Howard Wolfson was right to slap Geraldine Ferraro's wrist even though she was really nothing in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Her offense--ugly and demeaning--was to say that, if Barack Obama were not black, he would not be where he is now. Any politician with his speaking skills, with his ability to make Americans of all sorts feel that he grasps their needs and dreams, with his sheer brains could be exactly where Obama is if he or she wanted to be there.
Ferraro is not a monster. But she is a nightmare, a nightmare going back to 1984 when Fritz Mondale in a suicidal gesture put her on his ticket as the vice presidential candidate. She had an altogether undistinguished record in the House and her husband had ties to the mob. What were her credentials for this promotion from Brooklyn? Nothing but that she was a woman, nothing at all. There's somebody who wouldn't have been where she was except for, well, a biological circumstance.
After she lost she disappeared...and, great leader that she was, she was never heard from again: except in repulsive put-down of a candidate who has inspired millions, at home and abroad.