Former NBC News and CNN anchor Campbell Brown has been laying low for a while following her departure from CNN two years ago. Over the weekend however, she decided to return to the public eye to talk women and politics in an op-ed in the New York Times. Brown, who noted that she has “always admired” President Obama, nonetheless took him to task for the way his campaign has viewed women in this election cycle.
But the promise of his campaign four years ago has given way to something else — a failure to connect with tens of millions of Americans, many of them women, who feel economic opportunity is gone and are losing hope. In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it. Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills. To borrow a phrase from our president’s favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, they want “an open field and a fair chance.”