Below the Belt: a biweekly column by NOW President Kim Gandy

With Super Tuesday only a few weeks away, it’s hard to have a conversation that doesn’t work its way around to the 2008 elections. The Bush administration, thankfully, is in its final days. Voting registration and involvement among young people is on the rise. And the two most electable candidates for the Democratic nomination are panning out to be a woman and an African American.

With all this excitement, why is it that we seem unable to move beyond the obvious – for those of you who haven’t noticed, Barack Obama is black and Hillary Clinton is female.

As the leader of an organization that champions gender equality, promoting diversity, and ending racism among our top priority issues, in a sense, I am grateful we are finally talking openly about gender and race – topics we generally skirt, so to speak. Something about equality issues makes men and majority populations feel threatened, so what about the rest of the issues at stake?

With the primaries under way, I find myself combing through media to find information and commentary about the issues I care about.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic about the idea of a female president in both my and my daughters’ lifetime. It’s no secret that the U.S. ranks number 69 out of 128 countries when it comes to female political empowerment. “The Time is NOW” is hardly just a catchy campaign slogan we came up with here at headquarters.

And to think, just 50 years ago in my home state Louisiana, “for the purpose of protecting the public health, morals and the peace and good order in the state – not because of race,” everything from housing, to playgrounds, to restaurants were segregated. That, juxtaposed with the reality that this country is considering the election of its first African American president – this is truly a monumental occasion in U.S. history.

But I am concerned that personalities and identity politics are taking the place of real discourse about the realities of our country and the course we should be taking. My civic responsibility is to vote for the candidate I believe to be best qualified to lead this country for at least the next four years. And my vote, however gleeful I remain about the prospect of our 2008 candidates, has more to do with issues and experience than race or gender.

As with so many issues, the media have again chosen to take the low road, adding more heat than light. Race and gender are pitted against each other on TV and in print like contenders on American Gladiators. It is not enough to acknowledge that, when racism or misogyny occurs, both are bad and neither should be tolerated. Instead, they’re used to divide a nation in a cut-throat battle about which is worse. It’s like, as my colleague at Feministing.com put it so eloquently, the oppression Olympics!

To be clear – what if our leadership choices were between Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas as frontrunners for the 44th president of the United States? As the president of the National Organization for Women, I would have to acknowledge the political breakthrough. But with records like these three political figures, I’d be working like hell to ensure none of them made it to the oval office!

Neither women nor African Americans are a monolithic population when it comes to voting or anything else. The insinuation that women owe Hillary their allegiance or blacks owe Barack not only leaves African American women, white male Democrats, and any other minority within our voting electorate in an impossible quandary, it is a disservice to the larger political debate about who is the most qualified candidate with the strongest political agenda to lead our country – now. And while our willingness to finally engage the race and gender conversations as a nation is encouraging, we’re talking about electing the person in charge of the most powerful nation in the world, not identity politics.

Senator Clinton’s experience, record, and stance on issues that impact freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for women and girls won her my vote for the upcoming presidential election. Her strong record of protecting and advancing a woman’s right to control her body and to plan her family as she sees fit is impeccable. She has advocated for a safer and more secure future on every issue that affects the economic status of women and girls. I am comforted by her thirty five years of experience, her work promoting civil rights and calling for an end to racism; her detailed, universal healthcare policy; her commitment to end discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity; her body of work dedicated to stopping violence against women; and her determination to end the unconscionable war in Iraq. The fact that Hillary’s a woman – and a role model for my daughters – that’s just an added bonus.

Neither Senator Obama’s race nor Senator Clinton’s gender can alter the collision course of this country – only leadership and skill and determination can do that. And while there is room to marvel at the contenders, there is not space to vote for them based solely on their racial and gender identities. Although our history is in dire need of a more diverse body of presidential leaders, let their leadership and commitment to our issues and our future – not biological characteristics – be the criteria we use to determine who is most fit.