Has the Era of the Two White Men Presidential Ticket Ended?

I have a prediction. I predict that Democrats will not again have a presidential slate made up of two white men for a very, very long time, if ever. The last time the Democratic ticket had two white men on it was 2004, and when I heard that race recounted on NPR recently it struck me as odd. After all, if part of the purpose of the VP pick is to balance the ticket, why would John Kerry choose another white man as his running mate? That certainly doesn’t seem very balanced!

It’s moments like these that make me feel that something has actually changed, something that will maybe stay changed, in the wake of Obama’s presidency. Remember, 2008 was only the second time in American history that a major party presidential ticket had something other than two white men on it, after Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

I feel like we need a graphic of some sort to really grasp this.

See all those dark gray squares? Each one represents a major political party presidential slate made up of two white men. The orange squares show major political party presidential slates with one white man, and one woman and/or minority.

When it comes to the Democratic Party, I don’t think we’re going to go back to the two white men presidential slate. I think that era is over, and that going forward, a white male presidential candidate will feel obligated to choose a running who is not a white man in order to balance the ticket. And that’s a good thing! The more different lived perspectives we have in high office the better.

Perhaps the more pertinent question is: will the Republicans follow suit? The answer initially seemed to be yes. In 2008, in order to counteract the novelty of having a Black man on the presidential ticket for the first time in history, John McCain chose a Sarah Palin as his running mate. But that went disastrously, in part because the qualifications McCain’s campaign was using seem to have started and ended at being a woman. The idea was never meant to be that any woman or any minority will do.

Whether or not the Republicans will try a diverse ticket again remains to be seen. But there’s another question to consider as well. Even if, at some future time, white men were to make up only one member on each party’s presidential slate as a matter of course, they would still be overrepresented: after all, white men make up less than 50% of the U.S. population. So perhaps another question is: how long until we have a presidential slate without a white man on it?

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