The resistance of the electorate to electing a woman president is not simply misogyny and residual toxic patriarchy. More positively, it is an valid intuition, although one that dare not be spoken, that the president is symbolically a father figure. We need to distinguish the functional and symbolic dimensions of any authority.
Women can, of course, perform all the functions of leadership. Some aspects of femininity even enhance leadership: better team work, sharper emotional intelligence, empathy, reconciling and nourishing instincts. Today young women outperform men in academia and many arenas. Hilary Clinton was arguably the most experienced, knowledgeable, and competent candidate in the history of our country. I personally would vote for a Nicky Halley or a Condelezza Rice in a second over the alternatives.
Nevertheless, authority usually entails a symbolic element as the person represents something greater than oneself. The prime authority is the father in the family. Metaphysically, the father represents the fatherhood of God. Other offices resemble this analogically: the king/president the good of the nation; the teacher truth; the fireman rescue from danger; and so forth.
Masculinity is appropriate for authority not due to superiority, but due to inferiority. The woman is endowed naturally with deeper integrity, generosity, empathy, connectedness. The woman, as bride and mother is an identity unto itself; the highest creature; without reference beyond herself. The male is inferior: fragile in identity and ego structure; low capacity for relationship and empathy; more fragmented biologically due to hormones, morphology and neurology. Because of a significant disability, masculinity is appropriate in representing something other than himself. It is the hollowness, the fragmentation, the chaos of masculinity that makes it appropriate to represent Something Else.
This is ludicrous to modernity, but intuitively obvious to the Catholic imagination in the contrast of St. Peter with our Blessed Mother. The later is the perfection of creation, singularly splendid in truth, beauty and goodness. She does not represent her Son. Rather, like Eve with Adam, she is uniquely partner and spouse and so our mother. Peter is a train wreck: volatile, unreliable, angry one minute and cowardly the next. Yet it is Peter, with all of his flaws and because of his flaws, that is designated Rock, Vicar of Christ, icon and sacramental of the Fatherhood of the Father.
The daughters of Eve, even in their fallen state, retain a heavenly splendor...in face and form, in grace of movement, in magnanimity of heart, in docility of Spirit. Not so, men. (This is admittedly a male perspective. It cannot be helped: every thought, every whim, every breath breathed by me is masculine. It is the way I was created. My agony and my ecstasy. Every human perspective is feminine or masculine; there is no androgynous transcendence; no 3rd, 4th or 5th option.)
Even as our young women increasingly outperform men in many arenas, there remain domains which are predominantly feminine or masculine. Absolutely, a woman cannot be a biological father, a Catholic priest, or a father figure. In the order of creation, the natural/moral order, masculinity (physical, spiritual, intellectual, moral, social) is intrinsic to these; just as femininity is essential to maternity. Other areas allow for exceptions. Masculine tasks include garbage men, construction workers, plumbers, presidents, coaches of men's sports, combat soldiers, sports journalists in male locker rooms, firemen, and policemen. A good exception is police women: in our boarding home for women, we are happy that our frequent visits from the police include a woman who brings an important sensitivity to the difficult situations. Feminine occupations, again allowing for exceptions, include early child care, nursing, midwife, gynecology/obstetrics and social work.
Returning to the American presidency, it is widely noted that the average height of our presidents is almost 5 inches greater than that of the average male. This suggests that stature and strength are implicitly valued in the president. This is particularly obvious with Donald Trump who uses it to his advantage.
Primary Virtues and Vices of Masculinity as Representational
To appropriately represent that which is greater than self (God, Christ, justice, truth, the constitution, etc.), masculinity requires above all:
1. Humility as devotion to that which is greater than Self and realistic awareness of one's weakness and inadequacy.
2. Fortitude as courage, decisiveness, and strength that is gentle, protective and reassuring.
3. Purity as fidelity to spouse/family/community, including sexual chastity.
4. Sobriety and Serenity as interior freedom from disordered compulsions/passions, clarity and wisdom in judgement.
5. Prudence and Justice as freedom from obsession with Self and connection with Reality and Truth.
6. Charism as the indescribable appeal intrinsic to goodness/truth that attracts and inspires as it unifies across social divides.
It follows, obviously, that the fundamental contradictions of fatherhood and representation are: pride and narcissism, cowardice and weakness, infidelity and impurity, interior disorder, disconnect from reality, the repulsiveness and monotony of vice. The most despicably unfatherly thing would be killing of the innocent and powerless, including the unborn, as well as abuse of the weak.
