A Woman — But Why This Woman?

Susan Reimer Of The Baltimore Sun

September 1, 2008

So. This is what being pandered to feels like.

John McCain picked Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and mother of five, to be his running mate to woo women like me.

He seems to think that my girlfriends and I are so disappointed that an utterly qualified woman is not going to be president that we will jump at the chance to vote for an utterly unqualified woman for vice president.

You gotta love a guy who thinks things are that simple.

Women already outvote men in this country, and it isn't because we like voting for all those women on the ballot.

Does McCain think we will be so grateful for a skirt on the ticket that we won't notice that she's anti-abortion, a member of the NRA and thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution?

His selection of Sarah Palin is insulting on so many levels that I am starting to feel like the Geico caveman.

You want to look like a maverick and like you think outside the box? Pick a woman for a running mate.

You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down syndrome child.

(When James Dobson, the conservative Christian radio host who fancies himself a kingmaker, jumped up to say that the selection of Palin means he can now "pull the lever" for John McCain, I almost felt sick. I don't know what I'll do if she trots out the story of her 5-month-old baby to shore up the Republican base.)

Palin's personal story is very compelling, but it reads more like a movie pitch than a resume for national leadership.

Champion high school athlete, beauty queen. Married to her high school sweetheart. Car-pooling supermom who went from PTA activist to mayor of her tiny (population 9,000) Alaskan town.

Fisherman, sportswoman, hunter. Speaks truth to power in a state corrupted by oil. Has a son headed to Iraq. A woman who made the decision to carry to term a baby she knew to be developmentally disabled.

She makes John McCain, Naval Academy graduate, fighter pilot and prisoner of war, look like just another grouchy, old, rich white guy.

Oh. Right. He is.

And that's the other point here. McCain is 72. He has had at least four go-rounds with melanoma, a deadly cancer.

Under the circumstances, the decision to choose this woman over the likes of, say, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson looks less like a stroke of genius than a stroke. It looks crazy. It looks wacky.

And that's the other part of this decision that is so infuriating.

If you are going to pick a woman for the sake of picking a woman, can you at least make it a credible choice?

Can you at least make a choice that doesn't give the gag writers for Jay Leno and Jon Stewart the month off?

(The jokes started immediately: She won't be able to hold her own against Joe Biden in a vice presidential debate. But wait until the swimsuit portion of the competition.)

Can you at least make a choice that doesn't have Rush Limbaugh panting? (He called Palin a "babe." It was another memorable moment in the ascent of women in this country.)

Barack Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, for heaven's sake. And the best McCain can do is a woman who minored in poly-sci at the University of Idaho?

Palin might do just fine during the campaign. And she might do an excellent job of going to diplomatic funerals. (Which McCain once said is the only job description for the vice presidency.)

But it is more likely that she will be in over her head, and all the women McCain thinks he is courting will be cringing for our sister instead. And then we will be furious at him for setting one of us up to fail.

It isn't just that Palin might look bad campaigning against the likes of Biden or Obama.

It's that she already looks bad compared to the likes of Hillary Clinton.

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun