Majority of Americans Think They Can't Run for Office

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The majority of Americans -- including two-thirds of American women -- think their pasts would preclude them from ever seeking election

Less than a day after more-than-a-decade-old allegations of sexual harassment against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain broke into view, the latest 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll revealed that the majority of Americans said "their past would preclude them from running for public office."

Asked to consider decisions made in the past that could come out in an election, 62 percent of Americans don't think they could run for office, with women (66 percent) more inclined to say they could not run than men (58 percent).

The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll asks questions not usually asked by CBS pollsters.

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Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor covering national politics at The Atlantic. More

She was previously national web politics editor at The Washington Post, and has also worked at The American Prospect, The Washington City Paper, The New Republic and National Journal magazines. At The Prospect she won the 2007 Hillman Prize awarded to its group blog, "Tapped."

In 2006, she was fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass., and in 2007, a summer fellow with The Iowa Independent, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Garance has lectured at the Kennedy School, the Harvard Art Museums, Williams College, Wellesley College, Brandeis and Georgetown Universities, and taught in Georgetown's Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program. She also has made numerous appearances on national and regional television and radio programs.

Born in the South of France, Garance grew up in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico; New York City, New York; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has resided in Washington, D.C., since graduating from Harvard in 1997.

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