Shattering the myth of the ‘glass ceiling’

What a thrilling number of glass ceilings have been broken this century – with more still to come, apparently. In 2008 America elected its first black president. In 2012 Barack Obama was re-elected and so became the first black president to win re-election. In 2016 America had a chance to elect its first female president but the public blew it and failed to elect Hillary Clinton. Fortunately they somewhat made up for this in 2020 by voting in the first female vice president. A vote that was made sweeter by the fact that, on that occasion, the public had a two-for-one offer and were also able to vote in the first black vice president. Now the public have a further chance to improve themselves by voting for the first black female president.

Hillary Clinton had a chance to ruminate on this at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, declaring that between herself and Kamala Harris: ‘Together we’ve put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States.’

Close observers might have sensed a certain forced smile on Clinton’s face as she said this. She had hoped to be commander in chief since at least the time that her husband was breaking in the new intern pool in the 1990s White House. An unkind person might say: ‘Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’ But a kind interpretation of history (of the sort that Hillary is presumably already writing) is that she is like one of those early astronauts who paved the way for Neil Armstrong. Or an early explorer who traversed the Arctic wastelands and in whose historic footsteps other explorers more successfully followed in less bigoted times.