A recipe for incompetence (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
When I was a young girl in Somalia, I would listen to the grown-ups around me ask my brother: “What would you like to be when you grow up?” No one ever asked me this.
But I always interrupted. I shouted over him to say things like “When I grow up, I will be a doctor”, or “Maybe I’ll go into engineering”, or “I will be President!”. I fantasised about becoming an army general so I could set my father free from prison, where he was being held as a political prisoner. Every time I saw a plane fly overhead (which was not as frequent back in those days), I would declare that I would grow up to be a pilot. I thought I had limitless options. I was a dreamer.
The response from most adults, both men and women, was always the same: “If God wanted you to be anything other than a wife and mother, he would have created you a man.” My kinder relatives would at least attempt to base their prejudice against women on something more than “God’s will”. They would say that women were not designed to do certain jobs, that it went against the natural order. My uncles and cousins would explain that every woman they knew who attempted to take a man’s job had failed. They insisted that it was actually a blessing to be a female and I should be happy since they had to work, while I got to enjoy the fruits of their labour and protection.
For many women around the world, a similar, deeply ingrained misogyny remains a part of everyday life. Yet there are also countless examples of women who prove this persistent myth to be wrong. Today, especially in the West, there are women who do — and excel at — all the things I dreamed of as a child and much more.
Nevertheless, there is now a ridiculous campaign in America (which is fast spreading to other countries), that seeks to fast-track the closing of the inequality gap and eliminate all prejudice against women in one fell swoop. The result is a caricaturing of a very complex situation: it is one thing to develop animation characters for Disney that feature girls and women as superheroes or to swap a woman for James Bond, but it is quite another to place women in high-profile positions when they are clearly unqualified for the job. As we are starting to discover, doing so only affirms prejudices.
Enter Kamala Harris. When Joe Biden was searching for a running mate, it seems he had just two requirements: black and female. The Democratic Party agreed, pressuring Biden to select a “diverse” candidate for vice president; at one point, he boasted of having to choose between four black women. Biden plucked out Harris from his narrow search field and what did he get? A vice president who is unhelpful in advancing his agenda and unable to connect with the American people.
This week marked the second time Biden slipped up and referred to his deputy as “President Harris”. But don’t be fooled. His mistake says more about his own level of competence than Harris’s. As we approach the one-year mark of Biden’s presidency, it is obvious that Harris was set up for failure from the start. She had neither the experience nor the demeanour to be a successful vice president. Biden’s approval ratings may have slumped, but they have nothing on his Veep’s.
Her failure is so embarrassing that even traditional allies are starting to flee. CNN, which traditionally fawns over black female Democrats, published a blistering hit on her late last year, painting her office as dysfunctional. A former employee described her management style as having destructive patterns. Since her disastrous trip to the southern border last June, at least seven of her close aides have resigned.
While I have never been a fan of Kamala Harris, it does sadden me to see her fail so miserably. I had hoped the first female vice president would prove a success. After all, her failures affect more than just the White House and the Democratic Party; they affect women everywhere. On one level, Harris’s failures affirm the beliefs of misogynists who incorrectly believe that women are not capable of holding such weighty positions. It provides fodder to those men like my uncles and cousins, validating their prejudices against women.
More depressing, however, is the impact it could have on women: it’s not too difficult to see how Harris becoming the target of ridicule could dissuade young girls from taking such positions in the future. For them to see a woman finally make it to the position of Vice President and then fail so ignominiously is a massive discouragement to every girl dreaming of a big future.
But this is also the problem with quotas more broadly. Equality and empowerment can’t be achieved through bureaucratic box-ticking. It has to be fought for and earned. Harris, however, is a clear example of someone who has acquired her position due to her immutable characteristics, rather than her own abilities and achievements. The consequence of this isn’t hard to discern: any successful woman will wonder if she, too, were hired to fulfil a quota requirement, asking if she earned her position or were handed it.
What today’s activists fail to understand is that the key for any woman to succeed remains the same as it has always been: to prove that she is capable. Simply ticking the boxes of “female” or “minority” and expecting a good outcome might make you feel good about yourself in the short term. But in the real world, it is never enough. In the case of Harris, it is a recipe for incompetence.
I wasn’t wrong to dream of something better when I was a little girl, despite my family’s disbelief. Girls today deserve to do the same, with strong and successful female leaders setting an example. How sad, then, that arguably the most powerful female politician in the world embodies neither of these qualities. All America is left with is a failed black woman. And there’s nothing progressive about that.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an UnHerd columnist. She is also a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Founder of the AHA Foundation, and host of The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. Her new book is Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.
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SubscribeIt always impressed me that Margaret Thatcher led her party not just on merit, but in the teeth of general 1970s sexism and patronising bullies like Ted Heath. She then won three massive electoral victories, proving both talent and conviction – a leader who could connect with aspirational voters everywhere. She was loved and admired by millions. I only wish Boris had half her intelligence and belief in Conservatism!
Now that was an achievement any little girl can admire.
You nailed it when you mentioned “conviction”, you can have talent without it but as a leader it won’t get you far.
My very first thought. The prejudices Thatcher faced were far greater than any Harris might have had to overcome – none, really, since her entire career has been one she just slipped her dress off for. That said, no one in her current (upright) position could possibly succeed at anything, since this “administration” is obviously designed to fail.
There is another distinction. While Margret Thatcher achieved her position no merit, Harris got where she is by almost entirely dubious means
Haha
“ her entire career has been one she just slipped her dress off for”. I presume you can offer proof of this statement.
Yeah would be interested in knowing about this as I’m not keen on smearing people with innuendo in a decent debate.
