Friday, November 07, 2008 - Posts
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Do you mean, Maureen, that women in politics may have to be nine times nuttier and more narcissistic than even your average hey-look-at-me male of the species, just to get elected? Not sure I'm with you on that, having known some really menschy women officeholders. (And I know you're not saying there aren't any.) But maybe I would be with you if I'd had the job you had and seen all you have, right? What your post did make me think: We have no idea whether these stories about Sarah Palin throwing fits and clueless about whole continents are true; we weren't there. I've had two batshit bananas bosses in my life, one a he and one a she, and I almost never talk about either one of them—not because I am so nice, but because it's such crazyola stuff I don't think anyone would believe it. (Plus, even I don't want to hear it.) So maybe that's what Palin's aide Nicolle Wallace, or whoever the source was for this stuff, is learning, too: Sometimes, even the truth can splash back quite nastily. But if that were the case, it would certainly be an ironic coda to a deeply dishonest campaign.
Update: Sarah speaks, denies divadom. "I never asked for anything more than maybe a Diet Dr Pepper once in a while," she told reporters. She also disputed tales that she didn't know Africa was a continent and couldn't name the signatories of NAFTA: "That's cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context [from debate prep], and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and it's not right."
"This is Barack Obama's time right now, and this is an historic moment in our nation and this can be a shining moment for America and our history, and look what we're talking about. Again, we're talking about my shoes and belts and skirts. It's ridiculous." I've said it before: This woman has some moves, and might not be so easily written off. The fact that Hillary came as far as she did with so much baggage -- and that Sarah came as far as she did with almost none -- means that we are not just ready for a woman in the White House, but ready to overlook a lot to put a woman there.
As McCain's running mate says, this is Barack Obama's time right now. But women in general were not "rejected'' because he won. And catchy book titles aside, I'll bet Anne Kornblut doesn't think they were, either.
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Going back to the discussion of yesterday, and at the risk of sounding like a sexist myself, I'm wondering if we can find a diva equivalent of Sarah Palin in a male politician. Palin is not alone in this type of tantrum/staff abuse behavior among female politicians (nor is it confined to her side of the aisle). While I haven't heard first-hand of female elected officials throwing things, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I once worked for a high-level woman who famously asked another staffer, on the way to a fundraiser, what dressing would be on the salad at the dinner. (And let me tell you, when you're fundraising, that's the last detail you're struggling to keep track of—and the last one she needs to be concerned about.) A friend worked for a high-level female politician who used to insist that her event information be presented in a specific-color folder, or there was definitely hell to pay. In neither instance is the rejoinder "I'm not sure" or "I can't guarantee that" something you'd counter with if you intended to stick around long.
So Sarah Palin is not the only diva out there. I'm not saying this is acceptable political behavior, and I certainly do expect the runner-up leader of the free world to know that Africa is a continent. But I'm wondering if all this diva-labeling is truly sexist, or are we just calling a spade a spade? I wonder if female politicians act out in ways that are particularly feminine and unpleasant. And I'm hard-pressed to think of a story of a male politician behaving this way from friends who've worked for high-profile ones, these kind of grande dame demands that make the average Jane think, "What??" I'm just wondering: Do we not hear about men throwing things in a rage because there's a sexist tendency to point such ticks out only among women or because women are the only ones who indulge in such extreme behavior?
I do think that anyone running for public office—male or female—has to be massively overconfident to be able to stand up to thousands or millions and say, "Vote for me; I know what's right for you." It's the nature of the beast. And I think women, since they still have to work harder than men to get as far in politics, have to be even more overconfident, to the point of being a little nuts. So maybe, sexist or not, we shouldn't excuse such diva behavior, but we shouldn't blame them either. How else would these women do a job that requires brass balls if they weren't a little imperious themselves?
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Emily, I'm with you. This campaign was about the right leader at the right time: It's really only been since we went to the polls that breaking the racial barrier has become the euphoric narrative of the election. Exit polls and popular discourse suggested that most people checked the "content of his character" box, not the "color of his skin" box, after all. And that's just how Obama geared his campaign. Race was not a major topic during this infinite run, except for when our next president could no longer avoid it after the Wright sinkhole opened. (Obama addressed race full-on in that landmark speech back in March and basically never returned to the topic.) If we had a woman candidate who so captured the public and seemed to represent a new direction that the country craved, this might be a different historic first. Identity politics only rules this election in hindsight. The issue with Hillary was never her sex. Unlike Obama, she simply wasn't the right leader at the right time, and that's what it takes.
But then there's the question of right leader to whom? Forty-eight percent of the country went for the white guy who had rebranded himself a social conservative for the sake of the campaign. (Though I suspect that many of those people have risen to the historic occasion: Even Murdoch's NYPost was capable of seeing the bigger picture on Election Day.) With that population in mind, Dana, I wouldn't pack up our designer Palin bags yet, I'm sorry to say. It remains to be seen just how the GOP will define itself after these years of splintering and self-immolation. Palin was included on the ticket not just for her sex but for her appeal to the Evangelical base. And while plenty of people thought that young Christians would go Obama in great numbers, or older ones might merely sit this one out, in fact, they voted the same way they did last time. Evangelicals couldn't swing the vote this time because of record turnout in other demographics. But should apathy return to our nation in the challenging years ahead, that still-organized and still-tenacious base may outlast this moment. And should Republicans decide Evangelicals butter their GOP bread best, instead of going, say, the Romney route, you betcha we'll be returning to our regularly scheduled culture wars—likely with Palin in a starring role, no matter how the campaign may be damning her today.
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The Washington Post's excellent Anne Kornblut is writing a book about the campaign titled (for now at least) Rejection: Why America Isn't Ready for a Woman President. If her thesis truly is that Hillary Clinton lost the nomination because the country was ready for a black man but not a woman, I reject it. Tuesday night I was trying to imagine whether if the victory speech was being given by Clinton would there have been as many tears and spontaneous demonstrations of joy. Certainly there would be some—for the end of the Bush era, for the first woman president—but I think it would have been tempered because of that nagging, dragging sense of "We're BAACCKKK!" Yes, Hillary's gender would have been a break with the past, but everything else would have felt like back to the future. The country was ready to elect a black man because of the black man who put himself forward to be elected. I have no doubt the same thing will happen when the right woman runs.
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Thank God our country now has bigger and better things to think about than calculating the precise degree of Sarah Palin’s venality, ignorance, and greed. Did she bilk the RNC of $150,000 in her shopping sprees, or was it tens of thousands more? (The paper trail will eventually emerge on that one, now that lawyers are descending on Alaska to confiscate the gladrags.) Is she so dim she doesn’t know Africa is a continent, or only so dim she can’t name a single newspaper or magazine she’s ever read? Did she violate ethics laws in pursuing the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, or did her petty, nepotistic despotism remain within perfectly legal bounds? Guess what: We no longer have to care! To paraphrase Jon Stewart talking about Karl Rove the other night: Sarah Palin can’t hurt me anymore.
Unless … can’t you see Palin emerging as the leader of a splinter hard-right group, possibly even a third party? A perverse part of me—the part that enjoyed this endless campaign’s operatic grotesquerie–sort of wishes she would run in ’12, because if she did manage to get the nomination (which, as Anne observes, good friggin’ luck), she would have to debate Barack Obama, which would make for one of the most entertaining spectacles American politics has ever seen.
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