The XX Factor: What women really think.

Palin: It's Us vs. Them

Dahlia, you've put your finger on the reason my initial enthusiasm for Sarah Palin evaporated the minute she opened her mouth; it isn't her conservatism that rankles, but her bile. (Today, for example, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country'' because he happened to serve on a charity board on education reform with a '60s radical whose views he has denounced. According to the New York Times story Palin was referencing—and deliberately misrepresenting—"[t]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of [William] Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' ")

We could have disagreed on every issue in the multiverse, and I would still have applauded John McCain's choice of a strong, conservative, pro-life feminist—yes!—who actually walked the walk. But Palin's whole up-your-nose-with-a-rubber-hose presentation—it's us-vs.-them on steroids, really—gives the lie to her talk of bipartisanship. She sells herself as a can-do frontierswoman, but also as the poor-me victim of reporters so mean that they dared ask her what she believes. And her overt contempt for difference makes a joke of her promise to bring all Americans together; her loudest shout-out at the debate wasn't to third graders, but to haters. She bragged that she's such a tolerant person that "I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue'' of gay marriage. But people who really are tolerant of other viewpoints are not quite so painfully aware of their own saintly forbearance; that she finds it worth reporting that she has friends who have friends who might be gay—at least, I think that's what she said—in fact suggests a lack of respect. And except for killing her own meat, she has nothing in common with my grandma.

The Quasi-Cave

Is Being Tolerant Acceptable?

I couldn't help but cringe last night when Sarah Palin said the word "tolerant" three times within seconds in the debate. I hate that word.

Tolerance is widely accepted as an admirable virtue, but it still feels cheap to me. Essentially what Palin is saying is that she puts up with homosexual couples. There's no approval there, no acceptance, just respectful disregard. The difference between "tolerance" and "acceptance" is like the difference between looking the other way and actively supporting something. Her tolerant speech doesn't mean she supports, or even approves of, homosexuality. It means she just doesn't act out against it.

To be fair, neither Biden nor Palin support gay marriage. That was the one point on which they both whole-heartedly agreed last night. But Biden's answer was more political, less personal, and absolutely less grinding than Palin's, who seems to think looking away is a virtue in itself.

But maybe it's all just nuance.

Heartburn

Marjorie, I couldn't agree more about Sarah Palin's convenient geographic confusion—why are people letting her get away with saying her Alaska roots give her a "connection to the heartland"? And Rachael, fellow Ohioan, why doesn't that bug you?

I get that the heartland is an easy shorthand for "folksiness." And the specifics she cited have a lot of resonance, sure: worries about a special needs child, a son in the military, the cost of college and of health care. But context is important. It's very different to be sitting around the kitchen table in Wasilla worrying about those things than it is in Ohio, where your local economy isn't hemorrhaging just jobs, but entire industries. The "heartland" she references so glibly formed its identity and its values from the industries—manufacturing, agriculture—that are rapidly changing or disappearing, and that's a large part of what makes the piecemeal worries about health care and tuition weigh far more heavily than the sum of their parts for people who live there. Palin made a big deal about American exceptionalism last night, but Alaskan exceptionalism is far more germane—as she pointed out last night, it's the "nation's only Arctic state." You can define the heartland as broadly as you want, but Alaska just isn't in it.

Alaska's economy, thanks to oil revenues, has been likened to that of Abu Dhabi. The state has a budget surplus. There are relatively few manufacturing jobs and few illegal aliens, so there's not the looming specter of losing jobs overseas or to cheaper labor here. The state has the lowest individual tax burden. She's co-opting—and cheapening—a narrative that she has had no real contact with. Living in Wasilla is nothing like living in the rapidly changing modern heartland. That bothers me on a visceral level, but what troubles me on a deeper one is that that means she has no experience in what it's like to govern in the non-Abu Dhabi parts of America and very little context that would help her learn to do so, fluency in "doggone" and "gosh darns" put aside.

There's plenty about Alaska that makes it symbolically appealing as uniquely American, and the same goes for Palin, I'm sure. But from where I'm sitting, this seems like the most plausible heartland connection she's got.

Asked and Answered

Joe Biden, Regular Guy

I know this debate was mostly about Sarah Palin, but let's not be sexist and forget about Joe Biden. I thought he was great, not least because he came across as what Palin pretends to be but isn't—and what this campaign could really use: a regular person who resists pat categorizing, rather than a caricature in a polarized drama that bears no relation to life.

