cover image Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling

Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling

Eleanor Clift, Tom Brazaitis. Scribner Book Company, $26 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-684-85619-3

Brimming with comments from unnamed sources as well as from plenty of heavyweight politicos, this is a sharp, insider's view of the quest to elect a female U.S. president. Clift, a Newsweek editor and McLaughlin Group panelist, and her husband, Brazaitis, an editor and columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (co-authors of War Without Bloodshed), emphasize Geraldine Ferraro's watershed vice-presidential bid on the 1984 Democratic ticket with Walter Mondale, and how Mondale's loss was laid at Ferraro's--and all women's--feet. They also probe George Bush's subsequent choice of youthful Dan Quayle, rather than seasoned Sandra Day O'Connor, as a running mate, and why Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who they contend is smarter and more ambitious than her siblings, has had to struggle for electability despite her dynastic connections. Clift and Brazaitis assert that women win as often as men when they run, if they can get over the fund-raising hurdle, which stops many campaigns before they start--most recently Elizabeth Dole's much-touted bid for president and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman's senate run. From the election of Margaret Thatcher in England to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas debate, Clift and Brazaitis explore the catalysts that have spurred women to challenge the old boy network, as well as President Clinton's groundbreaking appointments of the first women to hold such key positions as attorney general and secretary of state. According to the authors, it is inevitable that a woman will be elected president in the next decade (the likely choice: Hillary Clinton). Melding the immediacy of a breaking news story with savvy investigative journalism, this lively analysis of women's political struggles over the past two decades exposes the impact of feminism on the Beltway. (July)