The XX Factor: What women really think.

Meghan McCain Copes With Fame

Meghan McCain, I was so wrong about you. Just a little more than a year ago, during her father’s failed campaign for president, I wrote a piece for Slate about how McCain had learned to cannily manipulate her very blond public image to its full advantage while still maintaining a modicum of privacy. I even called her shrewd. That was before she joined Twitter ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

The Sarah Palin Saga: Why Doesn't She Get it?

Like Jessica, I devoured Todd Purdum's blistering report in the current issue of Vanity Fair about Sarah Palin that draws on sniping from former John McCain aides, shrugging statements of disownment from acquaintances in Wasilla, and sorrowful head-shaking from the Republican intelligentsia. The wide-ranging “profile” of the woman who almost stood second in line to the presidency pre-empts the forthcoming book that netted the Alaskan governor seven figures. And, having undergone the saga of the 2008 presidential campaign—particularly the post-Labor Day sprint that made up Palin’s first months in the public spotlight—it’s astonishing to think that there could POSSIBLY be more to the story.

And yet, writes Purdum ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)

Drawing Obama, Part 3

For today's installment of Drawing Obama, we'll start with a terrific companion piece to Dahlia's son's "Dead John McCain." Deanna Newsom swears that she "did not indoctrinate" her 5-year-old son, Jonas. Still, he "came home from kindergarten one day with 'John McCain Falls into a Black Hole.' It was accompanied by another one entitled 'John McCain with Mold Growing on his Face.'"

Breaking into the double-digits for our artists, here's a drawing by 6th-grader Amber Adams-Holecek, submitted by her art teacher, Lindsay Davis. The assignment was to "make a tribute drawing to Shepard Fairey's famous red, white and blue print."

Jonah Goldman got into the game of drawing Obama early—and it paid off. A week before Obama announced his candidacy for president, then 13-year-old Jonah by chance shared a flight to Chicago with the then-Senator, and got him to sign the portrait below.

 Keep sending us Obama drawings from the kids in your life.

Meghan McCain on Karl Rove: "Creepy"

This week's column from Meghan McCain is my favorite thus far. While her previous installments were solidly naive, this week's manages to be that and hilarious. As it turns out, the senator's daughter is on Twitter, and guess who's following her Twitter feed? Karl Rove. And that gives Meghan the creeps!

"Karl Rove follows me on Twitter," McCain reveals. "That's creepy." Surely, Rove on Twitter is a creepy concept. Does he really have so little to do with his time these days that he feels compelled to send messages like these out into the void? "Joining Bill O'Reilly tonight," he tweets. Not exactly breaking news. But there's more. "Got to the airport with a lot of time to spare." Who says Rove's post-Bush career is not without thrills? My favorite is the one where he discloses he's getting his shoes shined. Fascinating.

So, what's the probs with Karl's tweets, Megs? Apparently, she finds them "disingenuous." Possibly even written by a ghost-twitterer, she ruminates! (I doubt it. Nobody could come across as dull and unself-aware as Rove-on-Rove.) Therefore, she concludes, it's time for folks like herself to "take Twitter back from the creepy people." Employing her usual writing style, in which she expresses some random thought and never really unpacks that random thought, it remains unclear exactly why she finds Rove following her "creepy." In all likelihood, it's another one of her attempts to set conservatives like herself, who find themselves attempting to blindly steer forward a floundering party, apart from the icky old guys like Rove. The problem is that she and Rove have more in common than she comprehends. After all, she's just a Karl Rove creep in sorority girl clothing.

Meghan McCain Uses the Daily Beast in Bold Attempt to Get Laid

Meghan McCain. Bless her heart. From the side ponytail to the fake catfight, she had us all fooled. We thought she was a dingbat. In reality, she's clever like a fox. Writing a column for the Daily Beast? Everyone scratched their heads. She's so ... vapid. So ... devoid of ideas. Was there something we were missing? After her weak attempt to draw Ann Coulter into a "debate" that even Coulter wouldn't stoop to partake in, McCain has finally made her writerly mission clear. She's looking to get laid!

This week's installment reads like a masturbatory reverie in homage to (gasp!) our youngest (swoon!) congressman, Aaron Schock (insert "shocker" joke). Mr. Illinois is Mini-McCain's "GOP's House Hottie"! ZOMG, Megs, I am, like, so with you on this one! Frankly, the Schockster had me at that photo of him greased up by the pool, browner than fried pig fat, basking in the shade of a faceless young woman's hot pink ta-tas, but Meghan closed the deal with her 1,500-word essay on how he's, like, totally smart, and also supergreat, which is, like, superawesome for the GOP!!! Yay! Schock in 2012. Or whatever.

According to McCain, who only figured out who Schock is because those half-naked shots of him appeared on TMZ, Schock is, well, interesting. As she puts it: "Schock’s rapid rise to the national level is, if nothing else, interesting, especially given the serious soul-searching the Republican Party is experiencing." So, he's interesting because he's ... interesting? I am intrigued.

Apparently, McCain likes Schock because: a) he's young, and her dad was old and that was bad, so Schock being young is good, b) he's not a radical, just like Meghan!, which is good, because the Republican Party needs all the help it can get at this point, c) he totally understands the power of the Internet (see: half-naked photos), which can be bad, but which can also be good, or, as Schock opines of the American people with an eloquence that suggests McCain may have found her intellectual match: "They watch pop culture, but they are also voters." Obvs.

Clearly, I hadn't given Meghan McCain enough credit. It never occurred to me to use my platform here on The XX Factor to get laid by some guy in Congress. I'll have to work on that. 

Meghan McCain's Magnum Opus

A guest post from Slate intern Margaret Johnson:

I was perusing the Simon & Schuster children’s book catalog to see what the kids are reading these days, and I came across a picture book written by none other than Meghan McCain, whose recent cat-fighting Dahlia rightfully skewered in her great piece in Slate today. That’s right, folks, your favorite daddy’s-girl blogopundit and mine is an author, too. My Dad, John McCain, came out last September, midcampaign, and features lots of lovely, nostalgia-inducing illustrations of father and daughter by the guy who drew Felicity and Samantha for the American Girl books. And to think, all Cate Edwards wrote about her dad’s campaign was her Princeton thesis.

Here’s the blurb from the catalog:

Born with a commitment to serve his country, Senator John McCain was destined to run for president one day. In this picture book, written by his daughter Meghan, young readers will learn all of the fascinating and sometimes dangerous events that helped shape the senator and prepared him for the race for the White House. From perilous wartime service to a twenty-year plus career in the Senate, this book will give readers an inside look at a man who has devoted his life to his country. The publisher shall donate one percent of its net proceeds from the sale of this book through regular U.S. trade channels to Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. (Net proceeds are the gross amounts received by the publisher less shipping, mailing, and insurance costs or charges and taxes.) Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund is an organization that aids military personnel and veterans who have suffered severe traumatic brain injuries while serving our nation.

Has the Candidate’s Daughter become a stock character in our political narratives, and if so, what’s that about? And does anyone think 1 percent is a pretty pathetic donation to brain-damaged veterans, especially for a book by a woman who brags in its pages that her “ancestors have fought for their country in every American war since the Revolution”?

Meghan McCain: I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Republican World

Thanks, Jessica, for the YouTube clip of Meghan McCain on Maddow's show last night. Now can I have my IQ points back? From start to finish, it's a profile in Republican idiocy, from mini McCain offering herself up as some type of towheaded neo-poster girl for the right to her faltering faux-platform that consists solely of her picking a fight with Ann Coulter. That's like picking a fight with Hitler. I mean: What? Are we supposed to be impressed she doesn't like the She-Devil? McCain takes Republicans to task for being too extreme and offers her idea of an alternative: "Be more moderate and reach out to people." That's. So. Deep. What's delightful is to see her paired with such a brilliant interviewer. Every word that comes out of Maddow's mouth only serves to make the New Poster Child of the Republican Party appear even stupider. What's a tougher call is that McCain and her commentaries are so insipid, her presence begs for the question: Who's worse? Meghan McCain or Ann Coulter? Tough call, in my opinion. At least Coulter has a brain. What she does with it is the problem.

Cindy McCain's Beast-ly Spin

Collegiality: Senate Style

Lies, Damn Lies, and Memoirs

I'm having a hard time summoning a lot of outrage over the story of Herman Rosenblat, the Holocaust survivor who reimagined his stay in a subcamp of Buchenwald. In his (now canceled) and unfortunately subtitled memoir, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived, he told the beautiful lie that a girl who lived near the camp had kept him alive by chucking apples over the fence to him. He'd already gone on Oprah and told the world that years later, in Coney Island, he and the girl had improbably met again, on a blind date, and had married. But does that really make Rosenblat another Margaret Seltzer? (She's the author of Love and Consequences, the 100 percent trumped-up "memoir'' in which, instead of growing up white and well-off in the San Fernando Valley, she's a half-Native American foster child gang-banger in South Central. Details!) Or does Rosenblat's fabulism put him on a moral par with James Frey, whose real adventures in addiction and rehab were wildly improved upon for his memoir-ish A Million Little Pieces? No and no. I guess there is a sense in which every lie is pathological. But there is also a pretty wide chasm between an addict lying to sell books, and a camp survivor lying, according to the statement released through his agent, "to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world. In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream."

