The XX Factor: What women really think.

24 More Years? Not This Time

Ah, the irony of the sexy librarian inquiring whether it's legal to ban books.

What I was initially getting at was less how Sarah Palin defines herself and more how our culture has responded to those definitions. For example, in all the McCain blame-game conversations that are emerging in the press today--like this one by Slate's Christopher Beam--there's a total absence of hand-wringing of the were we ready for a female VP? variety. Of course, had Palin been more prepared for the job, that conversation may be a different one: Her inexperience and incuriousity have been a great leveler. 

I'm happy that the McCain flame-out discussion doesn't imply we wait another 24 years for a female candidate, as we have since Ferraro. Hanna suggests, and I agree, that Palin will gain mastery in the political game--at least as it plays out in mass culture if not in policy discussion. But the specter of a post-Palin America, as Hanna put it, with our most famous Alaskan annointed as the lone figure to be reckoned with? That strikes me as just the sort of future celebrity candidacy Obama unfairly had to shake. Normalizing the concept of women in our highest offices? It's about time. Normalizing Palin as the best shot at female leadership? Thanks but no thanks.

Perhaps before I get all worked up about 2012, I should get through tonight. But it's certainly intriguing to consider what this two-year campaign has laid out for the road ahead. Looking at the ballot in my polling booth this morning, I flashed back to the beginning of this relentless, seemingly endless trip.  Back then I wouldn't have believed the choices we have had the opportunity to make today.

I Can't Believe I'm Saying This, But, Lay Off Palin!

A few weeks ago, when it was pointed out that it wasn't all that surprising that someone like Palin (Alaska resident, married young, parent of five) wouldn't have a passport or extensive foreign travel experience, the response was: Yeah, but she's running for vice president. An extraordinary job with extraordinary demands. (I am persuaded by this argument.)

Now that the question is about her wardrobe, we're back to asking her to be normal.

No fair!

Viva Palin!

Until now the McCain/Palin team has let the media spin about her appeal to women, and how he chose her to steal some of the Hillary thunder. But in these last desperate days of the campaign, they have decided to leave nothing to inference. For those too dense to pick up the hints, Palin has decided to actually plagiarize Hillary. "Are you willing to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America," she told a crowd yesterday in Henderson, Nevada, according to the Washington Post. She then went on to accuse the Obama campaign of paying women on its staff 83 cents for every dollar that men get. Now that is some serious chutzpah. I mean, is there no female archetype this woman is unwilling to inhabit: ballbuster, moose hunter, mom, good Christian, sexpot and now rope sandal feminist.  

Bush, Palin, What’s the Difference? Part II

Anne, Marjorie, and Hanna:

Thanks to you all for your considered responses to the question I posed earlier—about whether there's any discernible difference between Palin's ability to lead the country and Bush's. Initially, I argued that there isn't, and that's why it's perplexing that so many conservatives are denouncing McCain's veep pick when they didn't say boo about Bush.

You've all mentioned, in one way or another, the fact that Bush belongs to a political family, whereas Palin does not. The logic is that Bush must've picked up something or other at the dinner table, and then at Andover, Yale, and Harvard—that he was assigned important books, even if he never read them, and that makes all the difference. All Palin's done is run a tiny little town and then govern a state that's so oil rich it doesn't need much governing. She's never heard of the books that Bush didn't bother to read.

So here's my follow-up: Bush may have a better, more reassuring pedigree, but he panders to the same contingent as Palin. And, in my opinion, you are who you pander to. Bush, inauthentically, cast himself as a dude from the heartland unspoiled by D.C. like the tree-hugging Al Gore or the French-speaking Kerry. He sold himself to America as an anti-intellectual who governs from the gut. Palin is doing the exact same thing, only authentically.

Hanna, you say the difference in authenticity is what's freaking out the conservative press corp—that Christopher Buckley, et al., could tolerate fake anti-elitism, but not real anti-elitism. You may be right, but that doesn't make complete sense to me. Bush pandered to people who dismiss book-readers as eggheads, and so he governed like a person who dismisses book-readers as eggheads. Shiite, Sunni, what's the difference? Who cares? Let's just get in there! The military can muddle through. Stem-cell research? Fuhget about it. Torture? I'll let my veep figure that one out.

