Bob Weir: Are We Ready for a Woman President?

No flea is she; Sarah's the iconoclast that breaks glass ceilings...
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Neither major political party has ever nominated a woman as its presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton certainly looked like she was on her way to shattering that particular glass ceiling in 2008, but the Democrats went with a backbench junior Senator instead. The parties have each nominated a woman as their vice presidential candidates only one time in their respective histories.

American Thinker contributor Bob Weir considers the barrier women refer to as the class ceiling and why no woman has been able to break it to run as a major party candidate for the presidency. The metaphor employed by the author is that of trained fleas in a jar. They will easily jump out of the jar so long as it is open at the top. But put a lid on the jar, and the fleas will on bang up against for a short while. Soon they will learn to only jump so high as to avoid a collision with an immovable object. People, Weir submits, are like fleas in a jar. They will not strive for success beyond that point where they have been trained to limit their horizons:

It's my contention that women will continue to face perceptual roadblocks in the presidential area of politics until one of them becomes the role model for others to follow. Currently, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have popular support for 2012. My choice is Palin because she has demonstrated her executive ability as Governor of Alaska and was the most exciting candidate in the election of 2008.

Although she hasn't decided if she'll run next year, we constantly hear that she has too much baggage. What baggage? Anyone who knows anything about her record in Alaska would have to admit that she exhibited all the traits that make up the building blocks of leadership. Her rise to prominence is well-known and doesn't need to be restated in its entirety here. Suffice to say that she took on a corrupt system within her own political party and rose to the governorship after throwing the bums out of office. Certainly, a résumé like that should be viewed as the perfect recipe for a country in need of a moral renaissance. Aha, therein lies the problem! How many in this country want to return to the days when politicians weren't sending their nude photos on the Internet, fathering children with their housemaids, or having sex with interns in the Oval Office?

I suspect that all decent people want to go back to a time when their children had better role models than Weiner, Schwarzenegger, and Clinton. The culture shift in the last few decades is more than mildly alarming; it is downright frightening! Every aspect of our lives has eroded. From education to entertainment to politics; we have seen a value system that was once the envy of the world, slowly, insidiously corrupted by a philosophical framework that is inimical to any concept of a great nation. Today, we have a country whose people have almost given up on the idea that morality has value.

What has all this to do with Sarah Palin? She's a threat to those who have become addicted to the titillation of a callous and uninhibited lifestyle, free from compunction or responsibility. She represents the wholesome values and patriotic spirit that have been all but lost in the violent maelstrom of social and political engineering that has distorted our sense of right and wrong. No flea is she; Sarah's the iconoclast that breaks glass ceilings and shatters the lids on jars.

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The former Wasilla Warrior point guard knows a thing or two about jumping. Every time, she will leap as high as she possibly can, no matter how hard her political opponents try to block her vertical ascent.

- JP