Update to my comment: I see Galeti refers to her previous ‘relations’ below.
Willie Brown. And yes, “Willie” is his real name.
Here’s just one, but you can look it up yourself for further proof. I love that Brown describes their affair as “dating”. When I was dating, no one gave me a $400K a year job and a BMW. Then again, I kept my dresses on. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/27/willie-brown-kamala-harris-san-francisco-chronicle-letter/2695143002/
I’m not a fan of the Vice President, but the $400,000 annual salary you are referring to is way off. That amount was spanning 5 years. The BMW was likely a late model version. She was his young girlfriend–so what!? Willie Brown, as one of the most powerful politicians in CA history, helped out many people politically.
Are you a Russian troll?
You don’t think she has the experience and demeanour to be a successful underwear model ? Nor does she have the mutable characteristics .
Facts, please! Or at least reasonable opinions.
I’m not sure Margaret Thatcher was exactly ‘loved by millions’ – she was always a tremendously divisive figure as well as being subject to all the coded and not-so-coded sexism and patronisation in her own party. Admired, certainly, even by many of those who disagreed with her. But, yes, your overall point is exactly correct.
She was loved and loathed by millions but of course we generally only hear from the loathers, who would no doubt loathe anyone who is a Tory, let alone a strong woman who didn’t take sh*t from anyone and took on the job of radically transforming a country that was dying on its feet after decades of post war recovery, loss of its Empire, crippled by union control and left wing profligacy
If you count the approximately 50+ million people who identify as being on the right side of the isle in the U.S. then she was indeed loved by millions.
I was one of those who loathed many of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, particularly the destruction of industry and communities in the North.
Nevertheless I can see that she was a woman from an ordinary background, in a small town very much like the one I grew up in and two stops down the line, who went to the same sort of school as I did, and who achieved what she did through ability and hard work. I can also see that, much as I disagreed with her policies as PM, she continued to work extremely hard and was competent, credible and behaved with integrity. I would have welcomed her back over the last two years.
Boris has no convictions, he just needs to be top. It won’t bother him when it’s over, he’ll just go back to making much more money as a journalist. Jobs are like wives and girlfriends, to be enjoyed and then discarded without a further thought.
Whenever I hear of people talking about how women face barriers or bias due to sexism, I point them to the NYC gender switch play where they re-enact the Trump – Hillary debates. But, with a male actor playing Hillary, a female actor playing Trump and both doing a great job of impersonating their mannerisms and speech patterns.
Amusingly, the crowd went in with the expectation of seeing their own biases fulfilled – “if a woman behaved like trump she would never be tolerated etc”
In reality, and to their horror, they realised that male Hillary was loathsome, slimy, insincere, while female Trump came out straightforward, confident and sincere if a bit blunt.
In reality, Hillary being a woman helped her deflect criticism, while Trump was unfairly attacked because being a white male is the greatest evil of our times.
And no, in the 70s, or 60s or centuries back, Britain and some other parts of the world were not quite like Somalia is even today. Thatcher faced a lot of hatred and bias, not because of her gender but because of her politics.
Ironically, the ones who would venomously slander and badmouth her, just like they did with say Sarah Palin, are largely the kind of women who would complain about misogyny, gender bias etc. You know those books full of “100 awesome women” which are pretty much mandatory for bookstore fronts now? Never, ever would they include a woman who is probably one of the greatest 20th century leaders.
I was with you all the way, until you mentioned Sarah Palin. That woman was the Republican counterpart to Kamala Harris and should never have been elevated to a position of national prominence, for a second. Her selection as McCain’s running mate was another perfect example of the problem of “box ticking,” as explained so well here by Ali.
Margaret Thatcher read Chemistry at Somerville, whilst Boris Johnson read ‘Greats’ at Balliol, need one say more?
Margaret Thatcher was a woman with strong convictions strongly held.
Tony Blair was a man with weak convictions strongly held.
Boris Johnson is a man with weak convictions weakly held.
What is ignored is that she spotted by Airey Neave MP an extremely astute and tough man who escaped from Colditz and then served in intelligence in WW2. Thatcher managed to attract very capable WW2 veterans such as Carrington, Pym and Whitelaw.
She was truly exceptional, and turned up just when we needed her most.
And shuffled off this mortal coil far too late
Affirmative action, positive discrimination, box-ticking, numerous names for the doleful practise have come and gone and they invariably produce mediocrities. But that doesn’t matter to the so-called progressives, does it? Feeling good about it is the name of the game, not actual merit or effective results.
Welcome to Scotland.
Emperor Kranky and her Braveheart cover band, make President Brandon or Marjorie Taylor Greene look like Mensa winning, intellectual giants in comparison
Agreed and the evidence is all around us in UK and USA particularly. The problem is that it may already be too late to change things.
Biden was elected because he wasn’t Trump.
Harris was named as VP because she chooses to characterize herself as black for political advantage.
Neither were elected based on factors such as competence or charisma.
If either fails the reasons are obvious and have nothing to do with ageism, sexism, or any of the other isms.
Maybe, but the other democratic contenders had the same qualification.
Biden was selected because he was the candidate who best answered what the electorate seemed to want.
I agree that Biden was elected by virtue of not being Trump. He won the nomination by not being Sanders.
Incorrect, he was simply the one with the most money and tightest political ties. Additionally, as Trevor Law stated, he was not Sanders.
Bloomberg had a great deal MORE money, and got nowhere. Biden was the candidate the (very divided) Democratic Party as a whole thought most likely to beat Trump, and they seem to have been right in this, if not much else.
Biden certainly received more “votes” than Trump, but he most certainly did not beat Trump.
That sounds like Corbyn after the 2019 election. “We won the argument”!
