If the fastest way to self esteem is to stand up for what you believe, President Obama is standing tall this week–even though it has taken a long “evolution” to stand up for marriage equality. What do you think? Will it help or hurt his reelection prospects?

Politico Arena asks:

The newest issue of Newsweek Magazine has declared President Obama “The First Gay President.”  The cover features a photo of Obama with a rainbow-colored halo around his head.  The cover comes less than a week after Obama voiced his support for gay marriage.

Does this portrayal help or hurt Obama’s re-election chances?

My Response:

As gay rights leader John Aravosis says in an op ed about President Obama’s declaration of support for same sex marriage, ”The president who seemed almost afraid of change became an agent of change. The man we voted for was finally back.”

For the most part, what voters want to see is a strong leader who says what he means and means what he says. Polls are showing that this stance might even help, as Aravosis observes, to reenergize Obama’s base which has been discouraged by his penchant for appeasing Republicans on so many issues. A Pew Research poll (PDF) found 49 percent of whites surveyed and 68 percent of African-Americans said the president’s embrace of marriage equality did not change their opinion of him. And in both groups, more who changed said they moved to a better opinion than worse.

Whether the decision was from conviction or political shrewdness, Obama really didn’t have a choice, based on where public opinion and his Democratic base are.  And when it comes to the realpolitik of the looming general election, the size and fierceness of gay activists easily matches that of the far right homophobes. Both will be organizing and mobilizing like crazy. And this might just be one instance where truth, justice, and the American way of fairness for all will prevail.

Looks like we’d all better rally to help Wisconsin elect Tom Barrett.

Politico Arena asks:

Polling shows Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker with a narrow lead over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett ahead of the June 5 recall election. Walker infuriated Democrats and labor organizations weeks after taking office in 2011 by driving a measure through the Republican-led legislature to curb the collective bargaining powers of public-sector unions.

Walker holds a hefty financial advantage over Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor. Barrett already lost to Walker in November 2010, and came up short in the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary, when he was a congressman.

Did political foes of Scott Walker make a bad bet on the recall? And is Barrett a strong candidate or damaged goods?

My Response:

It is always imperative to challenge injustice, so taking on Walker is more than worthwhile. And there is plenty of time between now and June 5 for Barrett to marshal the votes to prevail over Walker, who has infuriated a broad based coalition of constituencies.

But this race illustrates the weakness of the classic progressive defensive organizing strength. Winning a long slog political race requires more than whipping up anger. To overcome the disastrous effects of policies like Walker’s, we need much more strategic action and less reaction, more asserting our values and less re-framing to please pollsters, more bold agenda and less fine talk, more hardcore organizing from a place of power and vision and less short-term mobilizing from a place of fear, more fighting forward to win and no more merely fighting back to keep from losing yet more.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he supports gay marriage, following Vice President Joe Biden’s statement Sunday on “Meet the Press” that he is “comfortable” with it. President Barack Obama has not voiced support for gay marriage, instead backing civil unions, though he has maintained for over a year that his views are “evolving.”

Has the President’s hand been forced on the issue so he’ll have to declare his position one way or another? Or would backing gay marriage now make it look like he caved into Democratic pressure groups?

My Response:

It’s the job of advocates to make it impossible for politicians not to do the right thing. Biden knows what the right thing is, as does Obama . And now they’re being forced to “evolve.”

Linda Hirshman, in her upcoming book Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution, (Harper/Collins) due out on June 5 (www.gayvictorybook.com), explains exactly what’s going on in political terms:

“Why is this happening? Gays are at most a small percentage of the population. Support for same sex marriage just outpolled opposition within the last year. Wasn’t it supposed to be the economy, stupid?

“Biden unwittingly revealed the answer when explaining why he was in favor of marriage. He knew so many people, he said, and saw what it meant to them and to their children. He told a story of attending a fundraiser at the home of a gay couple and how impressed he was with the way they were raising their children. Even amongst Republicans, as Grenfell’s appointment reflects, gays are out and in too great numbers for the issue to be swept into the closet once again.”

It’s way too soon to tell which way independent voters will swing. But net out the contributing factors and it’s clear the results depend on many volatile factors. That chaos gives advocacy groups tremendous opportunity to influence the outcome. What’s your prediction?

Politico Arena Asks:

A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll finds a dead heat in the presidential race six months before the election. Mitt Romney edges out President Obama 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters. And the president’s job approval rating stands at 48 percent, down five points from February and a number now equal to the amount of people who disapprove of Obama’s performance.

