America: A (Nearly) Equal Opportunity Employer

When will the first woman, person of color, Mormon, septuagenarian or gay be hired by the American voters to be their President? While the road is steeper for some, suveys show the road is technically open to almost all Americans. According to a 2007 Gallup survey, most Americans would vote for a person who is Catholic (95%), Black (94%), Jewish (92%), female (88%), Hispanic (87%), Mormon (72%), married three times (67%), 72 years old (57%), or homosexual (55%). The further down the list you go, the tougher it gets. But if you believe what people tell pollsters, a big if, all those groups that have traditionally gone unrepresented in the Oval Office have a mathematical shot. Not so for Americans who don’t believe in a higher being. With only 45% of respondents saying they would vote for an atheist, they are the only group that truly has a ceiling that bars them from leading our democracy. (In fact, President Bush the First even apparently went so far as to say that atheists...