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Gaffer Variety:
Women in Power 042:
By Willie Gaffer:
May 29, 2006:
Recently I had some input from a friend about a paragraph I put in the Weekly Notes. He said he was shocked at my change of attitude. I don't recall his exact words, but I think I got the gist. To him it seemed like I was being seriously vitriolic in my criticism of women in power. That caused me to look up the offending paragraph and review what I had said. Here is the paragraph.
My Mistake:
Years ago, when I was a very naive 60 years old, I though, if
only lots of women would manage to get into government, things
would change for the better. After all, women are more sensitive,
more honest, and generally more meticulous than men. How wrong
could a person be? Now a large number of women are in government.
Pretty much every bureaucrat I have encountered lately has been
a woman. Guess what? They ain't better. All the ones I have encountered
are worse than their male counterparts. I guess, when a woman
goes bad it's like everything else they do. There is no half way
about it. I'll expect to get a bit of hate mail from this paragraph.
Let it rip!
Well, for crap's sake! That paragraph is not all that mean. It is really just an expression of my reaction to some recent experiences and observations. Those have to do with the government of Michigan in the persons of Jennifer Granholm, our governor, Terri Lynn Land, our secretary of state, and Mary Bonner, an assistant secretary of state. I consider all three of these women to be pompous, self congratulating buffoons. There are also some good examples at the national level, but I'll leave that for another time.
Now, I must admit, that Weekly Notes paragraph by itself was unfair. In another piece, I did notice one outstanding woman in power. This was the previous secretary of state for Michigan, Candice Miller. She remains, by far, the best person Michigan ever had in that office. She streamlined it and made it very friendly to the citizens of the state. I can also mention my experience with a female manager who was one of the two best managers I ever had. I'm sure there are other examples of good women in power, but I cannot think of any offhand.
In general, it seems it does not matter whether women or men come to power. For the most part, they just go bad when they get there. This is not just true of politics, by the way. It is equally as true in business. As soon as a person achieves a bit of power, they go bad and begin too misuse it. They also tend to ignore or evade the responsibilities of their office.
Okay, what's the problem? Many people will toss off the easy answer, "That's just human nature." It sure seems that way, because it pretty much happens to everyone. However, we have had some very notable exceptions to the general rule. I have already cited Candice Miller of Michigan and a manager I once had. It is also quite easy to cite the rare and exceptional people of history. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln come quickly to mind. I suspect, if women had had equal access to power all along we could have cited several women as outstanding examples.
So, there is more than some loosely defined human nature involved in this. There must be some underlying reason. I believe there is and I believe the clue is in the fact that not everyone succumbs to the temptations of power. The people who do not succumb are, in fact, what I call superior people. These are the kind of people we sorely need in business and in government, superior people.
Sure Gaffer, that's swell! How do we do that? We could pray for good people, but if that was a viable method it would already have happened. There must be millions of people who pray every day for good government. It's about time we concluded nobody is listening and we ought to quit wasting our breath. Our real problem is much more difficult because it gives us a Catch-22 situation.
The problem is in the systems. It's our systems of business and politics. Both work the same. People who come to power go bad, because they have bad examples of how to achieve power and maintain power. They assume they have to lie and cheat to achieve power. The truth is, so long as we have a rabble-like ill informed electorate, their assumptions will be true. The most tried and true way to get to power is to con the electorate. The standard way to market products is to lie about them, be it Kellogg's or General Motors.
The catch is, to change that, we need good people in power. To get good people in power, we need good people in power. We need people who will enforce the law rather than circumvent it. We need people who will do what's right regardless of personal gain. I think there is hope, but we can only do it one person at a time. If we want a good community, each person must look at themselves. If you stand in your wallet to view the world, you will be part of the problem. If you vote for your own gain over your neighbor, you are part of the problem.
Until each of us can make the effort to change in our own behavior
nothing will change. Whether women or men come to power, most
of them will go bad. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever
will be, crap without end! Amen, amen!
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