Good news, bad news for women in politics

EMILY’s List, an organi- zation that gives money to women candidates to help them get elected, had one of those good-news, bad-news announcements last week.

Good news: There are three times as many women in Congress as 20 years ago. Bad news: That’s still only 15 percent of the total. Good news: There are more women in every level of political office. Bad news: There are only eight women governors, and less than one legislator in four, nationwide, is a woman.

But one set of statistics might be good news or bad news. The group says a recent survey by Brown University revealed women are twice as likely as men to view themselves as “not at all qualified” to run for office, and men are 60 percent more likely than women to view themselves as “very qualified” to run.

E-List folks seemed to think that was a bad thing, because women might not be getting as much encouragement as men. But Spin Control would say: “Advantage, women.”

Spend any time on the campaign trail, you bump into lots of people who THINK they’d make a great candidate and office holder. But many of them are just flat wrong. Sounds like this survey is pointing out that women are more realistic about their qualifications.

That’s a good thing, particularly for a group that wants more women in office. Because doesn’t it suggest that women who are running are less likely to have an inflated view of their abilities, and less likely to get their heads handed to them by voters?

Meanwhile, down in Florida

Offering a comment on the Terri Schiavo case may be like tossing a single snowflake into a blizzard, but one very strange press release came our way last week that hasn’t shown up elsewhere. So what the heck.

A group calling itself GrassTopsUSA.com (they’re more than just grass roots, get it?) recounted the sad tale of one Chris Keys of Texas, who brought his four children to Schiavo Ground Zero, the hospice, and was holding his 2-year-old when he got arrested for attempting to cross a police line with a symbolic cup of water for the woman who has had her feeding tube removed.

So Keys got cuffed and jailed, and when GrassTopsUSA heard the plaintive pleas of his children on cable TV, the group helped post his bail in recognition of his “tremendous courage,” and stands ready to help pay his fine.

Wait a minute. If Keys was wandering around the nation’s hottest protest zone with four kids and planning the kind of civil disobedience designed to get one’s self arrested, is it courage, or something else, that he didn’t have bail money?

And if he’s holding a 2-year-old as part of his civil disobedience and enlisting his other kids in the demonstration, shouldn’t someone from the Florida equivalent of Child Protective Services be looking for four slots in foster care?

This is not a liberal or conservative thing. It’s a parenting thing.

Parents in the Spokane area have enlisted their kids in all types of demonstrations over the years, whether they’re protesting abortion or the war in Iraq or nuclear proliferation. Push them in a stroller or let them accompany you through Riverfront Park for the cause of your choice, and no one’s got a right to question your parenting skills.

Tell them to lie down on a train track in front of a White Train or in the entrance to Fairchild Air Force Base, chain them to the doorway of a clinic or dress them in a sheet and tell them to light a cross, and you should expect to be seeing them only at supervised visits on days assigned by a judge.

Red state rankings

This may come as a shock to people in Idaho, but the National Annenberg Election Center, a University of Pennsylvania group that studies voters’ attitudes, believes Utah is the state with the heaviest concentration of Republicans.

In a nationwide survey, 44 percent of Utahans contacted said they considered themselves Republicans; only 19 percent said they considered themselves Democrats. Nebraska had a slightly higher percentages of Rs, at 45 percent, but by comparison were practically lousy with Ds, at 28 percent.

So where, Idahoans might ask, is the Gem State, which gave George W. Bush a mandate of 68.5 percent, which was much better than some corn-growing Midwest state? Idaho sends so few Democrats to the Legislature that they often can’t manage a decent game of bridge.

Not on the list, unfortunately, along with several other states with small populations. Adam Clymer of the center said there weren’t enough Idahoans interviewed in the survey to get a good read on their political identities.

Too bad, because Idaho might have had the Rs over 50 percent, and the Ds in double digits only if pollsters lumped them in with the “Who wants to know?” responses.