Sometimes the received wisdom can raise red flags for me, and this analysis of the final question of the Thursday night Democratic debate got them waving for me:
“I will ask for forgiveness,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). “I know that sometimes I get really worked up. And sometimes I get a little hot. I don’t really mean to.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) was similarly reflective: “Well, I’d ask for forgiveness, any time any of you get mad at me. I can be blunt, but I am doing this because I think it is so important to pick the right candidates here.”
The five men onstage, in contrast, offered the gift of their ideas. Several suggested giving others books they had written. Others focused on policy proposals they hatched.
In a campaign that has emphasized policy differences, generational divides and geographical values, this single question illustrated another dimension — what many see as a double standard in the ways men and women are expected to behave. [WaPo]
This analysis presupposes that the lessons society teaches – a better word is inculcates – are the only way to analyze apparent patterns in the data.
And who knows, it may be right, although we’ll never know for sure. But when we tempt the bull with those red flags – mixing my metaphors, to be sure – I have to go looking for alternative explanations. Especially when we have a data sample so small as to make the application of the statistics behind the societal model of analysis meaningless, and, just to make it worse for the analysts, a collection of subjects, in both genders, who hardly fit the profile of the common citizen. Each and every one of these candidates are extraordinary in some way, even if it’s merely gall.
So let me put forth the idea that the two candidates, irrespective of gender, who chose forgiveness over gifts may, in fact, have an insight into the political process lacking in their fellow candidates. Political processes executed by angry people, hungry for vengeance, lusting for dominance, are unlikely to easily make the passage around the Cape; instead, they face storms, raids by pirates, … well, you’re getting my drift.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, can act as oil upon the upset waters of the ocean, smoothing a path for better communication and cooperation between these ponderous ships of war that seem to make up our Legislature these days. By apologizing, the one offering the apology effectively lays an obligation, soft as it might be, upon those to which the apology was offered, an obligation to be civil in return, to seriously consider the ideas offered, to find the road to cooperation.
This is quite a frail obligation; someone like President Trump, an ungracious and incompetent brute who does not understand the ways of government as refined over centuries of experience, should not be offered an apology – ever. He would not honor it. But not all elected members of government are like him, even if names such as McConnell, Cotton, Gohmert, Collins, and others come to mind far too easily.
But the offering of gifts, on the other hand, especially of a book authored by the giver, has a sense of arrogance to it that I think may roil the waters of government. There’s a reason reaching across the aisle and legislators who might be ideological foes, but are close friends outside of the legislative arena are rightly celebrated metaphors for getting things done in government. The sense of humility that comes with them implicitly denies the tower of Ego which will sabotage the creation of the desired legislation.
I might be right, I might be wrong in this analysis of the responses of Senators Warren and Klobuchar. But I think it’s worth actually evaluating the responses on their own merits, before assigning gender biases to them.