Ranking and Rating Our Recent 15 Presidents
Considering, in non-partisan manner, presidents of recent memory is largely, but not entirely, an edifying exercise. Recall: an authority need not be a saint or hero or free of flaws. Rather, he must adequately represent the greater good he services. Some "sins" for a president are especially mortal: advocacy of the killing of the unborn, blatant marital infidelity, flagrant narcissism, inordinate polarization, bullying and craven weakness.
Strong Father Figures: FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, Ronald Reagan.
Adequate Father Figures: Truman, JFK, Ford, H. Bush, and W. Bush.
Failed Father Figures: Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Obama.
Anti-Fathers: Trump, Biden.
We see that nine of our last fifteen presidents were decent or strong father figures. Not too bad! Our most recent three are not on the good list.
Joe Biden
Especially from a Catholic perspective, Biden is the most depraved president in our history: militant advocacy of abortion, betrayal of core Catholic principles, systemic weakness, abandonment of Afghanistan, neglect of his own granddaughter, indulgence of son Hunter, denial of his senility and incompetence in a profound if camouflaged narcissism. He is The Anti-Father (and non-grandfather!)
Donald Trump
Trump is a dizzyingly complex, convoluted father figure.
He is strong in many ways: fist-pumping when shot, protective of the unborn, defensive of religious freedoms, fiercely defiant of decadent cultural liberalism, effective in closing the border, decisive in much diplomacy. He is at the same time pathologically narcissistic: indifferent to truth, disconnected from reality, oblivious of the objective good including rule of law, shameless in unchastity, petty and vicious in his polarizing resentments. Currently he is indecisive and cowardly in regard to Putin's invasion and starvation in Gaza; even as he mercilessly terrorizes decent, hardworking undocumented immigrants. He bullies the weak as he cowers before the tyrants. Like Peter on Holy Thursday night, he is a braggart, then a raging maniac, and finally a coward. He is more shamelessly and blatantly the Non-Man and the Anti-Father than Biden. But he does have impressive countervailing positives which Biden lacks.
My own reaction to Trump is passionate: I intensely love the good things and deeply despise the bad. This tension and ambivalence is extreme. I can think of no public figure who is so contradictory. My problem: I am largely alone in this position, with the exception of my own immediate family (children,) Progressives, afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, cannot admit the good he has done. Compulsively, they push God from his judgment seat to condemn his heart as evil. Conversely, my conservative friends idolize him as our warrior-hero, and minimize grave evils as minor flaws. We have here a Trump Infatuation Syndrome (TIS). One denies the good, the other the bad. Neither manifest the sobriety to recognize that which is so evil and that which is so good.
Conclusion
It is small wonder that our youth are alienated from politics. We see in Biden and Trump contrasting studies in unmanliness, toxic masculinity, anti-paternity, narcissism/vanity, cowardice, weakness, infidelity, unchastity, disconnect from truth/reality/moral order.
Personal moral character is not a private thing, irrelevant to a public order as disenchanted, functional, scientific/technical, bureaucratic. By analogy we see that as the family depends upon vigorous paternity/maternity, flowing from mutuality in spousal tenderness/fidelity/reverence, so the public order depends upon authority as surrender and fidelity to the true/good/beautiful!
The entire Democratic Party, champion of sexual liberation and abortion, is entirely void of virtuous masculinity. Indeed, it is the antithesis of such. In the Harris candidacy we were given the evil stepmother/witch straight out of Hansel and Gretel: hysterical rage against the innocent packaged in glaring incompetence and incoherence, with a nervous, silly giggle.
In the Republican Party, we have the otherwise wholesome virility of Vance and Rubio contaminated by subordination to The Great MAGA Narcissist. We wait to see if either or both will emerge from that dark shadow into the radiance of their own masculine identities.
More hopefully, we have in our new Pope Leo a refreshing image of virility: quiet, modest, clear, sober, judicious, selfless, rooted in tradition, loyal to institutions, unifying, reassuring, theologically solid. We hope and pray that he will reverse the feminizing/liberalizing/queering of the hierarchy/clergy in exercise of a virile authority that is clear, decisive, serene, modest, and magnanimous.
We do well to emulate the Benedict Option and our alienated youth in a modulated "disconnect with love" from the dysfunctional, pathological political order. Channeling our energies zealously to our immediate families, churches, and intermediate organizations, we will ourselves exercise genuine authority to the degree that we surrender...gratefully, trustingly, obediently...to the True, the Good, the Beautiful, the Just and to God the Father in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
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