I'm not saying that's Biden's usual public mode by any means: Man-off-his-meds can be more his style. But last night on the stage next to Palin, he was a guy in a dark suit who calmly confounded a script that's getting awfully tiresome. He wasn't the Elite Insider to her Maverick Outsider; the way Biden drew on his career accomplishments, he made 36 years in the Senate sound like real-world experience with real challenges for an independent minded person—not (as McCain often does) arcane ritual, and not like the vague grandstanding Palin invokes when she refers to her executive experience. He didn't come across as Professorial Wonk to her Main Street Mom, either, and not just because he said "champ" and invoked his blue-collar origins; he marshaled facts with ease, gave them punch because he knew what he was talking about, where for all her folksiness, her own patter sounded totally canned.

And he wasn't the Old Guy to her Young Gal; only six years younger than McCain, Biden may say "ladies and gentlemen," but he seems a generation apart, lacking the condescendingly old-school tone I hear in everything McCain says about his running mate. Maybe it's that Biden has a hands-on dad aura, which he comes by totally honestly. (Shouldn't we be parsing that choke-up? Seemed completely real to me.)

Race, gender, age, class, education, values, experience: This is a campaign in which both sides like to talk about surmounting divisions and bringing both sides together. But doggone it, you don't very often get to see someone just walking the walk.

D'oh! That's Who Sarah Palin Reminds Me Of

I have been racking my brain to figure out who Sarah Palin reminds me of ever since she came on the scene with her bright smile, her folksy-corporate style, and her Silly Puttied authenticity, which mirrors back at the viewer whatever talking point she's just absorbed. From the start, I've found her stylistically arresting, for reasons that have to do with her energy and her youth but also, I felt, with some dim recollection of a dark literary doppelganger ... And just now, watching the very end of the debate, it struck me: Sarah Palin reminds me of a character in a George Saunders story. Saunders writes brilliant short stories about characters trapped in the American Dream^TM. They are workers at theme parks or Hooters-style restaurants, mummified in corporate-sponsored "flair" (to borrow from the brilliant film Office Space). They speak in the same style of substanceless perk. They are to humanity what MSG is to flavor. (At least, some are.) Palin is, of course, far more successful than many of Saunders' characters, and I don't make the comparison merely to caricature her but to capture what I think is crucial about her. She buys into a whole vocabulary of signifiers that often don't signify very much, and she scaffolds that lexicon with winks, smiles, and carefully mimed gestural reinforcement. All politicians employ empty rhetoric, of course. But I don't know that I've ever seen one employ superficial language with such a sense of palpable enjoyment at her (or his, of course) mastery. And just like Saunders' characters, she refuses to show vulnerability or hesitation, deploying rapid-fire prepackaged phrases like a missile shield, as if the silence that comes with groping for ideas were deadly. (Just listen to her answer about her "Achilles' heel" in the V.P. debate, and compare it with dialogue in a Saunders story.) She loves to say "maverick" and "zero-base" and to recount how she once "quasi-caved" on an issue but didn't "compromise." (Huh?)

A lot of the original media coverage of Palin was confused by things about her that derive, it seems to me, from the fact that she's a woman in the West (which Camille Paglia wrote astutely about a few weeks ago). But what's *not* Western about Palin is how avidly she's borrowed and inhabited the language of cute-can-do-ism that's exploited by companies to lull workers into taking pleasure in how much of their time is given over to "breakout sessions" and the business of being an employee. Throughout the debate, she talked like the executive she's so proud to be rather than the governor she ought to be. (It's no surprise, it occurs to me belatedly, that Saunders wrote a brilliant parody of Palin's speech patterns right after the RNC speech, which you can find here.)

Meanwhile, Biden was the tortoise to her hyper hare: He chipped away slowly and steadily and relaxed as the night progressed. And his answer about being a father and understanding what it's like to raise a child who might not make it was authoritative and emotional at the same time.

Returning to the Eros Question, Biden vs. Palin Edition

I was teaching a class tonight (on T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," of all texts) and so I just got home to watch the debate and read everyone's responses. A number of my XX Factor colleagues here said that the debate tonight wasn't "about" gender. I guess that's true, but on the other hand, it was, at least in one small way. On CNN, the tracked "real time" reactions of uncommitted Ohio voters were divided by sex. And boy, did Biden simply not seem to connect with male voters. Those same men seemed to like Palin, though—a lot more than the women did. The Ohio women thumbed their disapproval when Palin got cutesy ("It's 'Drill, baby, drill' "), sending her ratings down. Women *really* didn't like it when Palin talked about Iraq and the "white flag of surrender." And they loved it when Biden talked about Pakistan. Meanwhile, any time Palin turned and faced the camera, the men's ratings shot up attentively. This division may have a lot to do with issue keywords—that is, a difference in which issues mean what to the two sexes in Ohio. But it was striking nonetheless. Gender may not be an issue, but I still contend that Eros is one, and Palin just has much more charge on stage than Biden does. (I have to say, I don't think that his suit or tie helped; he seemed overdressed, overformal.)

