I‘m coming late to the Ferraro/Obama dust-up, but a few thoughts… If it’s true that, in her words, “In 1984, if my name were Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice president,” isn’t that a tacit admission that she was unqualified for the job? And wasn’t she theoretically putting the country at risk by not declining the offer? Surely, this is a prime example of the quota system run amuck. Atempting to put out a fire with a can of Texaco Unleaded, Ferraro then reminded us that she said the same thing about Jesse Jackson in 1988. So why didn’t she go for the trifecta when Al Sharpton ran for president in 2004? I mean, if Sharpton is qualified to be taken seriously as a candidate, so is Fred Flintstone. They’re both big mouth characters (literally, in Mr. Flintstone’s case) with rigid hair and a tendency toward self-aggrandizement. The only difference: Mr. Flintstone has a real job. If Sharpton wasn’t worth Ferraro’s scorn, it could mean only one thing: he wasn’t perceived as a threat to the Democratic establishment. He was, at best, a sideshow tolerated in order to frighten conservative Dems into giving money to the other guys onstage. Obama, on the other hand, is seen by an overwhelming number of Democrats–and many disgruntled Republicans and Independents–as not only a legitimate candidate, but the best of his generation. Therefore, the uppity Obama is a genuine threat to the establishment (to which Geraldine Ferraro belongs) and must be put in his place until it’s his turn; i.e., when the white Democratic leaders born before 1950 say it’s OK. And speaking of qualifications, the only reason Ms. Ferraro is “qualified” to be a cable news pundit is that she was part of one of the biggest landslide presidential losses in American history. Or so it seems every time she has something newsworthy to say.
