Politics & Power Quote by Geraldine Ferraro

Ferraro is doing two things at once: conceding imperfection while refusing humiliation. The line opens with a calibrated admission - "not an expert" - the kind of modesty that disarms critics and reads as honest rather than evasive. Then she snaps the frame back into place: "but I was knowledgeable". That pivot matters. She is not asking to be graded on a curve; she is demanding that "foreign policy" not become a shibboleth used to police who gets to sound presidential.

The real target is power, not policy. By naming her opponent as "the Vice President of the United States", Ferraro drags the weight of office into the sentence, underscoring the asymmetry of the exchange: a sitting vice president leveraging institutional prestige to diminish a challenger. "Turning around and putting me down" is deliberately plainspoken, almost schoolyard language, and that's the point. It recasts what could be sold as tough debate as something more recognizable: condescension dressed up as seriousness.

In 1984, Ferraro wasn't just running against George H.W. Bush; she was running against a political culture primed to treat a woman's gaps as disqualifying and a man's as fixable. Her phrasing anticipates a familiar trap: ask for competency, then move the goalposts until the candidate is defending her right to be in the room. The intent here is to puncture that ritual - to insist that expertise isn't the same as authority, and authority isn't a license to belittle.