I give credit to the conservatives who are speaking out against the worrisome anti-intellectual trend in the GOP—but I think they should've said something eight years ago.

But Is Palin Really Worse Than Bush?

First it was David Frum; then George Will followed by David Brooks; then Frum's colleague at the National Review, Kathleen Parker; today, William F. Buckley's son, Christopher jumped on the band wagon. Conservatives everywhere are denouncing McCain's veep pick because, essentially, they think she isn't smart enough to lead the country. True, they focus on the experience or rather the inexperience question, but it's transparent enough that what's sent conservatives into a tizzy is that Palin can't speak let alone process complex ideas. As Parker put it, she's just "Clearly Out Of Her League." I couldn't agree more. But here's what I don't get—since when do conservatives care about smarts? Or, rather, why didn't they care about smarts in 2000 and 2004?

Watching Sarah Palin talk to Katie Couric, and then watching her at the debate (where, admittedly, she did better than expected) gave me déjà vu. She's really very similar to Bush, and it's not at all obvious to me that she's any worse than he is, or was in 2000 and 2004. Maybe Bush isn't stupid, exactly, just lazy. And Palin's not stupid, exactly, either—just supremely uninformed. But ultimately, what's the difference? Either of these qualities should disqualify someone from running the country.

As Leopold Bloom put it (or thought it), "a defect is 10 times worse in a woman." He meant physical defects, but I wonder if this charming bit of sexism applies to mental defects, too. Why is Sarah Palin pushing Christopher Buckley over the edge—he's voting for Obama!—when Bush didn't?

E.J. Graff Sends in This Post

My apologies, all, for being late with this. I'm en route to San Francisco for the wedding of dear friends—two fabulous and widely, deeply loved women—who've been together for 26 years. (It'll be my first Chinese wedding banquet!!) I dearly hope and pray that California voters will on Nov. 4 see fit to approve their marriage rights—and to say yes to recognizing many more such joyous marriages.

And so thank you, Abby, for noting how odiously Palin used the word tolerant in the debate. When Palin used it to talk about gay folks, she tensed up and all but wrinkled her nose, as if smelling something disgusting. In fact, although she briskly announced that she and Biden agreed, her entire way of answering the same-sex marriage questions were in very careful code that made clear how far apart she and Biden actually are.

I don't have a transcript here, but as I remember it, she carefully said that she wouldn't oppose hospital visitation or "private contracts" but that she opposed "redefining" the "traditional definition" of marriage as between one man and one woman. Now, let's leave aside both the tautology and the simple falsity of that statement; marriage has never been one static thing, but has been constantly shifting to suit each era and class, as I discovered when researching my book What Is Marriage For? More important here, though, is that Biden signaled he would support civil unions, domestic partnership, and possibly some now-banned federal recognitions like allowing an American to sponsor her foreign-born female beloved for immigration, say. (Now they'd have to move to Europe or Canada to stay together.) Most of the developed world, and some underdeveloped parts of the world, now have these interim recognitions. The U.S. anti-marriage movement has used state marriage bans to also try to erase these intermediate statuses—saying that any state recognition of a same-sex pair (even sharing health insurance benefits) is a redefinition of "traditional" (by which they mean "recent" or "conventional") marriage.

Biden was announcing, generously and enthusiastically, his support for these ABM (anything but "marriage") measures. Palin was signaling her opposition to any such things that governments might do to allow two people of one sex to honor their bond—and doing it in a way that only very attentive pro-gay and antigay folks would notice. Very smart. And not very nice for my dear California soon-to-be-newlywed long-coupled friends.

Home Is Where the Heartland Is

Rachael, I think you’ve put your finger on Sarah Palin’s “heartland” problem, but perhaps not in a way for which you will thank me. Accepting your premise that Palin deploys the term not in a geographic sense, but to express her “experience, ideology, and personality,” it seems Palin can’t stop herself from using the word in the way she uses so many other regional terms: as a way to rope off the Americans who matter from those who do not.