Six months out from the election, do these numbers suggest Romney can exploit the president’s perceived weaknesses? Or do the poll results offer reasons for optimism to the Obama campaign?

My Response:

The economy is trending upward. Advantage Obama.

The economy is trending upward slowly.  Advantage Romney 

Republicans are waging war on women, angering independent women who are key swing voters. Advantage Obama

Democrats fail to deliver economic and reproductive justice yet take women voters for granted. Advantage Romney.

Killed Bin Laden. Advantage Obama.

Job numbers have not risen fully from the dead. Advantage Romney.

Likeability. Advantage Obama 

Citizens United. Advantage Romney.

Net net: independents continue to be key to the election. But the vote could swing either way depending on myriad factors. Ask this question November 1 and get a more meaningful answer.

Regardless of which label one chooses for Richard Grenell’s departure from the Romney campaign ranks, the result is the same. And can anyone tell me why in the world a self-respecting gay person or a woman would ever support the Republican candidate in the first place?

Politico Arena Asks:

Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell announced he was resigning from the campaign this week. Grenell, (an occasional Arena contributor), was the first openly gay spokesman for the Romney campaign.

However, Grenell’s hiring became a source of tension for the campaign after conservatives expressed concern over Grenell’s sexual orientation as well as his endorsement of same sex marriage. Grenell’s voice was also absent during a week of key foreign policy news – the anniversary of Osama bin Ladin’s death.

Does Grenell’s exit reflect poorly on the Romney campaign? And does it indicate that openly gay individuals still have a hard time climbing the ladder in politics?

My Response:

Grenell’s departure not only reflects the homophobic truth of the Romney campaign and its supporters, it also reflects the inconvenient truth gay Republicans must face. Their party denies their basic humanity.

Grenell should have stayed and fought for his job, and his Log Cabin Republican allies should have fought with him. This episode makes them complicit with injustices against their own. So I hold them equally culpable.

Not if you’re Lilly Ledbetter.

The namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act—the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law while surrounded with the smart political optics of Ledbetter, bipartisan members of Congress, and other women leaders in red power suits—knows this:

• Securing fairness and equality in compensation requires each woman to be persistently aware of what she’s worth and stand up for herself in the workplace.

• Securing fairness and equality in compensation is a long haul process that requires changes to laws and policies so the system is fair to all.

The personal and the political are, as usual, intertwined.

Sure, negotiation expert  Victoria Pynchon can coach you on how to negotiate compensation more effectively for yourself. And when I speak and teach about my book No Excuses and its 9 Power Tools, I emphasize #3—use what you’ve got—to help women identify just how much power they have in their own hands, including the power to make changes in their paychecks.

And sure, as the Daily Muse pointed out, it’s good that the U.S. Department of Labor held an Equal Pay App Challenge seeking an app to educate people about the persistent problems of equal—or rather, unequal—pay.

But clearly these individual actions, as important as they are, constitute isolated drops in the deep blue ocean of needed systemic change.

Ledbetter’s new memoir, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, takes the personal and weaves it together with the political as she describes how she became a leader in the fight for equal pay.

The retired Goodyear Tire Company executive reveals how she discovered she’d been paid less systematically for 30 years because of her gender, began advocating for herself with her employer, and then realized she had a larger cause working for equal pay on behalf of all women through the courts and the legislative process.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act was needed to overturn the 2007 Supreme Court decision that nullified Ledbetter’s previously successful legal challenge to Goodyear, thus making it harder for women—and all employees—to pursue federal claims of pay discrimination.

Yet as Ledbetter explains in this radio interview with The Women’s Eye, her namesake law simply put women back where they had been before she filed her lawsuit.

“Women are still lagging far behind,” she says. “You should expect and get a good day’s pay for a good day’s work.”

Although the 2007 law restores workers’ ability to sue if they believe they have been discriminated against in pay, it doesn’t solve the underlying difficulty for employees to know whether they’ve been treated unfairly to begin with.

That’s why Ledbetter’s now fighting for the next step—passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

The Paycheck Fairness Act has been called the 21st century fix for 20th century laws. According to the American Association of University Women— which has been a leader in equal pay advocacy—the Paycheck Fairness Act, a much needed updated of the 47-year-old Equal Pay Act, is a comprehensive bill that would create stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay, and strengthen federal outreach, education and enforcement efforts…the bill would also deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages.

Washington beltway rumor has it that the Senate Democratic majority will bring up Paycheck Fairness in the next week or two, in an effort to solidify their party’s electoral advantage with women while further eroding women voters’ support for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Blocked by Republicans in 2010 when it was last considered, the bill has been neither endorsed nor opposed by Romney.