You know how every time John McCain did something crappy—like oh, say, abandon the wife who waited for him the whole time he was a POW—we said, Hey, the man was in a box for five years; he's allowed! Why would the McCain Rule not apply to poor Herman Rosenblat? Of course passing fiction off as reality is wrong. And I get why Holocaust scholars are "fiercely on guard against fabrication of memories because they taint the truth ... and raise doubts about the millions who were killed or brutalized.'' But aren't there cases in which embroidering on the truth might not be a sign of insanity so much as the only guard against it?   

As Rosenblat's tale is still going to be made into a movie, maybe this is just another case, as per Ben Crair, of America's weird insistence on prettying up the Holocaust by focusing on resistance fighters or righteous Gentiles or especially inspirational survivors. I don't see, though, that this emphasis is either a peculiarly American phenomenon—ever been to France?—or particular to our treatment of the Holocaust. Isn't that what Hollywood does? Could be I am just reacting to Crair's jerky line about "the most wonderful season of the year.'' But while it's true that Schindler's List is no Shoah, making the topic accessible to the general public is no crime, either, is it?

Whose Foreign Policy? That's the Question

At this point, I think we are arguing just to keep our skills up, because Hillary as Madame Secretary seems to be a done deal. But, my mother always said I would rather argue than eat, so: Whoa, Hanna, how is it that "in every way it is petty to want to deny her" the top foreign policy job when her views on foreign policy are not compatible with Obama's. (At least, that was my understanding when I voted for him.) As McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb says in a post for the Weekly Standard, "On the issues, Clinton's a hawk ... Clinton flipped on the war, but as the nomination slipped out of her reach last spring she spoke of the threats this country faces, and of the prescriptions offered by Obama, in language that would warm the hearts of neoconservatives. ... She threatened to 'obliterate' Iran in response to unprovoked aggression against Israel, she spoke of unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states as 'irresponsible and, frankly, naive,' and she castigated Obama's transparent saber-rattling on Pakistan. ... On matters of diplomacy, Clinton's views are not so different from those held by John McCain and most Republicans [big fat bold letters mine]—and they are certainly well to the right of Obama.'' 

I fail to see why it is "right-minded, in a feminist way'' to appoint someone whose views were rejected by the majority of Americans. And though I understand the impulse to aw, just go ahead and give it to her, this job is too important to be anybody's consolation prize, and that she has suffered does not mean she has earned it. To me, her trippy Tuzla flashbacks, or whatever those were, do not suggest a firm grasp of even her own life. Emily B., you imagine that though she's been a lousy manager in the past, she's "too smart not to figure out (finally) how to successfully delegate the management of this'' State Department. But isn't history a better predictor than IQ?

Hillary for Senate

Ann, don't you love how we've all turned into headhunters for Hillary, eager to pitch in and help her locate just the right job? State wouldn't be the best possible platform for her diplomatic and managerial skill set. But Hillary as war czar isn't quite the ticket, either. (Because nearly everything reminds me of a scene from a musical, what I'm thinking is "May God bless and keep the czar ... far away from us.'' In the Senate, for example.) Obama has created a problem for himself by dangling a major cabinet post as an option; if he doesn't offer it to her now, her partisans won't be happy. But it would be even worse to begin his bright new day in Washington with a confirmation hearing starring all the ghosts of Clinton scandals past. And Defense doesn't work as a Hillary landing pad any better than State does; her initial and lingering poor judgment on Iraq wasn't a plus in any way. Where did rewarding those who were wrong about the war ever get us? Truly, I never followed the '04 reasoning of those who argued that since Bush made the mess, he should be the guy on cleanup. During the run-up to the war, I remember talking to a top Clinton foreign policy person who patiently explained to me that, in fact, the Clinton and Bush administration's views vis-à-vis Saddam and invading and coalition-building were just not that different: "Together if we can, alone if we must.'' Which is why Clinton at DoD would not be different enough for me.

Let's Go Home

Forgive me, but I can't be bothered with Palin anymore. I want to linger with the victor. As I've thought about Obama's speech on election night, and his demeanor since, the word that has stayed with me most isn't the names of the groups he said he hoped to unite (blacks, whites, gays, straights, etc.) or the particular policy proposals he reiterated. Rather, it's the name of one of the temptations he hopes we'll avoid as a nation going forward: "immaturity." 

It's a striking word for a politician to use (along with the more customary "partisanship" and "pettiness" ). Reading the Newsweek series about the campaign, I was less interested in the latest revelations about Palin's wardrobe than those about the sheer childishness of the Hillary and McCain camps: the toddlerlike tantrums, the puerile infighting, the impulsiveness, the adolescent refusal to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong. Many commentators, of course, have noted Obama's self-containment, his self-discipline, his unflappability. His campaign's motto was No-Drama Obama (i.e., no teenage theatrics). But isn't this just another way of saying that Obama is that rare thing in recent American politics: a grown-up as opposed to a mere adult?