It’s not about the money you have, it’s about the money you receive from campaign donations by some industry crooks who know you now owe them a favor (Super PACs). My comment wasn’t meant to say that Biden won because he was a rich man. That’s certainly not the case.
I watched all of the Democratic debates except one, and was astounded at how horrible Bloomberg and DeBlasio were. Mayors of one of the largest cities on the planet, and their performances made my gut churn. I knew at that moment we were going to be stuck with Joe Biden.
I will admit that I was very briefly taken in by Kamala Harris, as she put on a short-lived veneer of presenting as a skilled, forceful speaker (some vestige of having been a prosecutor, I suppose). Looking back on this, I remember what Eddie Izzard said in his stand-up act about success in public speaking: “60 percent of it is how you look, 30 percent is how you sound, and only 10 percent is what you actually say.” I carry this sage observation with me now as a life lesson.
He was the Obama continuity candidate
Biden was selected because he was willing to be the perfect puppet, selling his soul as a consolation prize for being a loyal grifter for so many years. No other candidate had the number of horrendous gaffes, racist quotes and plagiarized speeches that Biden uttered over his 50 year political career, yet all of it was kept out of the headlines. In addition to his son’s corrupt dealings with China.
35 years ago, some in the media agreed that his career was over, yet here he is, leader of the free world. Only in a social media controlled new age is this possible.
that’s the true beauty of democracy in that people learn from their voting experiences… it’s just frustrating that nowadays we vote to make sure a party doesn’t get in… the classic FPTP vs PR argument.
Biden was seen to be a member of the old guard, with none of Trumps willingness to depart from the expected, and a pair of safe hands.
Those ‘safe hands’ don’t seem to be too reliable now.
He does seem gaga…and even in a politician that’s difficult to ignore.
ID politics will be the ruin of the west, picking people on a immutable characteristics basis for any job of importance is the road to mediocrity, and dangerous when it comes to roles such as the VP of the USA. I have trouble accepting such intelligent people even consider this a good way forward.
Identity politics will, in turn, lead to more racism and sexism. Think about it: any woman or non-white person could have been selected for their physical properties rather than their merits, so there is a chance they will be incompetent. Whereas white men in the same positions probably really are the best persons for the job. So which kind of doctor, lawyer etc. are you going to choose?
It will lead to more racism and sexism only if we remain a free people.
Nah the pendulum will swing back – it’s starting to already – and in 10 years time people will be embarrassed by the guff they wrote, as historians put the boot into them for denying biological facts.
Why is the left obssessed with race? The explanation is identity voting. If you vote your identity, bad governance is irrelevant. It doesn’t change your identity. So you keep voting your identity, even though the government gets worse and worse. If you’re convinced your identity means you vote for Democrats, you continue to vote for Democrats, regardless of how badly they do in governing.
The reason Democrats call all Republicans racist is because it maintains identity voting in minority communities. Democrats wouldn’t have a chance if people voted on the issues, like crime and school choice. So Democrats make sure that minorities think all Republicans are racist, so minorities won’t even consider voting for them. This leads to silly comments like saying Larry Elder, a black conservative running for Governor of California, is the black face of white supremacy. It leads to Sen. Tim Scott (R, SC) and Lt. Gov. Elect Winsome Sears (R, VA) to be called house negros or tokens, even though their success in elections show Republicans vote on issues, not skin color.
“Kamala Harris was set up to fail”And she did not disappoint.
She wasn’t set up to fail, she was given a massive unearned opportunity and has shown herself to be not up to the job. She is an individual being judged as a ‘representative’ of her race and gender when such a concept should not exist.
Spot on.
…I think you’ll find that the article’s title is deliberately ironic, in response to a headline of the same vein in The Economist, which seems to be excusing Biden.
What’s the evidence for the existence of “misogynists” like that in the west? Maybe in Somalia.
Plenty of people think the reason the Met are inept is because Cressida was appointed for being a gay woman, the CPS is inept because Alison Saunders was appointed for being a woman, and so on, and not because any of them was suited to the role in any material way.
This view seems to me to be so obviously accurate that I don’t get who’d disagree with it.
The point is not that “misogynists” think women can’t hold weighty positions. It’s that if you appoint women to such positions purely for being women, you’re going to get Kamala Harris. In other words, you and “misogynists” are in complete agreement.
I also found the use of the word “misogyny” jarring. I don’t get a sense of hatred in the minds of people whose thinking, whether through religion, traditions, or anything else, limits their vision of what girls can grow up to become. If I had been Ali’s editor I would have suggested choosing a different term, unless there was some actual hostility conveyed toward Ali as a child that did not get fully conveyed in her article.
Misogyny is a misused word; most men accused of misogyny don’t actually hate women. Male chauvinism always seems a more appropriate term to describe discrimination against women, by men, based on sex but it seems to have disappeared from the vernacular.
“to see a woman finally make it to the position of Vice President and then fail so ignominiously is a massive discouragement to every girl dreaming of a big future.”
Maybe not. We see people failing in top positions all the time. We know that considerations other than merit are always a factor in these positions; sometimes you get a Madeleine Albright or Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and they do as well as anybody else, and then you get a Kamala Harris as Vice President. It just sort of normalises things so that we don’t think about what sex people are anymore, they’re just people – it would be unrealistic to expect every woman was going to be a paragon, that wouldn’t be normal!
If Biden hadn’t decided that a black woman would help his election chances he would never have chosen this dud. He very definitely considered her sex and race, thus narrowing his choices drastically, so no, it wasn’t “normal” as you claim.
I’m not talking about how she got there; I mean that having been there, whether she fails or not, it will now seem normal that a woman could be there, and, like a man, could be a dud.
