When the V.P. Is ‘the Woman’s Spot’

When Geraldine Ferraro was picked to run on Walter Mondale’s presidential ticket, in 1984, the media did not know quite what to do with her. The political press experienced a female vice-presidential candidate as a kind of processing error. Journalists expressed suspicion of Ms. Ferraro’s use of her maiden name and confusion about how she would take care of her children.

“What does the inside of her house look like?” one reporter wanted to know. Image consultants advised her to “dress like a woman” and “choose natural fabrics instead of synthetics.” NBC’s Tom Brokaw, broadcasting from the floor of the Democratic National Convention, reported: “Geraldine Ferraro, for the record — and this is not a sexist remark — is a size 6!”

When Ms. Ferraro took the stage at the convention to formally accept the nomination, she did not say much about being a woman, a wife, a mother or a wearer of natural fabrics. Instead, she fashioned her gender into a metaphor, floating it as a symbol of broader change, progress and the realization of the American dream.

“By choosing a woman to run for our nation’s second highest office, you send a powerful signal to all Americans: There are no doors we cannot unlock,” she said. “If we can do this, we can do anything.” Or as Mr. Mondale put it, “When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro.” In the wake of the 1984 campaign, this registered not just as a rhetorical flourish but a premonition. The Ferraro pick “may lead to the vice-presidential spot being ‘the woman’s spot,’” Lee Atwater, a Reagan strategist, said. Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas wondered that year whether he would be the “last white Anglo-Saxon male to be considered for the vice presidency.”