Hillary Clinton visits Cleveland State University

[Mary Anne Crampton]

Friday, February 29, 2008
Regina Brett
Plain Dealer Columnist

I started writing a column with these words:

Only four days away, and I'm still undecided.

Then I decided to decide and rewrote this column. The primary is Tuesday. It's time to choose. As a Democrat, my choices are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

My first choice would be to choose both of them. I want the Dream Team. They are the two best people for the job. Neither could pick a better running mate. I hope whoever gets the Democratic nomination will consider asking the other to be his or her vice president.

Either way, one will make history. The first woman or the first black nominee.

There's little they disagree on.

The North American Free Trade Agreement? They both want a new deal.

Health care? They both have plans that require most people to have health insurance.

The war? They both want out fast. She voted for the war and now opposes it; he wasn't a senator at the time, so we don't know how he would have voted.

The only difference between them is the obvious: She's a woman. He's a black man.

I never imagined being stuck in this position. A few years ago, there were no good candidates. The party settled for John Kerry. Back then the future of the Democratic Party looked grim. Now? It's never been brighter.

On Tuesday, I attended the "Debate @ Cleveland State." The university and its president, Michael Schwartz, pulled off a dazzling event in just two weeks. They did us all proud.

Just as the debate was about to start, a young woman in her 20s walked by. She looked like a girl, so small, so young, so much like my own daughter. I'd never seen Chelsea Clinton in person. She looked nervous as she studied the woman on stage. Suddenly it struck me: Her mom is running for president. Her mom.

Someone's mom is running for president.

But as soon as the debate started, Sen. Clinton got on my nerves. She wouldn't stop talking, even for a commercial. She even griped about the questioning. I was watching the stereotypical woman who talks too much and complains too often.

Then I stopped myself. If she were a man unwilling to give up the floor, a man pointing out the unfairness of questions, a man trying to take over the debate, she'd look pit-bull tough, not bitchy, whiny and defensive.

If Obama had been a woman, his laid-back, thoughtful, calm demeanor would have been labeled passive, wimpy and indecisive.

I left the debate with my mind wide open but couldn't stop thinking about that daughter behind me, a daughter watching her mother run for president. What would it mean to have a woman president?

I once saw a fourth-grade teacher pin up a big poster bearing the faces of every U.S. president. All 43 of them. All men. Imagine a woman's face there. Imagine every kid in America growing up seeing one person who looks like the other half of America.

That's what I want the future to look like.

On Tuesday I will do something I have never done before and may never get the chance to do again.

I am voting for a woman for president.

[dl meckes]

Too bad Shirley Chisholm didn't make it through to more primaries.

I wrote her in.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/chisholm/