Leadership Quote by Geraldine Ferraro

Ferraro’s line lands like a backhanded compliment to superstition: even magic, she implies, deserves more respect than the economic ideas being sold to the public. The genius is the double demotion. First, she revives “voodoo economics,” the already-sticky jab coined inside Republican circles to describe Reagan-era supply-side promises. Then she undercuts her own metaphor, refusing to let her opponents borrow the exotic mystique of “voodoo” as if it were merely quirky or misunderstood. If anything, she says, the insult is unfair to the allegedly irrational.

The intent is surgical: strip a policy program of legitimacy without getting lost in spreadsheets. Ferraro is arguing that certain economic claims aren’t just wrong; they’re performative, closer to a ritual than a theory. “New version” hints at rebranding: the same old trick, repackaged with fresh confidence, asking voters to suspend disbelief.

The subtext is also about power and credibility. In the 1980s, economic debate was increasingly mediated through television-friendly certainty. Ferraro, as a Democratic standard-bearer and a woman forced to prove toughness in a masculinized arena, uses humor as a weapon that reads as plainspoken rather than professorial. She positions herself on the side of common sense against a governing style that asks for faith over evidence.

Context matters: “voodoo economics” wasn’t just a clever insult; it was a warning about consequences - deficits, inequality, the costs of treating government like a stage for confidence games. Ferraro’s punchline makes the policy argument memorable by making it socially embarrassing to believe.