"The Addams family has been shorted in the currency business," proclaimed Chris Christie, who was last to name an American woman that he would celebrate on the $10 bill in last week's primary debate. For a moment, I was hopeful that he was going with Morticia. But alas, comic relief was in short supply that evening. And though the $10 bill question was largely a throw-away (stemming from U. S. Treasurer Rosa Rios' June announcement that the $10 bill will have a woman on it by 2020), it revealed something worth discussing.
Some argue that the mostly vapid replies -- my mother; my wife; someone else's wife; a nurse I read about in the second grade -- reflect the ideological constraints of today's Republican party, i.e. most candidates deliberately hewed to the impoverished roles granted to women by the Right: mother, care-taker, wife. Did you see 11 people furiously scrolling through their mental lists of female heroes, discarding one after the other to settle on what they figured was a safer choice? We will never really know, but the truth is, most of them couldn't think of a woman hero. Here are five reasons their hapless replies should concern us:
1. Eight of these people have daughters. OK, not everyone excels at the lightning round or carries lists of luminaries in their heads. But of 11 candidates, eight raised girls. Did they never dream of greatness for their children? Did they never tuck their daughters in with a tale of Amelia Earhart, Marian Anderson, Billie Jean King or Eleanor Roosevelt? If not Ruth Bader Ginsburg, how about Sandra Day O'Connor? If not Madeleine Albright, how about Condoleezza Rice?
2. Many of these people have sons. See the above. Now imagine a world where all children are raised to admire men and women alike.
3. "It's probably illegal, but what the heck." This was Jeb Bush's rationale for having non-American Margaret Thatcher on the brain, but it also could serve as this crop of candidates' tagline. Deporting children born in this country is illegal. Torture is illegal. Refusing marriage licenses to gay couples is illegal. When a masked man robs a bank, we don't accuse him of flouting "laws he doesn't like." We accuse him of breaking the law. Let's hold our leaders to the same standard.
4. Rosa Parks was not "an everyday American." To his credit, Marco Rubio chose Parks for the $10 bill. But his description of her erases some important truths. Rosa Parks wasn't simply too tired to move to the back of the bus. Secretary of the NAACP chapter in Montgomery, she'd recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a training center for activists. Her act of civil disobedience was planned. She was brave, yes, but she also was strategic, and tied to a larger movement for civil rights.
5. Clara Barton believed black lives matter. Clara Barton was not the safe choice Scott Walker assumed. Tonight when you tuck your children in, tell them how this die-hard tomboy evolved into a staunch ally of Frederick Douglass and an outspoken feminist, whose insistence on equal pay for women would clash with Walker's anti-union views. Tell them about Mother Jones, Fannie Lou Hamer and the real Rosa Parks. Change happens when people of good conscience study history, band together, and build a movement grounded in the dignity of all.
That 11 people running for president are mired in a calcified, distorted past cannot not deter us. "I have an almost complete disregard of precedent," said Clara Barton, "and a faith in the possibility of something better... I go for anything new that might improve the past." See? Role models aren't so hard to find.