Throughout this presidential election cycle, the issue of
gender equity has been
front and center and the media and political pundits have attempted to walk a fine line between pandering and appearing overly aggressive toward these female candidates. However, the very manner in which these women have been treated is in direct contradiction to the elimination of gender barriers and the fulfillment of feminist ideals of equity and gender-neutral norms in our society.
When we witnessed Hillary Clinton
cry during the New Hampshire primary season, the male dominated media immediately surrendered any notions of objectivity. Compared to the infamous Ed Muskie moment in New Hampshire when the press suggested the presidential contender, shed tears in response to a question; Clinton’s “feel my pain” moment was immediately cast as legitimate, with no one questioning her fitness to serve simply because she displayed emotion. Ed Muskie was indeed living in 1972 America, when I was merely a toddler, but I would bet that if Senator Obama or any of the other male candidates had cried on the campaign trail in the same setting in which Senator Clinton had her moment, they would not have been granted a pass.
Enter Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; who
projects herself in the image of a gun toting, Northwest wilderness conservative. A relative unknown outside of her home state and amongst Bible thumping evangelicals, this governor of a sparsely populated state and former small town mayor, has been thrust onto the national political landscape by Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Despite being positioned “one heart beat” away from the Oval Office if elected, many in the media have already decided to excuse her from the scrutiny an individual seeking the office of Vice President should receive. Why? Because she’s a woman. Like Barack Obama previously exclaimed: Enough already.
The GOP touted a
significant poll bounce, as much as 16%, after her announcement and supporters exclaimed that Palin would bring the masses of women, upset about how Hillary Clinton was treated, would flock to the newly formed Republican ticket. While early indications did indeed show that trend, women have shown that they are not monolithic as a voting bloc, and that has
since trended back.
In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain skipped over
more qualified women in the public and private arenas who were credible and that no one would have questioned in their fitness to serve as Vice President. McCain skipped over the most obvious female candidate, Condoleezza Rice. Senator McCain took the low road and selected a caricature who could be
propped up for photo ops and hurl insults upon command. They basked in a triumphant roll-out of the Alaska Governor during the GOP convention in St.Paul, and then the immediately made her unavailable to the media. If Sarah Palin was indeed the tough, gun-toting, moose-skinning pioneer woman of the Alaskan frontier, why was she being treated like a damsel in distress?
Was she being cloistered away from the big bad media that is out to get her so she can be properly indoctrinated? A few of McCain’s strategy folks
Nicole Wallace and Rick Davis said as much. During a live interview of
MSNBC’s Morning Joe program two days after her famous convention speech Nicole Wallace said:
“Sarah Palin won’t be available to the press. The American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy.”
Rick Davis followed that up on a September 7th appearance on
FOX News Sunday with this statement:
"I'd never commit to anything in the future. ... Our strategy is in our hands, not the media's. We're going to do what's in our best interests to try to win the election. If we think going on TV news shows are in our best interests, we'll do it. If we don't, we won't."
Due to that misguided game plan by the McCain camp, the only news that came out about Governor Palin, came from fringe Internet sources. After a few of those, most notably that Palin’s son Trig was actually her daughter Bristol’s, we began hearing that her family should be off-limits. But Why? Initially when her candidacy was announced, Palin proudly boasted that her son Track was in the military, soon to be deployed to Iraq making sure she invoked 9/11. What was not said is why Track apparently
joined the Army. Palin also mentioned the rest of her family including year old Bristol. She however, left out a little detail - a growing fetus. After apparently initially keeping this fact from the public and the Republican National Convention she casually mentions it as if it does not matter. Has anyone called her out on this? Not so much. Moreover, would that be considered sexist or bullying if they did?
For that matter, Sarah Palin is allowed to say that her children are off-limits and that this pregnancy does not impact her potential vice presidency, but then she uses it, as well as
Tracks military decision to promote her commitment to family values.
Which is it? Is it off limits, or can it only be discussed in an attempt to demonstrate how this major challenge is actually a good thing? While advancing abstinence as an effective family planning approach, Governor Palin’s unmarried, teenage daughter is in fact pregnant. Not only is it contradictory to her own policy pronouncement, it is hypocritical given her alleged Biblically rooted family values agenda. The governor and the McCain campaign, have promoted an aura of moral exactness and embedded it in public policy. Therefore, Governor Palin and the circumstances of her daughter’s pregnancy, in the context of public policy is fair game.
For those of you that think I'm being judgmental, perhaps I am. I am judging a woman that promotes abstinence-only education for and the rest of America, but cannot seem to get that very idea across to her child. To me, that's troubling.
