Photo credit: Rod Lamkey Jr.
“I think my father would make an incredible President,” said Vice President Biden’s daughter Ashley. “My father is a man of integrity, honesty and he has incredible passion. So, I think he would be an absolutely incredible President!” Mind you, she didn’t make a surprise announcement at the 2014 Women Rule Summit hosted by Politico, Google and The Tory Birch Foundation – she’s ‘just sayin.’
The list of panelists was impressive throughout the day, but far too long to include in this piece, but all can be found on the Politico website. We decided to take this in a different direction by focusing on a lesser known name to those ‘outside the beltway’ but with outstanding accomplishments of her own.
Hollywood on the Potomac sat down with April Ryan of “White House Report” – the first and only daily national radio feature broadcast directly from the White House.
Tammy Haddad, April Ryan and friend Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“My mother was a woman who always told me I can be and do anything I wanted,” said Ryan. “She always said that and so I have taken her words and translated that into my life and told my daughters the same thing. I’m a person who always believes … don’t like the gender thing….. don’t like the race thing………but it’s real and I believe Nancy Pelosi got it right. She’s there to break the marble ceiling. You can shatter glass, but there’s a marble ceiling that you have to go through. But I think if you have confidence and work hard that you can succeed in this life. What is the definition of success? That’s for you and what you determine. You can succeed, but you just have to know that you can do it. And being a woman is not any kind of hindrance. It is actually an asset.“
Ryan has two daughters, some of us have boys, so we asked her if she thought the women rule thing could be a kind of reverse discrimination.
“I don’t think we’re trying to take anything away from anybody. I think this is a world where we all fit in. And we can all have it. {For me,} I rule. I rule. I’m going to tell you I’m going to embrace it. I rule, I rock. And I think we all should say we rock. Let me tell you something, I rock because I commute each day … I’m in 2 cities each day and I have 2 little girls and I’m by myself. I’m a single parent. I rock because I take them to school then go to work and I have to do what I have to do there. I go back home and take care of them. That’s rocking. And that makes me feel great. The unfortunate thing is a lot of the men don’t have to do the balancing that we have to do. They don’t have to balance like we do for the most part. Many of the men have support – their wives. That’s why I say women rule. We have been brought up to be the nurturers, the ones who can juggle. This is why I’m saying the sky’s the limit. We will not be held down by gender, by race – the sky’s the limit. I remember years ago, my mother was a secretary. She rose up to become the director of her department at a college university. And she fought hard, did what she had to do so I could be who I aspired to be or who I am. That’s it. Women rule.”
“I’v got a book coming out in February. It’s called The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America. It’s published by Rowman and Littlefield and I am ecstatic. We talk about race. In this town we’ve never had anyone going on the record about race. Never. When I say people going on the record I’m talking about Presidents, former Presidents, current President, former first lady, former Secretary of the State, people in Washington are on the record for this book. It comes at an interesting time. We need to have a discussion about race. It’s interesting to be here among the double minority woman. According to society I’m a double minority. I’m a woman and I’m an African-American. You’ve got to keep moving.”
Vice President Joe Biden:
Kathleen Parker moderates the “Conservative Feminists: Why It’s Not an Oxymoron” panel