Meanwhile, I was disappointed (if not surprised) to find that one of their few moments of total agreement concerned the issue of gay marriage. When Biden firmly said "no," neither he nor Obama supported gay marriage, I thought: *here* is politics as usual. Two candidates who've suffered discrimination in different ways (Obama, Palin) yet both defend a profound form of continued discrimination. Nice. 

All Style, No Substance

Posted on behalf of XX Factor contributor Marjorie Valbrun, who's experiencing technical difficulties:

Sarah Palin pandering to Jewish voters while simultaneously being hyperbolic about the threat that Iran poses to Israel: We can't allow "a second Holocaust" against "this peace-seeking nation" where we'd one day like to place our "embassy in Jerusalem."

Sarah Palin trying to compensate for being less than worldly, unknowledgeable about foreign and domestic policy issues, and inarticulate during one-on-one interviews: "It's so obvious I'm not a Washington insider." "I may not answer the questions the way you want me to."

Sarah Palin being annoyingly and disingenuously "folksy" and "real" while trying to take the focus off McCain's record in Congress: "Now Joe there ya go again looking at the past, now. Doggone it, let's look ahead." "Can wait to get there and get with ya." "I want to send a shout out to all those third-graders at Gladys Elementary School."

Sarah Palin being geographically challenged: Referring to Alaska to describe her "connection to the heartland of America." (Since when did Alaska become the heartland of the United States?)

Sarah Palin communicating in a language other than English: "We have got not to allow ..."

I don't believe she is purposely displaying a streak of anti-intellectualism to appeal to the Republican base, as some have suggested, I think she just is really not that smart or quick on her feet. When she couldn't answer a question, she went back to her talking points and repeated the same lines over and over like a malfunctioning robot. Her small town girl witticisms aside, I heard nothing from her to reassure me that she has one iota of the emotional intelligence needed to be vice president (and possibly president) or the necessary intellectual heft.

Not Exhibit A

Posting on behalf of Emily Yoffe, who's traveling:

Biden won, but more important, Sarah Palin rehabilitated herself from being a national joke. If she’d been performing as she did tonight during her big media interviews, she would have saved all of us a lot of existential squirming. And whatever your politics, I'd rather not have one of the candidates for the second-highest office in the country appear to be a fool. This makes her less of an issue, less of Exhibit A of John McCain's bad judgment. So, doesn’t tonight's debate makes the conventional wisdom right—that the vice-presidential pick really doesn't matter that much?

She Did What She Had To Do

The debate is over, and the Republican base is breathing a huge sigh of relief. Sarah Palin didn't make a royal mess of the debate, something that a lot of us feared might happen after her disastrous sitdown with Katie Couric.

Yes, she benefited from the fact she didn't have to take follow-ups, and she benefited from low expectations. But she was tough and charming, and she held her own against an opponent with vastly more experience and who was on his game in his own right. She almost made me want to believe in a windfall profits tax.

This is precisely what I was hoping for. I like her personally—she's endearing, even with that accent—and we share some important beliefs. (Not all. I will cheer the day any presidential or VP candidate, Republican or Democrat, stands onstage in an important debate and calls out for marriage equality.) However inexperienced she might be, I don't want her to get the blame for taking the whole ticket down with her.

Before McCain stunned all of us with the Palin pick, the consensus is that it's rare for a vice-presidential candidate to make a big difference in the outcome of the election. But then Palin took McCain on a meteoric rise and seemed poised to take him to equally low depths. I think, or at least hope, that she halted that tonight.

I don't know if McCain is going to get a boost from it. She might not pick up any independents. If you look at the instant—and unscientific—Internet polls that appear on Drudge and some of the news sites, they are laughably partisan. Drudge an InstaPundit readers love Palin. MSNBC.com, home to Keith Olbermann, has Biden winning by ridiculous margins.

