Mitt Romney generated a lot of flak for his “binders full of women” remark during Thursday’s second presidential debate. And he deserves to be criticized, but not for some throw-away comment taken wildly out of context.
No, it is not the wording of Romney’s comments that offends, but the fact that he and Obama feel the need to pander to women.
Whether the topic is jobs or contraception, what makes a group of bureaucratic men, largely removed from public life, qualified to preach about issues they perceive to be important to women?
The answer is simple — nothing. No matter how many qualified female advisers, found in binders or otherwise, they have doing policy analysis and advising them, they can’t really know.
Which is why politicians should campaign on principal-driven policies, rather than pigeonhole the American electorate into neat little subgroups based on race, gender and income level. In short, your desire to court my vote should be driven by the areas where my individual ideals and principles coincide with yours. To do otherwise is inherently sexist and fails to take into account the diversity of women’s interests. News flash, politicians — women as a voting block do not possess a collective brain. We have different priorities, influenced by our individual thoughts and experiences.
Most Americans, and women in particular, are intelligent enough to extrapolate the impact the goals of federal policy will have on their lives. If they like what they perceive to be the implications toward them personally, they’ll vote for a candidate. If not, they’ll apply the same rational process to the stated goals of the other candidate.
It’s the only way to end this ridiculous “malarkey,” to borrow a phrase from Vice President Joe Biden, about one party wanting to take away women’s health care choices. This fear mongering is not only downright asinine, but ought to be extremely offensive to any self-sufficient woman.
Excuse me if I don’t define myself by whether or not I have access to “free” contraception, or go running to the federal government to solve my problems. Are we really going to allow others to dictate how we should act or feel about these personal issues? And what exactly about this follows the “feminist” doctrine of strength and independence?
And the same principle applies to subdividing voters by race or income level. Are we really going to let anyone besides ourselves frame how we should think about issues that affect us? That’s not individualism. It’s some bizarre form of collectivism, and it’s a perversion of the underlying foundation of American government — personal sovereignty.
Essentially, this means that because we’re individuals with unique experiences and viewpoints, no one but us can know what’s in our best interests. That’s why government is limited and ultimately answerable to the people.
This is precisely why candidates for public office should run on ideals, not this degrading groveling toward the perceived priorities of narrowly defined groups of voters. As individuals, we can’t truly understand the thought processes of others because we do not share the same experiences or influences. But we can all understand overarching ideas, and their applicability to our own lives. In the end, that’s what America boils down to — principles. So, when we perform our greatest civic duty, voting, shouldn’t it be based on this, not the divisiveness of political pandering?