AAUW’s Government Relations Director Lisa Maatz has concerns about that strategy: “It’s always good to see our priority issues in the national spotlight, and there now seems to be a growing call in the Senate to bring up the Paycheck Fairness Act for a vote. It would be useful for voters to know exactly where our lawmakers and candidates stand on this critical issue. But I must also say that I’m not sure it helps our cause if equal pay simply becomes partisan cannon fodder in this year’s elections, with little actual effort made to close the gap.”

I think Ledbetter would agree with me that forcing the issue is a leadership act and might be the only thing that can help the fair pay cause by making voters aware of where the candidates stand so they can vote accordingly.

Whatever happens, women and men who believe in fair pay will need plenty of Lilly Ledbetter’s courage, grace, and grit to prevail.

I’ll be tracking and continuing to write about Paycheck Fairness here, so stay tuned.

Right-wing legislative think tank ALEC seems to be whining that it’s getting smeared. Pity.

Politico Arena asks:

Common Cause has filed a complaint accusing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) of violating its tax-exempt status by lobbying state legislators. Critics have seized on ALEC’s support of so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, coordinating a campaign against the group in the wake of the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

Is this a valid complaint? Or a smear against a successful conservative advocacy group?

My Response:

Thank goodness ALEC is being challenged. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and right-wing groups have never hesitated to smear any group standing the way of their total domination of the policy agenda.

That said, the only lasting antidote to ALEC’s twisted use of the tools of democracy is for the rest of us to participate in the democratic process more and better, in order to vote down laws like Stand Your Ground and throw ALEC-leaning legislators out of office.

As a student of women’s relationship with power, I made sure to be curled up in bed for Veep’s 10pm edt HBO premier last night, ready to soak it up and take notes on my equally charged up  ipad.

My excitement deflated minute by minute.

Entertainment Watch’s plot overview is one reason:

Louis-Dreyfus’ Vice President Selina Meyer is a veep without much influence constantly trying to gain some, a ripe premise for comedy.… In the first installment of Veep, we saw V.P. Meyer trying to advance her green initiative with the introduction of cornstarch-based utensils in government offices, a move that irritated (“outrage” being too strong a word to use for anything a Vice President introduces) the plastics lobby.

Now, I know that Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president John Nance Garner (do you even know who he was?) described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” And when Veep Meyer asks her former senatorial colleague what she’s been missing since she left the Senate to take the vice-presidency, the senator replies, “Power?”

As the tension between corn starch versus plastic utensils mounts, Veep receives repeated messages that the White House doesn’t want any mention of anything that could bring down the wrath of Big Oil’s mega lobby. The President himself is never seen or heard—rubbing the wound of Meyer’s perceived powerlessness with sea salt.

But that’s just the beginning of the narrative by which Veep renders the foul-mouthed Meyer less than influence-commanding.

Her self-presentation telegraphs “I am not to be taken seriously.” Would a vice president come to work in sleeveless party dresses, with visible cleavage, hair flopping in her face, the red power suit only worn for purposes of the official photograph?

Dreyfus acknowledged that she was styled after Michelle Obama.

“[My character Selina Myers] is not as chic as Michelle Obama, but who could be?” Louis-Dryfus said, explaining further that it was still Obama’s singular style that provided the blueprint for the character’s sexy, yet powerful look, “so we can move it slightly away from the square look — no offense,” Louis-Dreyfus concluded.

They model the first female vice president on the First Lady?

Please!! There’s not one shred of job description comparability, and to imply so is demeaning both to women and to whoever sits a heartbeat from the Presidency.

The entire show makes Selina Meyer look like a Palinesque dunderhead, despite never revealing her political party. Meyer gives away her power in so many ways large and small. And swearing like a sailor while thinking up schemes to cut others down to size is supposed to make her look strong enough to operate in a man’s world? I don’t buy it.

Being a leader whether or not you have the formal power doesn’t require cutting others down. It means first and foremost that you have to act like one.

Here are three ways everyone can use power effectively without being the formal leader:

Value Your Piece of the Puzzle

Everyone in an organization holds a piece of the puzzle, without which the full picture can’t be completed. There’s much more mutuality than we often perceive.

Everybody needs help now and then, even—especially—if they hold the title of President whose job by definition is impossible.

Bonnie McEwan, president of the public interest communications firm Make Waves Not Noise and professor in the Milano Graduate School in New York, told me she advises her students to “view themselves as powerful, in a constructive sense, and understand it in terms of the ability to influence for good.”

