Name-dropping “Sarah Palin” in a conversation usually results in one of two things. If you’re in a room full of liberals, steam visibly erupts from their ears. In a room full of Republicans, the crowd applauds Palin like a breath of fresh air for McCain’s aging respiratory system. Whatever the audience, Palin has been getting an unprecedented media buzz (which has taken care of much of the vetting McCain couldn’t find the time to do), and the greenhorn governor has gone from political unknown to potential second-in-command, should the Republicans win in November. But the party isn’t exactly doing Palin a favor — they’ve packaged Palin’s story of a woman making headway in politics when it proves to be a convenient way to gain votes.
To state the obvious, she’s a woman, a mother and a politician. Choosing her in what seemed to be a frantic campaign move smacked of patronizing Hillary supporters that had yet to embrace Obama as their candidate. Her positions on abortion and gun control are embraced by only the most conservative of women voters; Palin’s nomination was “historic pandering”, suggesting that the decision-makers made the shallow assumption that women would vote for any woman, however inexperienced she is, based only on her gender. What’s more, her choice to have her son, Trig, with full knowledge he would have Down’s syndrome is being touted by Republicans as evidence that her moral stance on abortion is undeniably superior — a completely dehumanizing assertion, as if having her child was a planned political move.
Palin wasn’t to blame though for her coverage; she was being used. The bignamemisogynists during the Hillary days immediately changed course and rushed to Palin’s defense, a miraculous act of born-again punditry that made hypocrites out of every Republican with a teleprompter and airtime.
Sarah Palin was the change of pace that the Republicans needed, but not because of her credentials: Simply, she was enough to McCain’s right to shove his moderate views into many conservatives’ blind spots. Her family history, an issue even Obama refused to pass judgement on, was brought to the fore by Republicans seeking to paint her as a victim of the media’s sexism. She may have fielded a few too many questions about her capability in post-announcement interviews, but it was her own party that left her vulnerable to such intense scrutiny in the first place, by skimping on their internal vetting.
But perhaps the biggest issue I had with her nomination was implying that her age, her gender and political experience made her as qualified for the White House as her opponents are. Republicans and Democrats can agree on one thing: She looks absolutely nothing like an experienced Washington politician. The problem comes when the Republican party argues that not being part of the “old boys’ club” automatically imbues Palin with the ability to bring everyone’s favorite political buzzword — “change” — to Washington.
Obama has caught some flack for his usage of Palin’s “lipstick” quote, but the comparison he made seems apt. Being one of the first women to have a shot at the White House doesn’t make her even half the seasoned lawmaker and campaigner that Hillary is. Being young and making unpopular decisions in office doesn’t make you the insightful lawmaker that Obama is or the maverick McCain claims to be.
Especially when you’re responsible for your own host of alleged corruption activities, including an ethics scandal and the recent inability to deny supporting the “Bridge to Nowhere” (wearing the t-shirt doesn’t help). And I wouldn’t trust the difficult job of cleaning up earmark abuses to someone who’s requested $453 million worth of them (in a mere two years as governor, netting $295 per capita in earmark money).
A “Miss Alaska”-turned Governor is no two-term U.S. senator. Hillary slugged through what may have been one of the most difficult primary seasons in recent history, and has spent time in and around Washington for most of her career. Palin, on the other hand, made her way from PTA member to Governor of Alaska — no small feat for a former sportscaster, but not the journey of a seasoned politician either.
Palin’s free ride is an insult to the work Hillary had done battling Obama; Palin wouldn’t have had a shot at the White House had it not been for John McCain using his vice presidential pick as an olive branch to placate the religious right. And insulting, too, is her youth; both Obama and Palin are young and it shows, though insisting that they are equally insightful is ludicrous. Palin is early in her first term as the governor of a state that has voted mainly red since its induction into the Union. Obama has extensive experience as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, a civil rights lawyer in Chicago, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago and a progressive community organizer on Chicago’s South Side. No contest. Palin insists she has better managerial skills than Obama due to her executive experience; maybe she’s learning on the job as a governor, but she needed to hire an administrator to help her govern a town of (then) 5,500 people.
In her short career, she’s become the first female and the youngest governor of Alaska, but was she ready to be yanked to the top in what seemed like a move of desperation? Ready to face public scrutiny over her personal life and political flame over her experience? Her politics aside, she’s given McCain a media buzz that makes his embarrassing days in midwestern German restaurants seem a thing of the past.
Palin seems to act as a shield for the McCain campaign. Her nomination makes McCain deliberately difficult to attack, diverting media attention from the war hero entirely. This has the effect of putting Republicans embarrassed by McCain at ease, but it’s still at heart only McCain’s quick fix to gain some ground on Obama, a strategic distraction that still hasn’t had a permanent effect on the polls. Rather than considering her actual political experience, the Republican party seems to have fallen in love with whom she represents and not who she really is.