Political Notebook - The Victim Olympics

I vividly remember a conversation with my father. I must have been on the cusp of adolescence, beginning to figure out how the world worked -- recognizing that my parents didn't know quite everything and that though my life had been charmed, it really may not be fair for everyone. I had figured out something in my head for the first time and I was about to speak it out loud so that my father could confirm its truth. I said something along the lines of, "I can never be the president, can I?"

"Why not?" my dad must have asked because no good father would allow his son's dreams to start being limited by reality even before reaching high school.

"Because were Jewish," I answered. For the first time in my life I began to understand that the things I had been taught to believe about my country and the world may not be as true as we all wished they were. I was deeply saddened, not because I had a particular interest in being president, but because I recognized for the first time that the American dream seemed to have limits, that sometimes reality got in the way of that dream.

Even as I've gotten older and have sadly grown accustomed to finding limits on the American dream, I retain a healthy sense of disappointment each time I realize that a particular person is being put at a disadvantage. And in our country's history, no traits have been more disadvantageous than being female, black, and/or poor. (my Judaism may have dashed any White House dreams, but it has hardly been a glass ceiling) As I watch the race for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, it is inspiring to me because each candidate is proving that even these most disadvantageous of traits can be overcome.

First, Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses and sent a shockwave of hope through the country. For a moment, Obama reminded us of the possibilities our country can offer. However, as good as Obama's victory made me feel, I was troubled by the rush coronation of him as our national savior (I'm talking to you Chris Matthews) as well as the sense that his victory as an African American was the only way Iowa could have signaled a new page turned in our history. It was as if they had forgotten that an African American had won presidential primaries before (Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988), but a woman had not.

Hillary Clinton is blazing a trail no less important than the one being forged by Barack Obama. I am thrilled as a civil rights advocate to see Obama with a real shot at winning the nomination, but I am also overjoyed as the father of a daughter to see Hillary breaking her own ground. The shame of this primary is that I am being forced to choose between them -- only one page can be turned in 2008. And I am being asked to evaluate whether an African American or a woman in the White House would better represent national progress.

On this question, Hillary Clinton is at a disadvantage, not because she is a woman, but because she is a Clinton. Were Hillary Clinton any other woman, she probably would not be able to mount a viable campaign, for it is her last name and not her resume of decades confronting the status quo that seems to legitimize her candidacy.

In an excellent op-ed in the New York Times, Gloria Steinam wrote that a female with Barack Obama's biography would have no grounds for even running for the Senate, much less the White House. As I see it, the opposite is also true -- a male with Hillary Clintons biography would be so qualified for the White House that he would have run years ago. Looking at it this way, it is hard to dispute Steinam's assertion that, at least when it comes to leadership, the female glass ceiling is lower.

This all boils down to what some call the Victim Olympics -- which group has had it worse? There is no answer to this question and the very fact that two groups that have been historically disenfranchised and extraordinarily underrepresented in American political leadership are competing in this way demonstrates how distant racial and gender equity remains.

With this in mind, I was encouraged to see Hillary triumph in New Hampshire and lengthen the race so that more voters will have the opportunity to make their choice between two ground-breaking, convention-shattering, (insert your own cliche here) candidates that may have once questioned whether they could be barred from serving as president, but are now refusing to accept an American dream with limits.