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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (13885)	3/5/2006 2:15:01 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541961

Just to throw out a name that some may not know or remember well, the most authentic powerful woman I can recall in politics was Barbara Jordan. I can't recall ever seeing a phony smile, a poll-driven spin or a contradictory position from her. But she was decades before her time. She may not have been widely liked but you knew what you were getting. Sadly, the modern political machine leans much more toward the smile/spin/flip-flop model that characterizes most modern politicians, including the women. That's my pet theory why you haven't seen a true breakthrough woman politician in the Thatcher/Meier/Indira Gandhi mold (plus several others whose names I should recall but don't - with Benazir Bhutto specifically omitted since she is one of the modern examples of a faulted character). More on Jordan: "Both as a state senator and as a U.S. Congressman, Jordan sponsored bills that championed the cause of poor, Black, and disadvantaged people. One of the most important bills as senator was the Workman's Compensation Act, which increased the maximum benefits paid to injured workers. As a congresswoman, she sponsored legislation to broaden the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to cover Mexican Americans in Texas and other southwestern states and to extend its authority to those states where minorities had been denied the right to vote or had had their rights restricted by unfair registration practices, such as literacy tests. She gained national prominence for the position she took and the statement she made at the 1974 impeachment hearing of President Richard Nixon. In casting a "yes" vote, Jordan stated,"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total." Having become a national celebrity, Ms. Jordan was chosen as a keynote speaker for the Democratic National Convention in 1976, and again in 1992. She was the first Black selected to keynote a major political convention. President Jimmy Carter considered her for attorney general and U.N. Ambassador but she chose to remain in Congress. She was seriously thinking about challenging Sen. John Tower for re-election in 1978, but became ill and retired from politics. She became a Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs. She was very close to President Johnson, often visiting him at the White House as a state Senator. In 1987, she became an eloquent voice against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. She served as an unpaid adviser on ethics for former Gov. Ann Richards of Texas and was praised for her work on the Clinton panel on Immigration Reform. Barbara Jordan died of complications from pneumonia on January 17, 1996."