McEwan teaches her students to analyze their own personal power bases. She highlights two key sources of power within their control: referent power, the power of personality or presence, and expert power, or their abilities and skills to contribute to the work. Meyer could have a lot of fun in Veep working these sources of power out while demonstrating spunk and leadership.

Deepen Relationships

The world turns on human connections, so it’s not surprising that many experts suggest deepening relationships by getting to know people and their motivations is as key to making things happen regardless of one’s position. People like working with people they like and trust. Coming from what was apparently a highly respected Senate position, Meyer brought plenty of that to the vice presidency.

In their book Influence Without Authority, Adam Cohen and David Bradford write about Nettie Seabrooks, who as an African American and a woman, had more than her share of hurdles to acquire influence at General Motors. Nevertheless, the authors concluded that her capacity for cultivating strong relationships and avoiding self-inflicted relationship traps helped her to be effective far beyond her formal position.

Set an Agenda and Deliver the Goods

When I spoke at the YWCA Tucson’s Women’s Leadership Conference recently, a nurse practitioner approached me with a worried look on her face. “I see where our patient care could be improved significantly,” she said, “But how can I exercise leadership when I’m not the doctor and not the manager?”

It can be frightening to tell the boss something he or she might not want to hear, but if you have your facts organized and present a cogent agenda, I’ll bet you won’t just get the meeting, you’ll be rewarded. And if the information or advice you offer proves to make the team shine, or keeps the boss from stepping into a big pile of —it, you’ll build trust and your own sense of empowerment.

Like the Veep, most of us don’t hold CEO positions during most of our careers. Nevertheless, as McEwan says, “If you see yourself as the leader of your staff rather than as the follower of your boss, you empower yourself to take action. Perhaps you can’t do everything, but you can do something.”

If Selina Meyer took these three tips for leading without formal power, she’d lose the contrived punch line of Veep. But believe me, there’s plenty of Washington absurdity to create a hilariously funny sitcom about a female Vice President without making her look small, mean, and truly powerless.

What was your reaction to Veep? How have you led despite not having formal power?

This article originally ran in a blog post for FORBESWOMAN. Check it out here.

Should a politician have to answer for what his/her surrogates say? That’s the question Politico’s Arena asked yesterday.

I see a big difference in the comparison between the two examples given, however. Here’s my answer–what do you say?

Politico Arena Asks:

The Secret Service has taken an interest in comments by rocker Ted Nugent about President Obama. At an NRA convention in St. Louis on Saturday, Nugent, a Mitt Romney supporter, said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

The Romney campaign has disavowed Nugent‘s remarks. And last week President Obama’s team denounced comments by supporter Hilary Rosen critical of Ann Romney’s role as a stay-at-home mother.

Should Romney be tied to Nugent’s tirade, as the president got linked to Rosen’s remarks? Or should candidates be absolved of responsibility for what supporters say about the campaign?

My Response:

All leaders get tarred or starred by the people they bring with them. It’s how leaders react that counts. Neither Romney nor Obama deserves kudos for his reactions to recent events. But Hilary Rosen’s gaffe does not equal Ted Nugent’s threat.

Shame on Romney for his tepid disavowal of Nugent. Any leader should voice unequivocal opposition to anyone who threatens, commits, or suggests others commit violence. Doesn’t Romney realize that if he becomes president, he might well become the target of similar vitriol that could become violent action if other leaders fail to stand with him against it? He should have issued a much stronger statement blasting Nugent.

In a lesser offense, but nevertheless discouraging to many women who have supported him, Obama threw Hilary Rosen under the bus when he could have used the opportunity to reframe the discussion of women and the economy in more positive and less polarized terms. Instead he bought into the right wing narrative that being a stay-at-home mother is the ideal, and that idealizes women who stay the heck out of the male-dominated economy.

Sure, motherhood is hard, but so is fatherhood if done right. Rosen was wrong in how she said it, but right in what she meant to communicate. Obama would have made himself a hero if he’d recognized women who not only are mothers but also work three jobs to support their kids with no nannies or housekeepers to help them–unlike Ann Romney whose cushy life gives her “choices” most women simply do not have.

And frankly, most women want to work for pay, even if they have multi-millionare husbands, because they want to use their talents beyond the home front. What are they, chopped liver?

Women who work outside the home make up the base of Obama voters, and he should give them more respect in the future.

Equal Pay Day marks the day in April when women wear red to signify we’re in the red, earning (by 2011 calculations) but 77.4 cents to men’s $1. And for African-American and Hispanic women the differential is significantly more extreme.

