Barack Obama was when he began his successful 2008 campaign—and Harris’ state-level experience is far more impressive than his. Other candidates and presumptive candidates—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren—have considerably more name recognition but they’re also generationally older. We’ll see how that plays out.
