Breaking the Presidential Mold: A Look at 2008

By Rori Picker, Associate for Interfaith Relations, RFP-USA

There is no place in the Constitution that states that the president of the United States must be male, white, and Protestant, but it is easy to see why one might think it does.

Since this country elected George Washington as its first President, 41 individuals have succeeded him in the role, each one male, each one white, and each, with the exception of one, Protestant.

These numbers are a harsh misrepresentation of our country as a whole. According to a 2003 estimate in the CIA World Factbook, 81.7% of the United States is white; 12.9% is black; 4.2% is Asian; 1% is Amerindian and Alaska native; and 0.2% is native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander. By that count, at least 8 of our presidents should have been of a race other than white by now. Moreover, half of our population is female, meaning that 21 women should have been elected into the Oval Office (or at the very least, 6 out of the 12 presidents who have been elected since women received the right to vote).

The religious statistics are perhaps even more surprising. According to a 2002 estimate, only 52% of Americans are Protestant. 24% are Roman Catholic; 2% are Mormon; 1% are Jewish; 1% are Muslim; 10% are other; and 10% are none. However, we have yet to see 1 atheist president, let alone 4.

Will the election of 2008 be different? It is still early, but already the media has been looking at three formidable candidates for the office, and none of them fit the mold. Barak Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have both been testing the waters for their candidacy while Mitt Romney has already announced his intention to run. Is America ready for a new public face? And in a campaign featuring race, sex and religion, which one will Americans find most objectionable?

It seems the answer might be religion. According to public polls, as many as 37 percent of all voters have said they don’t think they could vote for a Mormon for president — a higher number than you get when you ask the same question about whether people could vote for a woman or a black person.

Is this as far as we have come in the past 217 years? We boast of our freedoms and our progressiveness, but we have created an image of a leader so fundamental as to be incapable of being altered in two centuries.

Perhaps even more frighteningly: have we learned so little of our own past as to only replace one stereotype with the next? Have we fought for centuries to abolish segregation and give women the right to vote only to keep a man out of the White House because of his religious affiliation?

I don’t know who I am going to vote for yet. The election is still about two years away. All I know is that the person for whom I do end up casting my ballot will not receive my vote for being white, male and Protestant, but for being intelligent, insightful, and dedicated to working towards the betterment of this country and those who live within it. Perhaps if more people do the same, we will have taken the first step towards becoming the nation we proudly claim to be.