Mouthing the Words

THE PERFORMANCE given Monday by the six leading Democratic Presidential candidates before an appreciative audience of the National Organization for Women (NOW) deserves, if not the prize the politicians were angling for--the official endorsement of 1984--then at least an Oscar. Each candidate said exactly what the members of N.O.W. wanted to hear, in total disregard for the political realities they will face in the upcoming race.

Drawing hearty applause from the audience, the candidates affirmed to a man that they would consider choosing a woman as a running mate in 1984. Sen. Gary Hart (D-Col.) went so far as to say he would support--and run with--a woman "at either end of the ticket."

Yet realistically, the only situation in which any of the candidates would support a woman for Vice president would be if she were on somebody else's ticket. Regardless of the merits of the move, no serious candidate for the Presidency next fall will be running with a woman. Or a Black, or a Jew. It just isn't perceived as politically feasible.

Because of the Reagan Administration's spotty record on women's issues, it is an appropriate time for any Democratic candidate to come out strongly in favor of feminist concerns as all the candidates did. Despite the recent appointment of Katherine Davalos Ortego as Secretary of the Treasury, the administration has not yet recovered from the crippling embarassment of Barbara Honegger's resignation from her post as Special Adviser on Women's Issues. The attitude of the White House towards Honegger was adequately summed up in Larry Speakes' reference to her as a "Munchkin" whose only function was to give children Easter Eggs on the White House Lawn--a function which Speakes was apparently not aware that Second Lady Barbara Bush has fulfilled in recent years.

YET IT IS DOUBTFUL that any of the Democratic candidates will ride this issue so far as to run with a woman. NOW is a pragmatic political organization. Its president, Judy Goldsmith, has said that it would not support Reagan in 1984 even if he were, by some freak of fate, to run with a woman, because his policies have been perceived as chauvinist.

NOW has announced no plans to field or support a female candidate for the Presidency: they realize that a woman would only be as politically feasible in 1984 as the Rev. Jesse Jackson will probably be: negligibly. In the same way, they cannot realistically expect Mondale, or Glenn, or Cranston, or Hollings, or McGovern, or even the very enthusiastic Gary Hart to enter the New Hampshire primary on the same ticket with a woman.

NOW will support the candidate, probably Walter Mondale, whom it perceives to be most supportive to most feminist issues. The frantic claims of the Presidential candidates will be tossed out with the newspapers they were reported in, and the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party determined next summer will be male, white and Protestant.

Perhaps the fact that the candidates have gone so far as to suggest that they are open to a female Vice-Presidential candidate is encouraging although their hypocritical optimism and enthusiasm about the prospect is not. NOW members, and all feminist activists, should continue to pressure politicians to enact feminist legislations; they should not allow false hopes to be raised which would cause NOW members to slacken their efforts. The idea of a woman in the White House, even in the second position, is not unthinkable: only the perception of that possibility is still prohibitive. And that perception, as we saw this week, is changing, and capable of being changed much more.