There's no doubt that McCain is in trouble. He's trailing in the polls, and some of that has got to be because Obama is viewed by voters as better on the economy and the way the House Republicans made him look bad on the bailout. It's going to take more than an amazing vice-presidential nominee to pull him out of that. She saved his campaign five weeks ago. It would be nice if she could do more interviews and perform well in them. But at the end of the day, it's still John McCain running for president. Let's at least say that if Obama beats McCain next month, it's because Barack's the better candidate, not because a hockey mom from Alaska brought down the GOP.

She Shimmied. He Choked Up. But Did They Swing?

Does it make any sense to say that as expected, Sarah Palin exceeded expectations? She didn't flail. She didn't lose her train of thought or all semblance of recognizable syntax. She powered through her answers, airy and bloated as some of them were. She snapped out of the stumped distress of her Couric interviews and turned back into the perky forceful governor who showed up at the Republican convention. What made the spell-breaking difference? She had more facts at her fingertips. She got to needle an opponent, which she clearly loves and does well. But the real magic, I think, is that she didn't have to answer a single follow-up question. God bless that format.

So Palin redeemed herself. But how much does it matter? Because Joe Biden was good. She knifed him in the ribs with a smile, with a wink here, a "darn right" there. And he came back with strength, emotion, and point-by-point substance. According to those mesmerizing green and orange lines on CNN that tracked reactions among undecided Ohio voters—men and women separated this time, instead of Republicans, Democrats, and independents—Biden's numbers spiked every time he talked about the economy and the Iraq war. Palin's didn't. It doesn't matter how many times she says "doggone it" if that reflects the wider sentiment of voters in the middle. Palin got her base back, if she'd ever lost it. But with JohnMcCain writing off Michigan today, that's not enough. How many people who didn't already agree with Palin did her restored charm win over?

What did you all think of Biden's tearing up, briefly, at the end? It worked for me: He was talking about the terrible car accident that killed his first wife and their baby daughter. He choked up in the midst of a powerful answer about how he understands what it's like to be a single parent and to worry deeply about one's family.

My favorite Palin moment: "The chant is 'Drill baby drill,' "she corrected Biden, who'd said, "drill drill drill," and for emphasis she gave a little shimmy. That's the effective blend of femininity and toughness that has made a lot of us waste a lot of time this fall watching her every move. Welcome back, Sarah Barracuda.

My favorite Biden moment: his deconstruction of Palin's much-repeated mantra that she and McCain are the mavericks in this race. Biden ripped her on the facts, citing all the votes McCain has cast with Bush.Then he ended with "maverick he is not." It had gravitas, it was on message, and as my colleague John Swansburg said, it felt cathartic.

PowerPoint Sarah

I think it’s fair to say that gender was just not an issue tonight. Biden didn’t get all weird about it. Palin didn’t, either. Also fair to say that both sides exceeded expectations. By a lot. Biden was as good as I have ever seen him. Palin was almost as good as she was at the convention. Here’s the difference: Biden was like Obama last week: a flatline. OK, maybe a flatline with tears, but, still, he didn’t modulate or escalate or hyperventilate. He just made his points—“a maverick he is not”—and stayed right on task. At his very best moments—talking about Cheney for instance—he was devastating. Whereas Palin was like McCain last week, reinventing herself on the fly. She toggled back and forth between Farmers Almanac Sarah (with the “gol-durnds,” and the “bless-yer-hearts,” and that wacky “diverse family”) and PowerPoint Sarah, who spoke in canned talking points, regardless of the question posed. As was the case with McCain last week, her rhetorical mood swings became ever more jarring as Biden stayed on message. Palin will get props tonight for holding her own. But I have to say I am less certain than ever of which Sarah Palin she was trying to hold onto.

Her Only Achilles' Heel: Lack of an Achilles' Heel

Why She Didn't Mess Up

We waited the whole night for her to mention Runner's World or mispronounce Ahmadinejad, and it didn't happen. The best we got was "nucular" and a few botched names. So, we have to admit that on the most important count she acquitted herself. Whether she won or lost the debate, she is no longer an embarrassment to the McCain campaign. Here are the few reasons I think she didn't mess up:

1. No follow-ups. All of her worst moments have come after an interviewer asked a follow-up question, even a gentle one: Can you name another Supreme Court case you disagree with? Can you name some specific media you read? Can you give an example of legislation where John McCain has broken with his party? In this debate, she got away with the 90 second speech, and no one asked for specifics.

2. Boring questions. Remember that early Clinton/Obama debate that Stephanopoulos moderated? He asked about all the juicy controversies: the flag pin, the Rev. Wright. Gwen Ifill took the PBS route. She asked a series of high-minded questions that Palin had clearly prepared for. Nothing about her personal life, her embarrassing gaffes, even the culture war standards (except for same-sex partners). She chose never to put anyone on the spot.   

