A glass ceiling and a race to the bottom

“I say that the women of today smarter than the man in every way” sang Harry Belafonte on “Man Smart (Woman Smarter)” in 1956. My dad played Belafonte’s album “Calypso” until the grooves wore out when I was a boy. It was imprinted on me.

So was my Madison Avenue mom, who gave my dad a run for the money. I’ve been trying to catch up ever since, but I sometimes introduce my wife as my producer or, alternately, editor, so you see what little progress I’ve made.

In the last election, I wanted mightily to like Kamala Harris to win. But I never thought she would, even had Joe Biden not backed her into a temporal corner. Her speeches were gibberish.

Still, losing to Donald Trump by only 2.2 million votes out of 128 million is no mean feat. Her prior female trailblazer in the presidential derby, Hillary Clinton, actually won the popular vote in 2016 by a 2.9 million-vote margin. Unfortunately, this being a republic burdened with an Electoral College, coupled with the untimely intercession of FBI Director James Comey, the country was deprived of its first distaff president.

For 2028, female bold-face names bandied about still include Kamala Harris — the definition of insanity is repetition while expecting different results — and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.

Y., who has toned down her act since 2018 when she became the youngest woman elected to Congress.

Nevertheless, in the Jeopardy category “Gibberish,” see AOC’s comments on Taiwan at February’s Munich Security Conference: “I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.” We are so far behind the rest of the democratic world that it would be laughable were it not so pathetic. While women make up more than half our population, they are much less likely than men to get elected to Congress or governor.

Worldwide, more than one in three democratically governed nations have had female leaders. Margaret Thatcher became England’s first female prime minister in 1979, and Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany in 2005. In 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, became the world’s first female prime minister, and in 1980 Vigdis Finnbogadottir of Iceland became the world’s first female president.

Today, Iceland’s prime minister and its president are both female. Elsewhere in the European Union, Italy and Denmark are led by women. In the Pacific sphere, Japan, Australia and New Zealand all have female heads of state.

It doesn’t advance Belafonte’s lyric that “women are smarter” when several prominent players on Trump’s ship of fools have been female, but compared to whom? FBI tin badge Kash Patel or health nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Nevertheless, every time I watched former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem invade my television telling people to turn themselves in, I thought of “1984.” Banana Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi lives down to “South Park” as it depicts her brown-nosing. Bottoming the list, the White House press pool is subjected to jejune Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as she parrots her boss verbatim.

We are accustomed to playground speech from Trump, but it is especially ludicrous when echoed by Leavitt, whom, as press secretary, we do not grant license to let Trump be Trump. It is, sadly, useless to anticipate anything more from the confederacy of dunces of both genders run amok in the White House. They are enabled by the genuflection of a GOP-controlled Congress that makes France’s Vichy government in World War II seem vertebrate in comparison.

Witness the grandstanding of Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, and Susan Collins, of Maine, as they weigh a swing vote time and again, only to caucus with their party. If we expected these two women to save us, we were invariably disappointed.

This historically debased Congress has abjectly surrendered its Constitutional power of the purse. It is a party of Lincoln that he would not recognize. Running for office is only half of the equation; the other half is exercising one’s right to vote.

New Zealand was the first nation to legalize voting by women in 1893. It took until 1920 for the United States to pass the 19th Amendment granting women’s suffrage, with Tennessee casting the decisive 36th vote. Women are not responsible for either Trump victory: 58 percent of women cast their votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 51 percent went for Kamala Harris in 2024.

There is no basis for the sentiment that the Dems should not run another woman in 2028. She just needs to be saddled with less baggage. Let’s find someone who can pack light and pack a punch.