Vote for real change--vote Dr. Paul! All his foreign policy advisors are hermaphrodites!

Sorry, just saving the Ronbots some time.

Mr. Kevin Drum: McCain, for some reason, isn't listed, perhaps because he no longer has a campaign staff left.

That's some tasty snark.

On a somewhat related subject, we hear a lot about the “dynasty� thing in relation to Hillary. But I ask, how are we ever going to have a woman President if we rule out women who came to prominence via men in their families? The great majority of women who have risen to power since the mid-20th century have at least partially ridden on the coattails of their husbands (Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Isabel Peron and the likely new pres. of Argentina) or their fathers (Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto). It’s nice when the ladies make it on their own (Golda Meir and Angela Merkel spring to mind), but it’s the exception, not the rule, and probably will remain so for some time to come.

Clinton, Richardson, Romney, and Huckabee are pretty balanced.

Ignoring the context, I didn't think that I would ever see that sentence.

Yeah, but look at George Bush. His primary foreign policy advisor was a woman and look what that got us! Don't let women drive the country, we'll wind up in the median or stuck in a ditch.

*yes i'm joking.

Yes, IMU, but the important thing is how it looks, and how the way it looks makes us feel. That's Kevin's point.

Jessica Mathews would be a feather in somebody's cap.

"try a little (bit) harder (now)" I like the unconscious Janis Joplin reference.

One plausible explanation that Obama, Edwards et al, are trailing Hillary on women in their campaigns, is the fact that Hillary is in the race.

I sure was hoping that foreign policy advisors would be choosen because of expertise, not gender.

One plausible explanation that Obama, Edwards et al, are trailing Hillary on women in their campaigns, is the fact that Hillary is in the race.

I don't think that's particularly plausible unless you believe that a) the pool of top female campaign talent is sharply limited and b) female campaign staffers necessarily gravitate toward working for a female candidate.

I'm not so sure about this.

Yes there's a statistical imbalance. But I'm sure there is a similar statistical imbalance in the professions and fields that supply foreign policy advisors, notably but not exclusively the military. Now that in turn may need redressing (no pun intended), but I'm sure it's at least in part, and quite possibly in large part, due to self-selection.

And yes, some of a politician's actions should be intended to create new role models and to work against unproductive social customs. But that's only ONE of the motivations, and another -- in this case arguably more important -- is to hire the best qualified people. And I think it's not at all unlikely that, in this case, at this time, that is in part, likely in large part, a cause of the discrepancy.

I sure was hoping that foreign policy advisors would be choosen because of expertise, not gender.

I think we all want advisors to have appropriate expertise. Is it your argument that male employees are never chosen for their gender, but only for their expertise?

>"It's time to try a little harder, folks."

Hmmm... do you mean the candidates or female diplomats/policy analysts?

> "Yeah, but look at George Bush. His primary foreign policy advisor was a woman and look what that got us! Don't let women drive the country, we'll wind up in the median or stuck in a ditch."

ROFL. Priceless.

The gender is obviously a big issue, but WTF with all those advisers? 25? 35? Just an foreign policy alone? That's not a kitchen cabinet, it's a stadium tour. If they can't narrow down the advisers to a handful, what does that mean to the candidate and the campaign?

V. strange.

Any idea on educational background of these advisors? What percentage of them went to the usual places (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford et al), and how many attended public universities?

Wait a second - look at those stats again. They range from a low of 11 to a high of 35 foreign policy advisors. To this novice outsider, that seems like a lot of people trying to advise one person on foreign policy issues. I envision not discussions of these issues but crowded arguments coming from a multitude of opinions and recommendations. And if that's just the foreign policy staff, what are the numbers for the remaining sections? AAAHHHH !

And of those seven women on those campaigns, four were probably hired because only they make a kick-ass margarita ...

I think you could consider Elizabeth Edwards a poltical advisor to John Edwards, so that's 1 in 12.

His primary foreign policy advisor was a woman and look what that got us!

Dick Cheney's a woman? Well, I guess that would explain Lynne.

Zephyr Teachout, with her eyes wide open, abetted an effort to discredit the Dean campaign and reduce the negative impact of the Armstrong Williams scandal by creating a false equivelency between the Dean Campaign's tactic of influencing blogger coverage with private funds and the GOP-controlled government payments of tax dollars to Williams in exchange for positive coverage of GOP policies, in his columns. Further, she sought to damage the integrity and reputations of Markos Moulitsas and Jermome Armstrong by aserting that they insidiously accepted money from the Dean campaign in exchange for positive coverage on their outlets, without informing their readers. Her work should be approached with caution given her history as a willing tool of the GOP pearl clutchers in exchange for some level of notoriety.

To do list:

1) Get more women foreign policy advisors
2) Send all the neocon advisors to an island so they can form tribes and kill each other off (a la Lord of the Flies)

Too bad about Condolezza Rice. If she had some ethics, and kept the Real Politik of her mentor, Scowcroft, and didn't agree with Bush all the way on the road to the Iraqi Reconstruction debacle we are now in...she would have been quite good.

But you still wouldn't be able to spell her name, brian.

In terms of staffers, you might want to recall that Edwards was forced to fire two female staffers (Amanda Marcotte and Melissa MacEwen, IIRC) due to Manufactured Right-Wing Outrage^TM.