How Race, Gender, and Faith are Defining the U.S. Election
Race, gender and faith are the defining issues of the U.S. presidential campaign. It’s an explosive combination in any arena, let alone politics. For the Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been headlining on race and gender, whereas the Republicans are preoccupied with the characters and merits/demerits of their Baptist, Mormon, and Roman Catholic candidates. As the Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada votes have shown, it is shaping up to be a rollercoaster ride.
The split between the two parties’ campaigns could not be more indicative of what is happening in that other critical sphere, the world of business. On the one side (Republican), we have a line-up of rather nondescript middle-aged white males and on the other (Democrat), a pair of exotic creatures hitherto unseen on the U.S. presidential stage. The only thing that makes the Republican campaign more interesting is the candidates’ professed faiths, although Mormons and Baptists are not the easiest of faiths for anyone outside the U.S. to comprehend (Roman Catholicism is easier to grasp, as Tony Blair’s recent conversion has shown).
So let’s focus on the more straightforward gender-race divide. Normally, we are faced with gender or race being the issue. Here we have the unprecedented situation of wo ‘variants’ battling for the electorate, which reveals all sorts of interesting challenges. Let me first explain what I mean by the word ‘variant’. A friend, a psychology professor and management writer, used to jokingly call me a ‘variant’ — meaning that, as a woman, I fell outside the ‘norm’ (white, American, male) in psychological, sociological, and leadership research. Such research has informed management and leadership thinking over the last 100 years, so anything that falls outside this norm can be considered a variant. It’s no wonder that we have been struggling for years to comprehend other ‘voices’ in business and politics.
Back to Clinton and Obama. What are their tactics for winning the Democratic vote? How are they positioning themselves to best effect? Are we seeing anything new and different emerging from their clash? How are the candidates squaring up to their personal differentiators? Are there any lessons here for leaders in the corporate sphere?
Here are a few of my observations so far:
• Both candidates have support from their constituencies: in Nevada, Obama took the African-American vote while Clinton was strongly backed by women.
• Both have also cross-appeal to other constituencies: Clinton won the Latino vote in Nevada, while Obama appealed to white voters in Iowa.
• Both have dynamic, charismatic spouses who bring an added dimension to their campaigns.
• Barack is the fresh, young outsider; Clinton is the experienced, committed politician.
• Barack rousingly talks of the future and his plans for a new America; Clinton tearfully talks of how America has fallen behind and her plans to restore it to its former place in the world.
• Clinton has been criticised as a woman in ways that would be unthinkable if gender terms were replaced by race terms. Criticism of Obama has largely been confined to his youth and relative inexperience.
What do you think? What if Clinton and Obama were candidates in a CEO succession race? Who would be the frontrunner by now — and why? I’m especially interested in anyone who might be facing a similar leadership challenge at work that brings in the race and gender challenge. Let’s hear from you.