3. Biden ignored her. He basically pretended she wasn't there. He directed his answers to John McCain, or Gwen Ifill, but never engaged directly with SP. This allowed her to write her own script with little interruption.

4. Scripted folksiness. Palin has reigned in her combustible authenticity into a few digestible sound bites. She looks directly into the camera and says "a team of maaavericks" or "corruption and greed on Wall Street" or "predator lenders."  This is a kind of phony authenticity that translates well on a national stage. The irony is, she now sounds like another Washington cliché—these days, who isn't a "Washingtonn outsider"? But to the "American people," this is a safe form of rebellion.

All night the TV pundits will debate whether she helped the ticket or only her own reputation. I would argue she helped the ticket, if only because it no longer seems scary to vote for them.

Golly Gee, Sarah P.

Doggone it, howza 'bout we cancel these next two presidential debates and instead spend those evenings with Sen. O'Biden—Hey, can I call you Joe, too?—and Sarah Palin. Darn right that'd be more fun for Joe Sixpack—that's Mr. Sixpack to you—and for hockey moms across this great nation.

Gov. Palin made no rootin' tootin' sense tonight: Her defense of John McCain's insistence, as recently as two weeks ago, that the fundamentals of the economy were strong was this: "John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American work force and the American work force is the greatest in the world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our work force. That's a positive, that's encouragement (wink) and that's what John McCain meant.''

Darned if she didn't answer Biden's charge that McCain had been all for financial deregulation with a big ol' non sequitur about tax cuts: "I'm still on the tax thing.'' Her comment that we have nothing to apologize for as a country was alarming, her tone condescending and her answer on global warming dyslexic: "I'm not one to attribute every activity of man to the change in the climate; there is something to be said for man's activity.'' The Bush phrase blame game -- -- which he popularized post-Katrina -- made a surprise cameo. And the capper might have been when she said "Never again'' in reference not to genocide, but predatory lending practices. Only, you know what? She killed, with her cozy, winking speed-walk around the questions. Oh, and Joe—that is his name, right?—did fine, too, both on the substance and in his demeanor.

When he choked up at the end, talking about the accident in which his first wife and daughter died and his two sons were critically injured, it was in direct response to Palin's suggestion that she has some pretty unique insight into what it's like for families who struggle financially and worry about doing right by their children. So when he said "the notion that somehow as a man I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone...to have a child you're not sure is going to make it,'' it came across as real, rather than manipulative, while also (and perhaps for all time) trumping her gender card. It would have been nice if she'd found a way to acknowledge his loss, though she couldn't exactly walk over and throw her arms around him. And I doubt that's something they covered in debate prep.     

Step Away From the Blush

I'm no cosmetics expert—it's a high-maintenance day if I bother with mascara and face powder—but whoever did Palin's makeup should be fired. That contouring along her cheekbones made her look awful. During the debate, one Slate parent said his daughter noted, "Her face looks like a skull."

The makeup artist credited last year with improving Hillary Clinton's look is probably available.

It's All About the Script

Palin was great—at long as she can stick to her script, which this format allowed. Will the vice presidency allow such confines? The presidency? Most important, does she have the knowledge base to be, as they say, a heartbeat away from presidency? She did not prove that because she didn't answer many questions with substance. So hopefully if she gets in the White House, she won't ever have to answer an impromptu question or go off script. Yeah, that seems likely.

Everyone Can Cry

Palin started to disintegrate in the second half. She ran out of talking points and started to get plastic and incoherent on the subject of mavericks. Biden, meanwhile, started strong, briefly slumped a bit—some repetition and exasperation in the middle—but he came back strong. And it was rather moving when he choked up, talking about his first wife and daughter—killed in a car accident—and knowing what it was like to worry your child might not make it.

As far as the gender dynamics go here—I'd say Palin lost, but she lost not because she went all helpless and girly and speechless—she was confident, smooth, tough, etc. She just didn't say much of substance, and she ducked most of Ifill's questions. Biden, meanwhile, was occasionally repetitious and a little wonky, but on the whole he also defied expectations: He was calm, reasonably consise, not visibly patronizing ... and he's the one who cried. Huh.

A Passion for Diplomacy

Palin recalls a moving moment: "I had a good conversation recently with Henry Kissinger ... and he shared with me his passion for diplomacy."

OMG, he must have really liked her.