The XX Factor: What women really think.

Ann Coulter with Babies!

Dahlia's got it: what's depressing about Palin is that she represents the Ann Coulterization of the Republican party. That's what was tugging at my unconscious mind as I watched her spout the most vicious and irresponsible claptrap, with such a gleeful expression on her face.

Watching Palin was like watching a cross between Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin-- only Palin accessorizes with babies. And she's got a governorship, instead of a column or a TV show.

I'm beginning to suspect that it's not just me, either. Palin offered red meat to the hungry GOP faithful, but not sure how her speech played with independents. Way too soon to really know-- but for what it's worth, a Detroit Free Press focus group wasn't too impressed with her.

I'm Depressed Now

I'm not surprised that Sarah Palin can deliver a good speech. In my opinion, anyone capable of handling five kids and ANY job and not ending up in the loony bin presumptively has at least the raw smarts and managerial skills to run the Oval Office. So take a smart, tough, capable, ambitious woman, put her together for a week with the smartest, toughest, most capable and ambitious Republican political consultants, and it's a pretty good bet you're gonna come out with a woman who delivers a powerful speech.

But what an unbelievably vicious speech!  The nastiness level was just sky-high (or gutter low). And though Palin certainly didn't write the words she spoke, she sure looked like she enjoyed every second of delivering those zingers. That speech wasn't meant to inspire—it wasn't about our better selves or what we might be able to accomplish, as a nation—it was all about rage, sarcasm, resentment,  mockery. And the crowd just lapped it up.

Should I be surprised by this? Probably not; it's the meat and potatoes of the conservative culture wars and standard fare at Republican powwows of the past couple of decades. But all the same, I expected better of John McCain, a man I've often liked and admired over the years precisely for his resistance to using that Us-vs.-Them playbook. This year, with Obama's message of inclusion and hope, and McCain at the top of the Republican ticket, I thought we might at last break free of that kind of nastiness—that politics of smallness, of diminishment and suspicion and resentment.

Silly me.

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 Sarah Palin Show

Why shouldn't a smart, gutsy hockey mom turned small-town mayor potentially run the United States? The McCain campaign has argued that attacks on Sarah Palin's lack of experience are sexism rather than legitimate inquiries; Palin took it one step further tonight by asserting that her service as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and its 9,000 souls is exactly the right credential, and that the U.S. Senate is the suspect line on a résumé. This should seem odd, since being a senator is John McCain's main qualification. But that's the sort of contradiction Palin simply strides past, chin ever up. The troubles of her kids are off limits, until there they are up onstage, to be celebrated. Bristol holds hands with her now-fiance Levi, the crowd goes wild for the whole clan, and "What a beautiful family," John McCain can say when he walks out onstage to greet them. The Sarah Palin Show is all about gumption and the right optics. Even McCain's awkward grin registers as a plus with Palin near to stand tall and personify true grit, as only a tough mom can. The Republicans even invoke Hillary as a sage for seeing through Obama during the primaries. And her advisers help them along by backing up some of the charges that the scrutiny of Palin amounts to sexism. It's as if the McCain campaign tossed a whole deck of gender cards into the air and turned them into confetti.