By contrast, Bush, McCain and Hillary remain, quite literally, children. One or both of their parents are remarkably still alive. Indeed, what struck me most about Obama on election night was how alone he was on that stage, except for his own wife and children. (Even an aged Biden could hold his mother's hand.) And I wonder if, even more than race, this unusual parentlessness for a man Obama's age hasn’t contributed to what I regard as his singular strength and virtue in our youth-obsessed culture: his maturity. Yes, McCain was older and more experienced, but in this election, he actually came across as less mature. The youth vote went for the grown-up.

Obama's election may have finally closed the chapter on the 1960s, by which most people mean the debates over Vietnam. But born as he was at the tail end of the baby boomers, Obama, I think, may have also turned the page on the extended adolescence of his generation. In many ways, the last eight years have felt like one of those teenage parties where the grown-ups are absent and things have spiraled dangerously out of control. Countries, like kids, need and want limits. So, while I've been overjoyed this last week as I've watched a confident and competent Obama begin to assume power, what I've felt most, I've suddenly realized, is sheer relief: A responsible adult has finally showed up to shepherd everyone home.

Blaming Palin Is the Easy Way Out

Thank you, Melinda and Lauren, for saying what I wanted to say but was avoiding since I've largely been our lone Sarah Palin defender. Saying that Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent sounds like something you'd say about your ex after a bitter breakup (which is perhaps what this is). It sounds far more sarcastic and bitter than serious, and it says more about the speaker than the target.  

John McCain might not have been able to win even if he'd put God himself on the ticket, given the standing of the Republican Party right now. And Palin surely didn't help him pull in as many women as he'd hoped. But still, as Chris Beam points out in Slate, he didn't have a lot of good choices (or rather, left himself with few good choices because of his rumored stubborn insistence on Joe Lieberman). I kind of wish in hindsight that it had been Mitt Romney, because he'd have brought credibility on the economic front. But the narrative would have been about their contentious primary. And I liked Tim Pawlenty, once I'd heard of him, but Chris is right that you would have been able to hear crickets chirping at rallies. And Joe Lieberman? Worse than crickets. The networks would have had to find a way to silence the echoes in the convention center during the acceptance speeches while the conventioneers were out at bars drowning their sorrows. Heck, I would have voted for Obama if he picked Lieberman. (No offense, Joe.) So, it seems a little unfair for all the blame to fall on Sarah Palin. McCain was trailing, he threw a Hail Mary, and it fell short. It's not like he was leading by 10 points and then she brought down the whole campaign.

Like Anne says, whether Palin is that dumb or not, this says something bad about the McCain campaign. The candidate himself gave a gracious concession speech Tuesday night. It's too bad his staffers don't have the same amount of class.

Palin in '12

Sounds like those McCain aides are fast-tracking their guy's return to pariah—I mean, maverick—status by alienating every last conservative who voted for him with their mean, sexist, and derriere-covering hooey about Sarah Palin. I'm sorry, but I do not for one second believe that she did not know Africa was a continent. If she threw those poor foot soldiers for democracy into a panic by appearing at her hotel-room door "essentially ... wrapped in a bathrobe''—grow up, people; it's not the first time a candidate has finished dressing on the run. And from what I saw of the crack McCain-Palin organization, somebody needed to engage in the dreaded "throwing of paperwork and things of that nature.'' I see this as the jump-start of her rehab with women voters: diva, shopaholic, temptress, hmmm. Keep up the women-hating insults, McCainiacs, and it'll be Palin in '12.

Best Group-Hug Ever

Classy Concession

John McCain went beyond where he had to go with the speech he just gave, pretty much all but begging his supporters to please forget everything his campaign has been suggesting about Barack Obama and instead hear this: "I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but in offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together. ... Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans, and please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.'' I do believe him. And not only am I proud of President-Elect Obama, but it's good to have John McCain back as well. At the end, when he complained that his campaign "at times seemed to be the most challenged campaign in modern times,'' he seemed more comfortable than he had in months.

McCain-Palin Fails To Attract Women

CNN is reporting that Obama received 60 percent to McCain's 38 percent of the female vote with just less than 50 percent of national precincts reporting. This 22-point margin is much higher than polls predicted.

Adding Sarah Palin to the ballot didn't attract the women vote as McCain and the Republicans might have hoped. After picking Palin as a running mate, many speculated that Clinton supporters would flock to the McCain-Palin ticket. These early results don't show that to be the case.

Corn Country

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