McCain thought he could upstage the Democrats by bringing out a female.
“Let’s go with Sarah Palin!” must’ve been the nervous mantra during Obama’s straight-A Democratic presidential nomination performance several days prior to the Republican National Convention.
A mother of five, married to a real-life dude. A moose-hunting former high school athlete who grew up to become a Wasilla, Alaska city councilwoman, and then Mayor. Now Governor of the State. Straight out of Central Casting.
The GOP quickly readied her for their Saturday night live, star-is-born performance. All the “hot” 44-year-old former beauty queen runner-up had to do was look comely, wink on-cue, execute show-womanship and follow the script. No problem: The governor has ample experience with spotlights, more specifically Teleprompters as a former television news anchor.
But it did not take long to see that McCain was no Capra and his pick was no Everywoman. Her speech, written by President Bush’s former speechwriter Matthew Scully, said it all for the Republican base, but little for anyone else. Forget about the roasting points intended to attack Obama, forget about the references to hockey mom.
Excluding the obligatory mention of families of special-needs children because of her own newest born with Down’s Syndrome, the mother of five did not speak for the children of America. She did not put the “ups and downs” of families, the “challenge” of great joys, and her promised “advocacy” of families of special-needs children, within a real context that could touch our collective conscience or our hearts.
Palin, a woman who would board a plane in the midst of labor – we would later find out – knows about risks. But she wasn’t about to go outside of Scully’s script. Not that women seeking office should have to provide children-are-our-future statements just because they have wombs. But there’s something a little unusual about a woman who found excitement in comparing women to tough lipstick-wearing bitches.
Desperate times sometimes spawn desperate acts. And while the Palin-McCain night was no Saturday Night Live, it was designed to distract with catchy one-liners. A warm-up, not the real thing. Give ‘em jokes.
We thought the whole affair was more like “Mad Men,” last Sunday’s Emmy winning best television drama series, come to life. It’s the stylized AMCTV show set in the early 1960s when ego-driven men (in the advertising world) were “the man” and did “things men do,” and their women were perky, poodle-like and piqued. Pit bulls were not in fashion 40 years ago. But that’s the point. Palin is a throwback; she can only read the script that’s been prepared for her. And if that’s not a woman falling short of the glass ceiling, I don’t know what is.
With America about to go under while providing Wall Street tycoons with a safety net, women need more than a script-reader, a barb-thrower. And we need to be able to talk about the real world, the future and what will happen to our children, on our own terms, in our own way.
“We as citizens have to be responsible for the kinds of leaders we elect,” says Marian Wright Edelman, the nationally-known children’s advocate who heads the Children’s Defense Fund. “Look at their voting records. Voting is a matter of life and death. This is a nation-defining election year.”
And while Palin’s speech did not touch on the very subject that she should have the most experience in talking about, her resume lacks the very qualification that would have made her palatable to all the people: on-the-ground community organizing. In explaining what community organizers do, during an interview with “Democracy Now’s” Amy Goodman, Ms. Edelman commented, “We go door-to-door to the people. We are in touch with the people at the local level, and we want to make sure there’s a voice for the people who don’t have any.”
See, when you put children first, you start thinking about how they will live – that’s budget and refocusing it; how they will eat – that’s health and hunger issues; where they will live – that’s housing and foreclosure challenges. You think about protecting them from evil and monsters – that’s the bad guys and sometimes, just sometimes, it’s the pit bulls.
In the end, the ultimate insult to women did not come from McCain. Quick-study Palin actually exults in the role she’s been assigned. She believes the script she has been given, and continues to bark its now-tired one-liners. Time will soon tell as Tina Fey has already proved, Palin is not so hard an act to follow.