I assume Obama wanted Biden as VP because of the vote he brought (the white vote), this time the position is reversed,, what’s new?
No objection to a woman or black VP or President for that matter but Biden deliberately narrowed his choices to them. The only criteria should have been competence primarily, followed by experience and state of health (but that would have meant ruling himself out). He owed it to America to choose the best Person. If that happened to be a woman and African-American then fine but they should not have been the main criteria.
Who ever chose ‘the best person’? Isn’t the VP chosen on the basis of how many votes s/he will bring to the ticket?
Pretty sure that’s not the case. Nobody really knew Harris, and those who did generally didn’t like her. I do believe this was a gamble about “shattering glass ceilings”. It should be clear by now that what the extremist speartip of the progressive left does, and believes to be correct according to the resonance on Twitter, is actually not what most of the population wants. And likely, it’s not even what most left-wingers want.
Not always. Since California was a certain blue state, her selection made no sense from a vote perspective. She never won more than 1% of the vote in any of the primaries. And it was well known that blacks thought of her as not being black enough.
Sadly, you are probably right.
Many American political observers felt Obama selected Biden partially to shore up the white vote but also to shore up Obama’s weak foreign policy credential. After all he had only been a Senator for 2 years before grabbing the brass ring.
If Biden hadn’t decided that a black woman would help his election chances he may not have won.
“As we approach the one-year mark of Biden’s presidency, it is obvious that Harris was set up for failure from the start.”
I do not believe this at all. There is no way the precarious Democrats would have self sabotaged.
(who only won by several states creating postal voting illegally, without their State Houses of Representatives approving such a voting law change, and 34,000 votes changed strategically would have had Trump win) (and whose hold on the office is even more precarious every day, thanks in part to Harris)
No, some one in the Democrats made such a choice because they are utterly removed from what the Actual Americans think. They put her into the VP, even with the terrible scandal of her getting her power position by sleeping with Willie Brown – and utter incompetence, and horrible media skills. (worth a google, but 99% of those stories of the sex for position and money stories have been taken down by our Social Media Thought censors)
Kamala getting selected runs with the great, self inflicted, hurts politicos have done to themselves in history. But she was selected because they thought she was the best choice, that being how removed from reason the Democrats are now.
I remember a good friend of mine in the U.S at the time saying how Biden’s choice was inspired. He’s been very quiet about the whole subject of the tottering Biden Presidency, lately.
I have a problem with the use here of the word ‘misogyny’ to describe the attitudes the writer encountered as a child – women being expected to be wives and mothers and no more. These may be inadequate and unfulfilling vocations for some (many? most?) women, but is prescribing them (by women as well as men, she says) evidence of hatred of women?
Agreed Andrew. Empirically, the worst “misogynists” are typically other women. Although FGM is generally carried out on women by other women, it’s not just the third world where women’s attitude towards other women is women’s largest problem. Western women endlessly lament that they are “expected” to do this and that and the other thing, but when you drill into the expectations, it’s interesting how often they are the expectations not of men (who are always blamed nonetheless), but of other women.
A good example is the eternal one about how women are “expected” to look good or to be slim. Men don’t notice women’s turnout and are more likely to rate women’s looks high than vice versa. So this claim is certainly specious and derives entirely from other females’ expectations, not “society’s” and certainly not men’s. Women also generally enjoy spending money on clothes and beauty, so this whinge is a double-dip: they get to complain about having to do something, but they also get to enjoy doing it.
What they also fail to mention that men in Somalia don’t have the option to stay at home and avoid having to either
a. Get conscripted into whatever murderous war their local warlord has cooked up
Or
b. Engage in dangerous or gruelling occupations to keep their family fed.
Set Up to Fail- I think not. Kamala Harris was 55-56 years old when she made her decision to accept the nod and run for VP. She was no child and nobody’s fool. She was a candidate for the democratic nomination, did terribly, and was out of any serious consideration. Biden himself was doing poorly until Jim Clyburn came to his aid and the Democrat establishment, who could not accept Bernie Sanders, followed Clyburn’s lead.
At this point, she had all the information she needed. She had seen Biden up close and was likely still stinging from her own failed run. Her own ambition got the better of her. I think it is just that simple.
Well, I think she was somebody’s fool
Harris was a legend in her own mind.
Tulsa gabbard would have been a far better choiçe. One problem – she is not woke.
And she is hotter than Jill Biden.
Much better choice.
As always a moving and analytical approach from Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I was thinking about something though: why is it that one incompetent woman and/or person from ethnic minority should taint people’s perceptions of those groups altogether? Male leaders fail all the time. Yet as soon as a woman fails, the assumption is that all women are not fit for leadership and might have simply been chosen for quota requirement? :/
No risk of the Kamala disaster tainting the image of women and certainly not of immigrants from India. They have done fantastically well in the U.S in medicine, politics, business, science you name it. Not so sure of her Jamaican side, though and that’s the side which is always highlighted. One hears little of how the Indian subcontinent views her but Indians are notoriously colour conscious so they may be lukewarm on the subject.
There is a good reason Kamala emphasised the black half of her parentage while barely acknowledging her Indian roots. And the latter is why she is in turn ignored or even viewed with contempt by Indians.
In liberal land, being from a high performing ethnic group is like an insult, suggesting that their stories about “structural” racism re just hot air. While, conversely, any ethnic minority or religion being serenaded by those same liberals would suggests something’s gone badly wrong for your group.
It might interest you to know that blacks are probably as much, if not more colour conscious than Indians! And skin colour certainly is viewed as a strong factor in terms of attractiveness…for personal relationships and marriage. Nobody cares when it comes to politics or business.