Moving on to her husband, the so called “First Dude”, Todd Palin. Apparently Mr. Palin has played a major role in advising her politically and is now under subpoena. Todd Palin too, is fair game. Governor Palin’s role in the dismissal of the state police chief has come under question in what has been famously called “
Troopergate”. Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan refused to dismiss the governor’s former brother in law, State Trooper Mike Wooten. The governor’s sister was involved in a messy child custody battle with the trooper. Todd has allegedly played a key role in this affair and
again he has been subpoenaed but will not testify.
When it comes down to it, under Alaska law, Governor Palin could have dismissed Monegan for no reason whatsoever. It is her explanation or ever changing explanations that are earning the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate extra attention. On top of that is the fact that while previously stating that she would cooperate with the investigation, since being tapped as the GOP VP choice, the Governor has allowed the McCain campaign to take over her role in the inquiry and has stalled any cooperation she may have promised previously. In this instance and in her overall introduction, Governor Palin has
painted herself as something completely contrary to
who she really is as a politician.
While McCain and Co. did well to shoot down the false stories, they could not control the narrative regarding Governor Palin and with their strategy proving unsuccessful they agreed to an interview with
ABC’s Charlie Gibson. It was considered a great move to many McCain/Palin supporters the decision of having
Gibson land the interview. However right after that interview, her supporters in the media were blasting Gibson because he rightly wanted to do some true vetting for his viewers, the American people. The Governor next did an
interview with Republican sympathizer
Sean Hannity, which I can only describe as a love fest.
Next up is
CBS’ Katie Couric who famously sliced up an interview with Barack Obama to misrepresent some of his statements. Could Mrs. Palin be in for the same treatment? Not likely because the premise of the Couric interview is that women are all in it together, but we shall see.
So far what has Palin done for the GOP other than show up? When she first burst on to the scene in St. Paul, she really read that teleprompter and gave that great speech with very little experience on the national stage. There were a lot of Americans, myself included, who were impressed by her capacity to show up and be ready. But over the course of the past couple of weeks, information has come out that she does, in fact, have experience. Experience as an executive, and the
decisions that she made as an executive have demonstrated secrecy, divisiveness, and a willingness to put her
friends and colleagues in positions of power that they're not ready for. And that looks an awful lot like the
Bush/Cheney White House, and the kinds of decisions made there. We now find out that it is not only McCain’s people advising her, but she now has advising her, many of the
seasoned political operatives of George W. Bush. That does not sound too much like change to me.
Sarah Palin has not yet uttered a word of substance in her two interviews, just talking points. She famously ducked a question last week at a town hall meeting with John McCain. She has at many rallies and campaign events since the convention, energized the crowds by
repeating many of the catch phrases that garnered the loudest applause, but have since been knocked down as not exactly true. Indeed she drew a
crowd of over 60,000 people at a rally in Florida this past weekend appearing without John McCain, but she did not answer any reporters questions following the rally. Sarah Palin may have in fact, energized one part of the Republican party, but she might have also really irritated other parts of the party. And while Palin at first
energized independent voters that energy has become less so lately.
The only way to break the gender barrier is to break the gender barrier. What I mean is that gender neutrality must extend to the manner in which we hold women accountable in the home, workplace and community. For too long in our country men have tempered their critique of women in public positions for fear of being viewed as boorish, intimidating or sexist, yet by using “kid gloves” we simply feed into longstanding stereotypes of women as intellectually weak and emotionally unstable; and reduce them to sexual objects. Thus, the round of doctored photos on the Internet of a bikini clad Governor Palin and the obsession with Senator Clinton’s hairstyle and choice of clothes. Heck, Sarah Palin even said that
Hillary Clinton was whining and that did not serve women in politics well.
Risking being viewed as politically incorrect, I contend Senator John McCain chose the political equivalent of a Campfire Girl to score gender points. To further insult our intelligence supporters of Senator McCain now label unfair any criticism of Governor Palin’s obviously lightweight credentials to sit in the number two chair. The goal that John McCain had as the presidential candidate with the experience and background of himself as veteran was not to choose someone else who had foreign policy experience.
Thus, Sarah Palin was chosen not to provide experience, but to provide excitement and enthusiasm. That is what her job is and that is what she has effectively done. The key to the decision is that we've had an opportunity to watch John McCain as a potential president, make his choice of a VP running mate, and his choice was Sarah Palin. That also means that we get a chance to look at the choice of Sarah Palin, and it tells us, who is John McCain really going to be as a president.
Their tag line is country first, but I do not believe that Americans feel that John McCain was putting the country ahead of his opportunity to win in November, by the possibility, in an uncertain and dangerous world, that Sarah Palin could in fact assume the position of the U.S. presidency. If he made that choice just for political purposes, as it seems, it's awfully difficult for him to make a claim of country first. At least this week she gets to
bone up on foreign policy by attending some meetings at the United Nations.
Am I sexist for calling it out or is Senator McCain for feeding into the stereotype? Feel free to be the judge.
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