On a bright, sunny Fall day in late September 1987, congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado stood on the steps of the Denver Civic Center, and announced to a world who may or may not have really been all that interested, that she would not run for president in 1988--which may, if nothing else, have made her nearly unique among politicians in 1987. But the big news in her announcement was not the valence of her decision, but the fact that she broke down and cried during her news conference. Cried. On TV for christsakes! In front of the proverbial millions of people.

This lapse in media-cool was variously interpreted as: weakness, honesty, a blow for feminism, a vindication of feminism, proof that women shouldn't be president, proof that women should be president, and on and on, depending, as they say, on the eye of the beholder. The great pundits have long-since passed this way, leaving us the droppings of their concentrated wisdom, and clearing the road for the light tread of we lesser mortals. So it is hopefully now safe for we minor-league pundits to strut our stuff and offer our version of what this all really means!

I wont employ the novelists artful trick of keeping you in extended suspense. To tell you the truth, I haven't the dimmest idea what it all really means. But what I find interesting, and perhaps even instructive, is the whole process of it, how it triggered such elemental issues in the ongoing cultural dialog. Some very basic stuff about men vs. women was stirred up by Pat Schroeder's momentary performance in the Fall chill of a Denver afternoon. I noticed this same stuff being stirred up around my office this week, and after two or three additional repetitions here at work, I finally got it! Then it dawned on me what service Pat Schroeder was really performing for us.

I work in a huge corporate bureaucracy, almost 7,000 people work in my building alone. And office politics is rife everywhere one looks--if one likes to look. And God help me, I do. Watching, and even occasionally dabbling in, office politics is one of my character defects. I must confess to a gleeful fascination with that dark business of who's up and who's down, who's in and who's out, who did what to whom, and who is climbing up the greasy pole and who has slid back down again. Back-fence gossip in a suit and tie.

This week one of the top female executives in the organization resigned. And when one of her key female subordinates announced the news to her staff she broke down and wept. The second time. Did the same thing last week when she called a staff meeting to deny the rumors of her boss impending resignation. Broke down then too and cried in front of her subordinates, mostly men. Embarrassing one of them said to me as he recounted the story. Fascinating, I thought, being the hopeless gossip that I am.

And this week I was locked in a political skirmish with one of the top female executives in my component. I had been given an assignment which she managed to wrest from my grip and take over for her own. The stakes were high because it was for our top boss. Reputations were at stake. And she wouldn't allow me to help, wanting all the control (and the glory, naturally) for herself. Trouble was she needed my input, and I knew it, but she didn't. I offered, she rebuffed.

This woman is an exquisitely classy act. Beautiful, bright, capable, impeccably tailored, a textbook dream of a tough female executive. When it came time to make her big presentation she flopped. Big. Fell flat on her face. At one point it got so bad she broke down. Started to cry. Embarrassing everyone thought. Fascinating I thought ( I told you I'm incorrigible).

Round 2, she tried it a second time, after much reflection and licking of wounds. Better, but exasperating. She kept getting suggestions from all sides until she was inundated with too much help. Voice cracked, face reddened, tears welled up again. Embarrassing. Even for me.

Well, I may be slow, but occasionally it gets through. Neither of these strong, capable women could be seen as anything but highly competent executives. And yet they broke down and cried, something none of their male counterparts would ever do. And this is a difference between men and women. Probably cultural, maybe deeper, I have no firm conviction. But the point is: there's something there. I don't know what it is, or what color or shape it has, but something's there.

In short, there is a real piece of business about men and women revealed in these incidents. Maybe women are more honest with their emotions and men repress them. Maybe men should cry when people are being so beastly to them. Maybe that's more real than stoic silence and fisticuffs and warfare. Or, if you prefer, maybe women are weak and emotional and cant be trusted in positions of authority. The evidence suggests otherwise, but I'm not interested in arguing the point with anyone.

My own cockeyed opinion, is that most of life benefits from balance. And if men and women are interestingly different in some ways then this is a happy fact and it suggests that we need a healthy mix of men and women in various enterprises in order to have a balanced view of things. Differences in reactions to stress or good news or whatever should therefore be encouraged and admired. No one need be embarrassed; and after a time it probably wont even be fascinating anymore.

This same principle applies to race, among other things. The real reason such things as affirmative action are so important is not to redress some past injustice so much, as to produce a more balanced mix of perspectives here and now. It seems to me sensible and healthy to have a mix of various races in most sectors of society so as to take advantage of different cultural experiences, perceptions, etc. Again, I suspect that the various races might be interestingly different in some ways. And if this is true, again I see this as a happy fact, which contributes to the strength of a culture.

And of course, a segment of society dominated by women is just as bad as one dominated by men. Or one dominated by blacks is just as bad as one dominated by whites. Neither gender nor any race has a monopoly on bigotry.

The danger here of course comes when someone is tempted to use differences as excuses for repression. As in: women are emotional, therefore they cant be president. What I am suggesting is: if women are emotional, then we need to make sure we have some women presidents from time to time to keep things on an even keel. See the difference?

And the temptation of course is to defend against this kind of illicit repression by denying the differences. Which is one tack that feminism has historically taken. As in: Women aren't emotional damnit! Men just say that because we threaten them!

And who can blame them? We can't b.s. our way through this you know. We cant patronize women or blacks or Hispanics or gays or whomever, by saying: Well you're different from us of course, but we wont hold that against you. Yeah, sure. I mean, we must really be prepared to accept whatever differences really exist. And really accept them, because we've come to the wisdom of realizing that differences contribute to balance, and balance is healthy. And healthy is good for everybody.

That's my view of it all anyway. Again, take it or leave it as you like. This is not my real point here. What I started out to point out is the existence of the debate, and how that debate is triggered by things like Pat Schroeder's news conference or some petty little office politics that one may stubble across. Because its the dialog that interests me. Its the fact Pat Schroeder can stir up such stuff in us all that makes what she did such a valuable and profound service to the culture. Such people should always be thanked, even when they stir up ugly pots, because its only by stirring up our uncooked stuff that we grow as a culture, that we come to wisdom.

It is not given to many people to have an opportunity to serve as such a trigger. It was given to Pat Schroeder, and yes, even to Al Campanious and Jimmy the Greek Snyder. And Jesse Jackson, in a different way.

You remember Al Campanious. He was an official of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball organization until he publicly made some racially loaded remarks. He said something to the effect that blacks didn't have the smarts to be managers or baseball executives, just players. Offended lots of people. Embarrassed the Dodgers. Lost his job.

But Al did us all a great service, I submit. Obviously, that attitude is still very much with us as a culture, and Al stirred it up for all to see. We had to confront the stuff in that ugly pot once again, and realize that all that stuff isn't quite cooked yet. We really should thank Al. He was the unwitting agent of our progress. As a culture, we saw some of our unfinished business and had a chance to rise above it. And without doubt, some people did. Somewhere in America somebody witnessed the row, thought about it, and realized that's not what they believe anymore. And when enough somebodys come to that realization, we grow as a culture. Al triggered that process for us. Thanks Al!

And Jimmy the Greek did likewise. Said blacks were bred by slave owners to be big and strong and so they are genetically superior athletes. Probably thought he was paying them a compliment. He was too slow-witted to realize the flip-side of the compliment which is: Yeah, but they cant be managers or executives you know. But it takes a little bit of a dim-bulb to stir up a pot like that. Nobody with any sense would pick up that stick and stir that pot in public, for all the world to see. So we shouldn't hold it against poor Jimmy that he was incredibly dumb to have said what he did. But obviously, that pot isn't cooked either. Jimmy the Greek reminded us of that fact, for which, I submit, we should be grateful.

I will even be so outrageous as to suggest that such people are blessed. The Fates have selected them to play a minor walk-on in the drama of our culture. A few minutes on the stage, with reverberations for a long time to come. What more could we ask?

Of course some people stir the pots by negative example, so to speak, and some by positive example. Jesse Jackson, by the sheer act of running for president, has obviously provoked some of the same soul-searching. What a leap of consciousness it is to see Jesse Jackson being bussed by white Iowa farm wives who have just been charmed out of their sturdy shoes by Jackson's persuasive stump speech. Jesse Jackson, whatever one thinks of his politics, is a living, breathing, positive example that a black man can be a serious candidate for president. Maybe a black man cant win yet. But if we just stir that pot a few more times . . .