Elizabeth Warren is my senator and I would vote for her for president in a hot minute. It would be gratifying to help put a woman in the White House, to be part of the shattering of one of the most important glass ceilings extant.

That said, Warren’s gender would be “icing on the cake.” She is a smart, strong, articulate, well-focused person whose politics I greatly admire, whose policy orientation is just the shot of FDR we so desperately need (or Eleanor, if you prefer — though I am not interested in Warren as “First Spouse”).

Given the opportunity, however, I would not have voted to “make history” by putting Margaret Thatcher (who lacerated the British social safety net) or Indira (“Martial Law”) Ghandi in positions of power.

The representation argument makes sense to me: In a representative democracy, the people in power should be broadly representative of their constituents.

I am a little uncomfortable, however, with broad statements about “how women govern differently from men” (not saying that’s your angle here, although it feels like subtext). That puts us on a potentially hypocritical slippery slope toward an Essentialism that has theoretically been rejected by Egalitarian Feminists (Difference Feminists, being another story, of course).