This marker of financial non-power came just after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker disappeared the state’s equal pay law. It also coincided with author and journalism professor Katie Roiphe’s implausible analysis of the S and M-loving novel Fifty Shades of Gray.

A paradox in her own mind, Roiphe opines:

“It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace…when—in hard economic terms—women are less dependent or subjugated than before.

It is probably no coincidence that, as more books like The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy and Hanna Rosin’s forthcoming The End of Men appear, there is a renewed popular interest in the stylized theater of female powerlessness…We may then be especially drawn to this particular romanticized, erotically charged, semi-pornographic idea of female submission at a moment in history when male dominance is shakier than it has ever been.”

Really? And whose preferred narrative do we think this zero-sum “power-over” social model is?

Even if we bought the logical framework, assertions of female dollar dominion are greatly overstated. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 28.9% of wives in dual income families out earn their husbands. If my elementary school math holds up, that means more than 70% of men still out earn their wives.

And because women don’t negotiate as aggressively as men and don’t toot their own horns as flagrantly, each woman who works for pay outside the home (note the language here, Hilary Rosen) gets ever-farther behind in the paycheck race, amassing a half-million dollar average deficit by retirement age.

Here’s a dandy little chart created by Catalyst that lays it out starkly.

Men Hold the Vast Majority of Positions of Power (and Remuneration) in the United States.

Table: Percentage of Women and Men in Positions of Power in the United States, 2011

Sex and the Power of the Paycheck

For men, the “mine is bigger than his” ideal, whether we’re talking paycheck, possessions, or penis, isn’t mitigated by any cultural narrative of a presumed desire for powerlessness. So why should a desire for powerlessness be inherently true for women?

Which doesn’t mean women don’t experience real power ambivalence issues, as I found in my research for No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.

It’s hard to change a culture while you’re living in it, and there’s a big risk in upending any power structure. You lose the comfort of familiar misery. People say bad things about you. You have to actually think. To make choices and take responsibility for what you choose.

Co-option becomes rampant on all sides of this equation. The rewards of living within the patriarchal narrative are so high and the benefits of bucking it so low. Why else would Tina Brown publish Roiphe’s logically torqued submission theory?

But think about the alternative to embracing the power of the paycheck:

Think of all those freezing days in January, when the dark comes early. Those miserable gray mornings in February, when the ground is covered in slush and the car refuses to start. Those blustery days in March when spring seems like it’s refusing to ever come. Think of working all those days for nothing, zilch, nada. That’s what pay disparity looks like.

The late Nobel-winning economist Paul Samuelson quipped that “women are just men with less money.” That’s not funny if you’re a woman struggling to raise a family on your own, and it’s not right or just regardless of one’s financial position.

So it’s incumbent upon women to do as PBS “One-on-One” host Maria Hinojosa said as she wrapped up a New York Women’s Agenda panel on equal pay with an exhortation to action, “You have to learn to eat your fear, to turn the tables on the power relationships.”

Pay Disparity = Power Disparity

For as long as women are paid less than men for the same work, women will have less power in politics, in the workplace, and in personal relationships.

Economic inequality narrows the possibilities to define our lives at work, in politics and civic life, and in our relationships. True economic equality, on the other hand, would allow us to redefine the meaning of consent, sexual and otherwise, and create healthier relationships that are mutually rewarding in all spheres of life.

This kind of power to, not the domination-submission framework of power over, is what our country needs to assure that the intelligence and capabilities of all our citizens are used most effectively. Even those—male or female, high earners or not—who like to be spanked now and again during sex.

I hate to throw water on Katie Roiphe’s latest feminist-disparaging theory, but I feel a lot sexier after I’ve earned a nice book advance or a fair speaking fee than during an economic dry spell. And after I’ve deposited my money, I’ve never once had a fantasy of being submissive. Not even when I’ve out-earned my spouse.

Personally, I find paycheck power—mine, that is—quite an effective aphrodisiac, with no concomitant need to be subjugated or humiliated. But I do get off on verbally spanking legislators who don’t support equal pay policies.

Here’s a link where you can use your power to tell your members of Congress to vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act. Maybe our collective voices will whip them into submission.

Do it right now. I promise you’ll get a thrill.

And then, walk through the doors of power that have been opened for you; join me on Thursday, April 19, 2012, in a teleconference event, Sister Courage: How Movement Building can Break Glass Ceilings and Change the World. This Ten Buck Talk is sponsored by The Daily Thrive, a She Negotiates project.