True, Samir, racism through colour consciousness knows no boundaries.
It’s fascinating how we in the U.K. appear to have adopted the same criteria for racial oppression as the USA – that it mainly affects black people – when we have a far higher proportion of Asians. Interesting too to see the media and tv over-populating their casts and adverts with black people but almost no Asians.
It’s a great time to be a black actor; horrible if you’re white though.
Well, because there are no quota requirements for men in leadership … that seems logical?
I don’t think ordinary people think like that at all…only people writing articles think like that.
The more boxes you must “tick” the weaker the choices become. That’s because having to tick too many boxes narrows the field of acceptable candidates. And box ticking seems more like an exercise in optics rather than a search for the most qualified person. If Biden had ticked only one box, say “a woman” his choices would have been much larger, increasing the likelihood of finding a strong candidate. I don’t think that Kamala Harris’ poor performance will endanger any future women candidates for President as long as the women are competent and capable.
“As we approach the one-year mark of Biden’s presidency, it is obvious that Harris was set up for failure from the start. She had neither the experience nor the demeanour to be a successful vice president.”
This is woke tosh! Kamala Harris is an utter piece of rubbish who deserves to fail. If not for her race–remember–she’s Indian and Jamacian–and gender, she would be a cleaner, though that good and honourable work is probably too much for her.
Like Biden she is a mean and nasty person, and the people who seem to hate her the most–except for me–are those who work closely with her.
This is beneath what AHA usually writes by a lot.
‘More depressing, however, is the impact it could have on women…”
How utterly selfish to make such a statement. The last time I checked, Ms. Harris was the VP of the United States, which includes the half of the population who currently identify as male. When a leader of the country is complete failure, it impacts all of us.
In the comment section to a recent article there was considerable criticism directed at women writers who made their articles all about how something affected them as women or how it affected other women as if they were only writing from the point of view of one half of the population. It is a pity that Ayaan, an excellent and much admired writer, seems to be slipping into this trap here.
As others have remarked here, the fact that a woman chosen for the wrong reasons is not a success should have no bearing on the prospects of success for other women.
Well written Ayaan, Kamala like many important citizens of this nation are Potemkin people, something akin to wood cut outs. There is nothing behind them. They are dressed up to look imposing but you figure out the emptiness upon first analysis. For example, I am sure you already know you are miles smarter than many of our politicians, certainly far smarter than Hilary or Kamala and therein lies our biggest problem. These people devote time towards remaining useful to their special interest groups. They know how to posture, lie, false signal, or whatever, just to stay in the game. Thus they do nothing but create background noise while people lose touch with the world we live in. They pay no attention to their conscience, or to the needs of the people. They only care about offering their services, to their bosses. You can’t believe a word they say and sadly that may even mean global warming, So how do we change things
I agree. This seems to me a good diagnosis of the current problems with western democracy. How do we get competence back into government? I’m pretty sure it won’t be easy.
What about Condoleezza Rice? She’s been a great success, a truly impressive person.
I think there is always opposition of some kind or another when it comes to political positions, there are always people who will strongly disapprove for one reason or another, it might be skin colour, sex, religion, character, whatever. Never mind, if you are competent and charismatic enough you usually get the position you deserve. But not these days so much on account of “equity”. No good for anyone.
She doesn’t count because she is a conservative and an Uncle Tom.
Most people obtain positions partly due to immutable characteristics and partly due to abilities and achievements. The problem with Harris is that she’s veep wholly due to her immutable characteristics.
Harris’s incompetency & craving for attention are obvious. But the most disturbing thing about her is her vacuity. That cringeworthy event with the hired child actors says it all. This is not even a remotely intelligent person. And by the way, saying that future female candidates might also suffer from being a “target of ridicule” is ridiculous. It has nothing to do with gender. ALL presidential hopefuls are targets of ridicule at some point. Harris just invites it with a very large neon sign on her forehead!
The major incompetence here was that of Biden selecting someone as his VP who was not up to the job. I remember there was speculation about all sorts of other black women who might have proved competent.
Quite rightly Margaret Thatcher has been mentioned as someone selected in the teeth of prejudice who helped make a woman a natural choice as PM, if chosen for the right reasons rather than virtue signalling.
However, one of the most successful Heads of State is Elisabeth ll, who was chosen by the utterly random system of primogeniture, the eldest daughter of the previous holder of the office.
Until comparatively recently US VPs were not expected to do anything but be the stand in in the unlikely event the President died and was always chosen to balance the ticket and carry a section of the country where the President’s own electoral appeal was comparatively weak. Was Biden’s appeal among Black women weaker than Trump’s? It would be a bit surprising if that was the case. As I say Biden just made a bad choice.
Well, it depends what you mean by “successful”. The main threat to her kingdom in her reign was the EU’s steady and unconstitutional misappropriation of UK sovereignty, in breach of the 1689 Bill of Rights. If the Queen did anything to challenge that, it’s been kept inexplicably secret, as though it’s something she should not have done when in reality it is the main thing the throne is supposed to be for.
Her other major duty was to secure the succession. We’ll see when the time comes, but I’m not sure Charles can be considered to be an unqualified triumph in that regard. His great uncle had to abdicate because he couldn’t accede if he married a divorcee, yet here’s Charles, still heir to the throne, yet a divorcee himself.
That depends on whether you think she should have set off a constitutional crisis by going beyond advice and decisively intervening in political decisions as to what powers might be outsourced to achieve what was felt to be a political benefit.
I know you feel she should have. Most people I think would not agree with you. George V did intervene on the issue of Ireland but he had the backing of the principal players in the government of the day. That was not the case in the slow creep involved in outsourcing powers to Europe.
