Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman.