The XX Factor: What women really think.

Average Mom or Brainiac?

Debating Palin's wardrobe was fun, but now we're back to the woman herself. Does her "claim to fame [lie] in her repudiation of Clinton-type exceptionalism," as Judith Warner wrote in the New York Times Week in Review Sunday, or in being a "brainiac," as Elaine Lafferty, former Ms. editor-in-chief and longtime feminist, writes on the Daily Beast? At least the first can be supported with words from Palin herself. What's strange about Lafferty's praise is how, well, elitist—and even sexist—it sounds.

This former Hillary supporter pays tribute to "a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had." And for her clinching assessment, she invokes as a standard a down home man who kept his Harvard Law pedigree quiet: "Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included 'I'm just a country lawyer.' ... Yup, Palin is that smart."

This calibration of Palin's candle power is the result of one plane ride with the vice-presidential candidate. Am I wrong to think that a little more exposure might be required to thoughtfully assess a mind deemed so thoughtful and curious—-and that such a far-fetched comparison wouldn't get invoked for a man, at least not with a straight face? Like McCain's patronizing expressions of pride in his running mate, Lafferty's curiously condescending flattery helps explain the rogue impulse, I would say.