Palin’s constant use of geographic and class code words—“East coasters,” “media elites,” and “Washington insiders”—reflects just how steeped she is in Ginsu politics: The slicing and dicing of Americans into those who deserve her respect and those who warrant only contempt. As you have eloquently observed, “People are similar wherever you go.” But Gov. Palin just does not seem to share that worldview. I am trying to think of a single sentence she has uttered that has evinced compassion for the residents of downtown Seattle or for the entire East Coast she likes to write off with a wink and a sneer. Whatever you may say about Barack Obama, his 2004 convention speech was transformative in that it renounced the view that some Americans count more than others, based on artificial geographic or religious divisions. Rachael, try as I may, I cannot think of a single compassionate, elevating, or ennobling sentiment Palin has ever expressed toward Americans with which she disagrees—unless you count parroting Ronald Reagan. I can’t think of a single instance in which she has expressed or implied that Americans have more in common than not, and that were she to be elected, she would be respectful of and accountable to all of them, including East Coasters, environmentalists, and community organizers.

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.

Sarah Palin's Political Eros

Sarah Palin loved being onstage, and people loved watching her love it. This was no Sarah, plain and tall. There was a palpable eros in the room at the RNC tonight, and not just when she made a subtle crack about the great "package" her union husband had offered her. To be clear: What made Palin appealing wasn't that she was pretty in a beauty-contest kind of way, but that she possessed a real charge as she spoke, a charge that derived from her palpable sense of enjoyment at finding her voice and being loved for it. She started off rocky, speaking in a high pitch. But as soon as she mentioned that she had a son going to Iraq, the shell cracked; she appeared to relax into her role, pursing her lips and having fun. What Hillary Clinton pretended to be at the end of her campaign, Sarah Palin is: a red-blooded Middle American populist. Or so you started thinking by the end of her speech. No wonder John McCain wanted to get onstage while she stood on it; it won't be long before Sarah Palin has her own equivalent of the Obama girl. 

Nor is it any accident, I think, that Palin found her voice, as it were, when she got into her spiel about motherhood. Palin did something I've always thought female politicians should make more use of: She used her authority as a mother—the vital center of many families, and the first authority figure many of us know—to coax Americans into seeing her as a "force to be reckoned with," as CNN kept putting it. While her platform may be undeveloped, her persona is not. It's actually more complex than we're used to seeing onstage: a combination of eros with tough love, motherhood with wifeliness, fierceness with friendliness. It's not a tack Hillary tried. Throughout, Palin made full use of the old power women had (as the domestic angel) while embracing fully the new power women want (as the boardroom madam). Ironically, she may have an easier time bringing what CNN called "toughness and femininity" together precisely because she never assumed at the outset of her adult life that she'd end up in a role like this. On-screen, at least, she's not divided in herself in quite the way that someone who agonizes over how to "balance" her life can seem. In the end, the night held two firsts: the sight of a VP candidate onstage quipping about foreign policy while her husband held the baby in the audience. And the glimpse of a novel problem for a presidential candidate: sexual tension with his VP.

The Cultural Canniness of John McCain?

How Progress Happens

Back in the late 1980s, there was a moment when British newspapers suddenly started hiring women—columnists, editors, whatever—en masse. The explanation for this change was not that Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black, or the other British press barons had somehow become feminists: The explanation was that the newspaper market had suddenly become unbelievably competitive, and some marketing genius had worked out that women like to read articles which are written by other women. Women readers being just as good as male readers—better, even, since advertisers reckon they are in charge of household budgets—the British press fell about itself trying to hire women who would entice other women to buy newspapers. The job market for women in journalism exploded.

Seems to me that with the nomination of Sarah Palin we are witnessing a similar phenomenon. Hillary didn't get the presidential nomination herself, but her primary campaign did demonstrate something that the political marketing geniuses had hitherto denied: Women, at least some of them, will vote for other women. Neither John McCain nor the Republican Party had to be converted to feminism in order to draw the next obvious conclusion: If women vote for women, and women's votes are just as good as men's votes, then a female vice president could be a hugely important addition to the ticket.

The point here, of course, is that a thousand speeches about women's rights couldn't achieve what John McCain's cold calculation of his political interests managed to achieve. Women make progress in today's world because they are needed and wanted, not because they can succesfully pass equal-rights legislation or stage a protest march. Perhaps the job market for women in politics will now explode, too.