Apart from this issue I think you may perhaps agree that she has supported her office with a dignity that a succession of political retreads would not have achieved.
She’s certainly preferable to President Blair, but the point of a constitutional monarchy is supposed to be that the throne guarantees observance of the constitution by politicians. That is, the Queen is supposed to point out when politicians are acting ultra vires, i.e. outside of what they are entitled to do politically, and therefore unconstitutionally. Giving away UK sovereignty to the EU is about as clear-cut a case of this as is imaginable, and we never heard a squeak from EiiR. It may be there was a squeak and she was told to STFU, but there’s no evidence of that.
The EU announcing, during Britain’s membership, that it was abolishing the UK monarchy would have been no different. It would have been a more obvious, less stealthy example of the same unconstitutional thing.
If we’ve all decided that the throne doing its actual job is too “political”, then we have constructively already abolished the monarchy, and what we have is the Kardashians.
Harris was selected for her minority circumstance but her controllability via her struggle to the top. Most know she has few real skills other than blind ambition thus she could be a vessel for others should Biden stumble. Those opposed to her rise within the Biden team have forced her upon the public illustrating her incompetence. But that has created its own dilemma that has no answer short of her resignation which she is not likely to do because of her fundamental character flaw. Fun times.
The experience of Hilary Clinton is very similar as someone who was set up to fail; the first female candidate for president of the USA who failed miserably because she was such a hopeless candidate.
Clinton was not a bad candidate because of lack of intelligence. She was a bad candidate because her total contempt for the working class and her overbearing sense of entitlement were constantly on display for everyone to see. Then she had the nerve to be surprised she lost, and blamed Russia and James Comey.
‘it’s not too difficult to see how Harris becoming the target of ridicule could dissuade young girls from taking such positions in the future’
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This implies that women feel inherently inferior. Yet such inferiority can foster ambition and drive. As migrants everywhere testify don’t they Ayaan ?
How on earth is Kamala Harris classed as black? Or do I need to go to Specsavers?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No Specsavers needed!
Meghan and Harry’s son Archie is classed as black, but he ain’t exactly Snoop Dog is he?
The use of “Set up to fail’ in the title makes no sense. Nobody made her accept the position of running mate to Biden. She’s a politician for goodness sake!
Demrats thinking is obvious here: they are ideaologically and logistically linked to the politics of conservative societies be it Honduran anti-abortionists or Al Shabab misogynists. If they can wreck the playing field for womankind as a whole it will only help consolidate power for them and their allies. They believe, once they’ve achieved their goal of absolute power, that nothing can stop their utopia – except of course, humanity itself – a group to which leftists and demrats etc are violently opposed.
It always seemed to me that progressives don’t want their policies to work, else they would be out of a job with no hope of a family dynasty. The progressive technique is to bring in the ideological idiots to pretend to be Woke but put in place completely contradictory policies that those ideologues have been fooled into believing will achieve the opposite. Meanwhile enriching themselves and tossing out the used and dried up activists when they are no longer the right kind of activists for this year’s brand of fear and prejudice.
Kamala Harris, the general pourpose POC of the California Democratic Party who slept her way to the top in San Francisco, as a victim. That’s hilarious.
Bear in mind these people believe there is no such thing as a woman, therefore there is no such thing as Kamala Harris, so she can neither fail nor succeed as far as they are concerned
I think the claim “set up to fail” suggests that the failure was intended, but nothing in the essay speaks to that.
Let’s all agree that VP Harris’ incompetence and unsuitability for the job have nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with her race or gender.
Let’s agree that it was a horrible mistake to put her in office based on those same characteristics.
Let’s agree that we should elect candidates to office based on their integrity, their experience (actual, positive experience), and their intelligence.
Tulsi Gabbard seemed to fit the bill, but she is surely not the only choice.
No, Kamala can’t have it both ways. She knew she was being selected based on her skin color and sex – and she agreed on those terms! Nobody ever pretended she was qualified in other ways. Now, she is trapped by the same. Shame on Biden for offering her the job and shame on Kamala for accepting. I have no sympathy for her.
It’s obvious to 99% of people, at least here in the UK, that she is failing because she’s just not very good, rather than because she’s a woman. Can’t we move away from seeing everything through the lens of identity theory, please??
“… the key for any woman to succeed remains the same as it has always been: to prove that she is capable.” So true. The Democrats again failed to listen to their own voters. Harris proved so unpopular in the race for the Democrat nomination that she dropped out before the first primary. This was despite the media giving her massive backing and letting her promote herself as a ‘top candidate’, while smearing another woman of colour Tulsi Gabbard. The Democrat establishment was surprised that Harris’ record of jailing lots of black men meant that she was not particularly unattractive to black voters.
“They insisted that it was actually a blessing to be a female and I should be happy since they had to work, while I got to enjoy the fruits of their labour and protection.
For many women around the world, a similar, deeply ingrained misogyny remains a part of everyday life.”
If this is misogyny (I say no, not always), then it is an odd form of misogyny that so many women themselves feel able to fall back upon. As was remarked by a standup comedian whose name I don’t recall, gender equality isn’t complete yet, and will never be until the point where it is legitimate for a man to answer “boyfriend” when asked in mixed company what he does for a living.
At this point any feminist reading this will probably burst into flames or something, but I mean no disrespect by this and certainly not to claim that any continuing asymmetries in the quest for gender equality are evidence of injustice borne by men. All I’m saying is that although “traditional” attitudes by men towards women certainly were patronising and often demeaning, they were certainly not always also intended to be cynical, cruel and selfish confiscations of female rights and freedom. Such attitudes were more often meant well than not, and while we don’t excuse outcomes by reference to intentions, it still matters if we’re debating the motives of the people involved.
