Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Massachusetts is as screwed up as any other state. Probably has all sorts of problems.
But am I really supposed to believe the Bay State is such a hotbed of crisis that the infrastructure will collapse, the economy implode and the people riot, if the governor takes a few days off?
I’m talking about Jane Swift. At 36, the acting governor has already made history on several fronts. She’s the nation’s youngest governor having assumed the job when Gov. Paul Cellucci accepted an ambassadorship to Canada and one of the few women to hold that post. She is also believed to have been the nation’s first pregnant governor until a couple weeks ago, that is, when she added another distinction by becoming the first governor to give birth. To fraternal twin girls, no less.
It is those last claims to fame pregnancy and childbirth that have raised a ruckus in Boston and beyond. Swift’s obstetrician, you see, had ordered her hospitalized for bed rest, forcing the governor to conduct the state’s business from the maternity ward at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. But the Governor’s Council, an eight-member elected panel, voted to ask the state’s top court if it was constitutional for her to conduct meetings by speakerphone. Though Swift eventually won a vote of confidence from the council, the move was widely seen as an attempt to force her to relinquish power.
The firestorm of criticism that followed ignited a national dialogue on mommyhood in the workplace and left many of her political opponents ducking for cover. You have to wonder what or if these fellows were thinking.
I mean, she’s just a working mother, guys! That’s not an uncommon thing these days, or hadn’t you noticed? Geez, get a grip.
There are two distinct dimensions to what’s going on here, both fascinating. The first is political. Swift is a Republican in a heavily Democratic state. The members of the Governor’s Council are all members of the donkey party, as is the man who would replace her should she relinquish power.
It all leads to the unavoidable conclusion that state Democrats were less concerned with constitutionality than expediency. They saw what they thought was a chance to use Swift’s pregnancy as a political weapon. Unfortunately, it’s a weapon they somehow pointed at their own feet.
Thus Swift, a woman who once came under investigation for using state employees as her personal baby-sitters, is suddenly transformed in the court of public image into a sympathetic victim. A pregnant woman bullied by political hacks. And the transformation is doubly striking, because said hacks represent the party of abortion rights, the party of the Family Leave Act in other words, the party that is generally perceived as being out front on issues important to women.
Which brings me to the second dimension of all this: sexism. Put simply, it’s impossible to imagine we would be having this discussion if Jane Swift were a man.
Earlier this year, the governor of Rhode Island was laid up at home for more than a month, recovering from surgery for prostate cancer. No one demanded he surrender his powers. Ronald Reagan recuperated from a gunshot wound while president. Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, a bout with ileitis and a minor stroke. Keep in mind these two were men with their fingers on the proverbial button.
We accept their incapacities but not hers? Take it as proof that, though we’ve made great progress toward gender equity, we have not yet arrived. To the contrary, there’s something creepy and paternalistic about the response to Swift’s pregnancy, something that suggests we somehow stumbled into a time warp and ended up in 1954.
It’s galling that this bunch of goobers would try to use Swift’s babies as an excuse to, in effect, take her job. But frankly, there’s something else that troubles me even more. I mean, if this is the garbage they try with a woman who has a high-profile position, a full-time staff and a six-figure salary, my goodness… Just imagine what they do with a woman who does not.
Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
