18
While the security mom phenomenon served Bush and his campaign well, the security
mom also proved to be a blessing for journalists, who are always looking for a new story or new
perspective on an old story. The security mom news frame provided reporters with a new
“hook” or “peg” for writing about women voters and the gender gap,
6
especially when Bush’s
numbers increased in the polls in early- to mid-September following the Republican Convention
and the Breslan tragedy. Security moms provided a convenient and novel explanation for
Bush’s bump in the public support even if the underlying evidence to link security moms to the
increase in support was generally lacking.
But if the interests of Republicans and journalists were served well by the phenomenon
of the security mom, the interests of women voters by and large were not. Several years ago in
an analysis of media coverage of women voters in the 1996 elections, I argued:
Instead of empowering feminist and other women’s organizations, the soccer
mom news frame actually led to the disempowerment of most women through its
narrow portrayal of women voters and their interests. The soccer mom frame
created the illusion that Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were reaching out to and
promising to address the concerns of women voters when, in fact, the candidates
were actually paying little attention to large subgroups of women. The fact that
soccer moms were portrayed by the media as the only women voters who really
mattered made it easier for the candidates to ignore voters who might be
politically unpalatable (e.g., women on welfare, women immigrants) or who
might push to have their concerns addressed in the campaign or placed on the
president’s agenda (e.g., women of color, pro-choice activists, professional
Convention