On the main point of the article I agree completely, and of course one of the privileges of being British in this particular debate is that it has been impossible to deny since the age of Thatcherism that women have what it takes to get to the very top and to be the best once they get there. The reason we still have feminism in the UK is down to one thing only: the inability of the Progressive Left to accept that Margaret Thatcher proved this point.
I am not well enough acquainted with the person and performance of Kamala Harris to have an opinion about her as an individual.
The remarks that follow are criticisms of Dr Ali’s reasoning and arguments.
It does not follow from the fact that a particular woman is not up to her job, that therefore all affirmative action and positive discrimination does not work. One cannot reason from one example to deduce the failure of an entire policy. Dr Ali should know this.
To assess a policy, one needs to compare two like situations, each taking a different position on affirmative action, over a period of time.
Australia, where I live, provides just such a clear basis for comparison.
The federal Labor party adopted affirmative action and gender parity targets two decades ago. The federal Coalition (Liberal+National Party) refused to do so, insisting, as Dr Ali does here, that advancement—selection and promotion—should be based solely on merit.
Two decades later the evidence for the relative efficacy of these two approaches is there for all to see.
Both sides started from a low point of female representation in their parliamentary parties—from memory, I think it was around twenty-something percent. Both were well behind other European democracies. Again from memory, I recall Labor had a couple more women than the Coalition, but there wasn’t much to choose between them.
Today Federal Labor has forty-something percent women. It is just short of gender parity. Over twenty years, it has made tremendous progress.
By contrast, the Federal Coalition is still stuck below 30% women. It has made no progress at all. Some say preselection processes even look like setting it back further on women’s representation than its numbers 20 years ago.
There is more to this track record. Today’s Coalition is mired in ingrained sexual abuse of women, which has included physical attacks and persistent sly groping of women, and rape of a staffer on a couch in a government minister’s office. It has included sleaze so widespread it has become almost normalised male behaviour around parliamentary corridors, while sexually demeaning, filthy insults have been shouted publicly in parliament across the benches at female members trying to speak. There has a been a major national outcry over the behaviour of these rightwing male parliamentarians and several enquiries. Results in so far confirm this behaviour and call for urgent, radical overhaul.
The parliamentary party, after initially trying to deny, cover up and sweep the whole thing under the carpet, has now been forced to act. One result is that a number of clearly incompetent women have hastily been promoted to senior government positions, even to cabinet, in an attempt to improve the coalition’s public image. But the Coalition has nevertheless so far stuck to its idea of promotion on merit, avoiding the issue of how women can ever be perceived to have any merit when they are written off as sex objects and legitimate prey for male predators.
By comparison, the federal Labor party now includes an impressive array of hugely competent women, reaching right up to senior shadow cabinet positions. These women are experienced and comfortable in their jobs, of unimpeachable integrity, and they offer exceptionally good role models for more junior women on their way up. Labor is not perfect; there are still a few hoary old male sexist brutes who need to be turfed out of positions of power. But taken as a whole, Labor provides a shining example of the success of affirmative action and gender targets over an extended period of time.
The Green Party started off well ahead in its female representation 20 years ago, and has maintained that parity. Other minority parties of the right have proven even worse harbours for male abusers than the governing Coalition.
An examination of parliamentary representation of women across Europe since the turn of the millennium tells as similar story.
Dr Ali, and Mrs Thatcher, and now the Liz Truss’ and Priti Patels of today’s sleaze ridden, extreme-right UK parliament, appear to believe that all other women ought to be capable of their level of individual achievement.
But this is simply not true. A certain level of exceptional masculinist push has been exerted by these women to get to where they are. Playing the aggressive, inflexible hard man better than the men themselves. In my view, these women have proportionately lost touch with their feminine side in the process. They do not present a gender balance within their own person. A range of paths and processes is required to ensure women’s advancement as a whole, and to blame one, Kamala Harris, for holding back the futures of an entire sex, is not just wrong; it is over the top. This is not one of Dr Ali’s best articles.
“Today Federal Labor has forty-something percent women. It is just short of gender parity. Over twenty years, it has made tremendous progress. By contrast, the Federal Coalition is still stuck below 30% women. It has made no progress at all. Some say preselection processes even look like setting it back further on women’s representation than its numbers 20 years ago.”
You’re proving the whole point by referring straight back to representation itself as evidence of success of the principle. This is the exact fallacy referred to in the article. As for your conclusion, you seem to deny the potential excellence of your own sex by dismissing examples of high achievement as depending upon the adoption of masculine attitudes. The whole point of the article is to get everyone to accept that although these characteristics were once seen as male, they are not: they are accessible to both sexes equally.
The part that most people do not accept – because they do not understand – is that this level of excellence in anyone is rare and special, and requires immense sacrifice. Men sacrifice the same things that women do when they seek to achieve this highly, the only difference is that society is more tolerant of this than it is for women. Your interpretation of this is unfair to the women in question, but this is no surprise coming from someone so ill-informed as to describe the present UK government as “extreme right wing”. If you had any idea at all about it, you would know that the present UK government is a left-wing administration that has got itself elected by not being as insanely left-wing as the alternative.
Kamala Harris’s mother and father were, each, brilliant and top in their field. She must be very clever, if not in the same ballpark. If she’s failed, it’s because she chooses to dumb herself down. Biden and Jill have very very sharp elbows, they were never going to make it easy for her. “Hey Kamala, go fix the pandemic, inflation, violence and the immigration mess….whaaa? She didn’t do it? What a loser!”
