Politics & Power Quote by Geraldine Ferraro

"Vice president - it has such a nice ring to it!" lands like a half-laugh, half-challenge: the sound of a title being tried on in public, with everyone watching to see if it fits. Ferraro delivers the line with a deliberately light touch, but the lightness is doing heavy political work. In 1984, when she became the first woman on a major-party presidential ticket, the office itself was a symbol factory: mostly ceremonial, often dismissed as a waiting room. Ferraro turns that into an advantage. By focusing on the "ring" of the words, she treats power as something that can be spoken into legitimacy.

The subtext is sharper than the smile. For a male candidate, "vice president" reads as career progression. For Ferraro, it comes preloaded with skepticism: Can she handle it? Does she belong? The quote subtly acknowledges that the battle isn’t only over policy credentials; it’s over cultural permission. If the title sounds good coming out of her mouth, it starts to sound normal in the country’s ear.

There’s also a wink at media spectacle. A woman running for national executive office was, at the time, treated as novelty and provocation, scrutinized for tone, clothes, family finances, voice. Ferraro’s line disarms that circus without conceding to it. She claims the thrill of ambition while refusing to apologize for it, compressing a historic rupture into a breezy sentence that makes history feel, suddenly, like common sense.