-
My beloved Liz Lemon—er, I mean Tina Fey—isn't the only one suggesting that Sarah Palin's focus has shifted from 2008 to 2012. Today, trying get a jump on the post-election story before the polls even open, much less close, a host of politicos are placing their bets over who will emerge from the broken GOP as the next to be (unofficially) crowned party leader.
When John McCain chose his running mate, he was rightfully lambasted as cynical for passing over experienced insider men for an accessible outsider woman. In the end, he was right on one count: that a swath of the American public—though one which perhaps may not be wide enough to elect him tomorrow—felt so disenfranchised by the people who hold power in this country that they would line up behind someone who reflected and could articulate their own proud feelings of ordinariness. (This profound cultural conflict—rooted deep in issues of education and economics—will require far more systemic thinking than the fuzzy feeling of "unity" Obama hopes to usher in tomorrow and beyond.) Where McCain may have been wrong—and this is big—was in his perception of this election as a game of identity politics.
People have talked plenty about whether Obama is a post-race candidate for a post-race America. I've generally taken issue with that notion—and should he be elected, my heart positively swells with the notion of the descendant of slaves raising her children inside the White House. But by the same flawed token, did Sarah Palin become a post-gender candidate for a post-gender America? Of course, Palin has certainly worked her gender in this race: from that flirty wink and sky-high Manolos to her uber-mom positioning. But like Obama's race hasn't been the totalizing meta-narrative of his candidacy, neither has Palin's gender, and just as this hasn't been an election year for single issue voters, it hasn't been one for single-identity ones either, despite what pundits may have predicted from the outset. We entered this race all aflutter about our first female presidential candidate. We're ending it considering the next one with hardly a shrug about her gender.
While I am hardly a Palin fan, and for myriad reasons shudder to imagine how she might develop with the next four years to study up, the fact that neither her supporters nor her detractors seemed to make a big deal about a female commander in chief (remember those days?) suggests that in unexpected ways, we've come a long way during this long march to Election Day.
-
Dana, I kind of agree with you but for different reasons: I don't have much sympathy for Palin, cringe as I might through those interviews at her ignorance on some major issues, simply because I don't think she shows much sympathy for other victims in her political views. I can never get past her providing no exception for victims of rape and incest in cases of abortion. A rape victim is supposed to bear the child of a violent crime against herself because she failed to fight hard enough to ward her aggressor off or get him to wear a condom? That's a pretty unsympathetic message to women, I think. And if Palin is going to live by that kind of sympathy sword, she does risk dying by it.
That said, I don't like to engage in too much schadenfreude because, well, I think it's uncharitable, and I believe it comes back to haunt you. It's partly why I've quelled my outrage at the McCain camp's nastiness—ever since the sneering, community organizer-mocking speeches of Guiliani and Palin at the GOP Convention, I've been dying to see the Democrats hit back as low below the belt as they were being punched—the jeering at helping laid-off people recoup their lives. (Call me a bleeding-heart liberal, but I think it rather mean-spirited to mock someone for trying to help people who'd lost their livelihoods, which is essentially everything. I bet none of those laughing had ever been laid off.) But they haven't as much as they could have, and I think it's actually paying off. Obama—at least currently—isn't the one imploding. There's still time left in this campaign; that all might change. But it's nice to see that taking a bit of the high road does actually turn out to pay off at times.
-
Barack Obama is going to wish he hadn't said this (via Politico):
Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.
"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?