If you’re correct about Harris being intelligent then she is an incredibly weak person with zero integrity. And an absolutely first rate actress!
For once I disagree with Ms Ali here. I think there’s a need for quotas to put women in positions of power at least for public roles (e.g. legislative/executive/judiciary), with corresponding expectations of how this is going to work. This follows the best known successful human organisation there is: the family. Women don’t need to compete with other men to be part of a typical family. There’s a place for men and women in there to share the responsibility and power of their household together. I think societies should recognise this gap, and organise accordingly taking their input explicitly from a mix of men and women without having them compete with each other to get there.
Families and governments are not remotely comparable.
I half agree with you on this issue, I believe that there is a need to have women in positions of power because of the different viewpoints that they can bring (yes, I think men and women are different), but quotas (?). The problem I have began when I was on secondment, for a short time, at an US lab; there were female scientists there who confided in me that they hated the quota system because it meant that their male colleagues often regarded them with suspicion “is she here because of ability or to fill a quota?” and if they made a mistake, there was the knowing look. I don’t know whether this attitude has changed, but for those who were well qualified for their positions (as the women that I spoke to were) it was always a mill-stone. I’m not saying that I know the answer, breaking patterns is very difficult, but quotas are not necessarily an unalloyed good.
I probably should’ve said positions of political power here. A professional organisation like a lab probably shouldn’t have a quota system for the reason you said above. But politicians / judiciary etc are meant to represent people’s thinking on a matter. In those cases, I believe there’s a need for quotas.
May I also suggest airline pilots and brain surgeons as a good starting point for your project.
But seriously, if politicians were relegated to their proper role, versus now being involved, regrettably, in every facet of life, I would agree with you.
Don’t see how this relates to what I said though. Brain surgeons aren’t popularly elected or selected (political/judicial) representatives in any capacity as far as I can see.
It relates to what you said because you are elevating quotas over merit, and those are 2 excellent examples of where there can be no hiding: you’re qualified or you’re not. Harris is supremely unqualified for anything, and so is Biden, but for different reasons.
I don’t say quotas are always better than merit, I say they can sometimes be better. In fact, I disagree with an existing quota system for the reason it lacks consideration for merit.
There are examples of working quota systems as well though. Lebanon has a system of picking certain elected positions from certain members of religions. Ottomans had a system of religious minorities who were asked to elect their leaders.
More to point, the division of members of a parliament into constituencies (for example in England and Wales), or the number of representatives per state in US, is itself a quota system where regions are allocated a number of people.
No, there has to be more than just being representative of people’s thinking. There have to be attributes of leadership in persuasion communication, influencing, and achieving change. Having the ability as a ‘doer’ needs to be high on a person’s ability to operate as such a senior and important position. Having equality of outcomes with quotas not only dumbs down, if you do not get the right people, but it also does the persons placed by quotas no favours, as they might be regarded as not being as good as another getting there on merit. We need to strive for equality of outcomes.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one. I can happily accept (in fact expect) that qualified people take their roles where specialisation is needed in a meritocracy. This is especially the case for any private enterprise. However, for political power, in particular popular elections, I think there are unjustifiable discrepancies where representatives can be a better match to the represented. Think of it like this – why do we elect representative from given locales (e.g. boroughs, towns, etc)? Why don’t the best qualified people (say, who may all be living in London) do the representation instead? The underlying assumption is these are communities electing their leaders for representation – admittedly oftentimes a stranger is put into a safe seat for election, but the idea is valid all the same. It’s the same logic only an extension of it.
Back in the 70s when racial quotas first made their appearance in American corporations, I worked for a large insurance company. Blacks were eagerly sought out to fill management training positions, ultimately to become managers in various departments or divisions. Each division was expected to fill out their quotas. The result was that too many less than qualified black candidates were placed in these positions and we had to train them, only to watch them fail in the long run. This was terribly discouraging to watch, for both the blacks and the whites. Quotas are destructive.
What are the pre-requisite qualifications to be political representatives? Being over 21 years old?
25 for Representatives, 30 for Senators, 35 for President. A Representative must be a citizen for at least 7 years, 9 years for Senator and natural born for President. What does this have to do with racial quotas?
You projected from your previous experience on racial quotas that quotas in general are a bad idea presumably also applying for my suggestion of having gender (sex?) based quotas for political/judicial representation. That’d be the link as far as I can tell.
So I’m applying your logic to what kind pre-requisite requirements a political representative would need to have, so we can benefit from your earlier insights such that they don’t fail due to not being qualified enough to do the job in the long term.
I think you need to broaden your thinking as to what kind of jobs should be filled by quota. There should also, for example, be quotas for women in the dirty and dangerous jobs – why are we limiting this to only the desirable jobs?
At present, risky jobs are done almost entirely by men. 97% of those killed at work in the UK are men. If we can get that down to 50%, with a 50% target for quota women to get killed at work, something might actually be done about it, because women.
Maybe there should be some sort of lottery for these quota jobs. Women can either proceed on their merits, or they can choose to draw a quota lottery ticket. 100 tickets would get them one of the FTSE 100 CEO jobs, but about 100 other tickets a year would get them jobs in which they’d be killed. Other tickets wouldn’t be lethally dangerous, but they’d be very unpleasant: shovelling fatbergs out of sewers, for example.
You can’t just decide to hand out 50% of the plums to women because they’re women; there has to be balance, otherwise you’re just embedding sexist advantage.
I now see that I had an unfortunate choice of wording when describing the idea. I probably should have been more clear that I’m referring to political power here and this likely means public officials in particular the elected ones. This has very little to do with sewage workers or brain surgeons, it’s more about the democratic processes that govern our daily life.