In our politics today, we spend more time talking about how leaders look or what they wear than about the real problems facing our country. Important issues like fixing schools, protecting the environment, or making healthcare fair often get lost under a plethora of rumors, insults, and inappropriate distractions. Americans have a habit of ignoring big ideas and getting stuck on small details, especially when it comes to women in power.
Time and time again, we see men in office make serious “mistakes”, commit crimes, tell half-truths and lie; yet, we shrug and move on. When a female leader makes a small slip up, if she pauses during a speech, or has ridiculous rumors spread about her, the headlines spin it into a scandal. We treat their stumbles as proof they aren’t ready, while we excuse the same behavior, and worse, from their male counterparts. The same goes for racial minorities in office, and not just presidential. To name a few, Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett, Barack Obama, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would never, in their careers, have been considered for their positions had they held any criminal record; meanwhile, others can directly steal classified documents from the capital and still win elections. Double standards like these take up space in political conversations that keep us from talking about the plans and policies that should really matter.
Take recent elections, for example. The only times our current President, Donald Trump, has won any race, he was running against women, first against a former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and later against a female senator and vice president, Kamala Harris. It’s tempting to imply his wins were simply because of his ideas or his policies. But, when we look closer, we see a pattern: voters are quick to doubt a woman’s strength or judge her harshly for small mistakes, while they often give men the benefit of the doubt. Arguably, former President Joe Biden, who won against him in the 2020 election, was less qualified than Harris in 2024. However she was still labeled as “useless” and “bad for America” despite her experience in every single government branch and three degrees from renowned universities.
This unfair treatment sends an unfortunate message about our society: women have to be perfect to be taken seriously, and even when they are, false rumors will always be believed over researched-based opinions and the actions they choose to take each day, while men are allowed to mess up again and again. Meanwhile, our schools need better funding, students worry about the cost of college, families struggle with health care bills, and our environment grows more at risk every passing day. These are the issues we should be debating every day, but instead we’re caught up in a cycle of lies, gossip, and pointing fingers at personalities rather than working together on real solutions.
If we want a true democracy, we need to bring back honest debates about real challenges, not endless coverage of personal slip‑ups. We should hold every candidate to the same standard, focusing on what they will do, not on how they say it. Anybody can say they’re a superhero, and if they have enough confidence you might actually believe it. But as a nation, we must all be able to decipher and research the truth, or the retelling of our once-called democracy may as well land in the hands of a modern-day George Orwell. Only then can we tackle the problems that affect our country and build the government that the founding fathers intended for America.
