Saintless

First, an apology to those wondering why I didn’t blog much while in Denver. My laptop has had some issues, so blogging wasn’t an option. But, if you missed me, I’m sorry! I’ll try to make up for it over the next few weeks with some more in-depth posts.

As our chauffeur, Jeff, drove Jason, Craig and I home from Denver last Friday, a frequent topic of our conversation was this mysterious woman, Sarah Palin, about whom we knew little. Although MSNBC didn’t give us much to feed on before we left Denver, we managed to find lots of tidbits via our phones on the drive.

We found out that she’d been a “mayor/manager” of a small Alaskan town for a couple of years before spending the last year and a half as Alaska’s Governor. She apparently ran that little town into the dirt before moving on. She has no foreign policy experience. She was a beauty queen (like many other women in McCain’s life). She has a firing scandal that is as of yet unresolved. Her Wikipedia entry was scrubbed, as was her website, but they missed the Google cache of her praising Barack Obama’s energy plan just last month. A month ago she didn’t know anything about McCain’s position on Iraq. And those are just the first few hours of what I learned about Governor Sarah Palin.

The more I learned, especially about her inexperience, and the more I thought about the obvious ploy to win “disaffected” Clinton voters, the more angry I got.

I’m not a feminist, or at least I don’t call myself one. With politics, as with most things, I find that balance is really an essential part of getting it right. And feminists are pretty much seen as extremists. The original movement is really one I could get behind, but so many of the arguments coming out of modern feminists mouth’s really are extreme. I don’t think I deserve a better job than men because my grandmother didn’t have a chance in hell of getting one. I do think that I should have an equal chance at getting that job, though. I think most feminists probably agree with me, but the loudest ones are a bit too extreme, and so I do not identify with them.

That said, something I truly didn’t understand during Hillary Clinton’s run for President was why her supporters sometimes had no better reason for supporting her than to get a woman in the Oval Office. I do see that it would be a wonderful thing to have a female president, but I needed more of a reason to support her than I had. By far, I think that Clinton’s core supporters have come over to the Obama camp, or are at least on their way. Hillary Clinton’s principles on women’s issues were matched well to the Democratic Party.

And so, in choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, how can John McCain think that the true core of Clinton supporters will come running? Sarah Palin believes that the government should decide many things for women that most of us would like control of ourselves. She is pro-life. Hillary Clinton is pro-choice.* Sarah Palin has not been a voice on issues, such as domestic violence, equality, or anything else typically thought of when discussing women’s issues. Her vagina does not make her any more of an expert or an advocate of those issues than Alaska’s proximity to Russia makes her a foreign affairs expert.

This next part may seem a little disjointed, but I wrote some notes during the car trip home, and I’d like to separate those thoughts from the rest of this. So here they are.

In general, a woman can work and still raise a family. Of course, some challenges with work or the family can make success at either less likely, without choosing one. A highly stressful job, one that takes you away from your home or a child with a disability are perfect examples of what I’m talking about.

Is Sarah Palin some kind of undiscovered superwoman that she can be both a good mother to an infant with Down’s Syndrome and a good Vice President of the United States of America?

Is her husband the nurturing matronly type who will make a fine mommy-substitute to this baby with Down’s Syndrome? Is she hiring a surrogate “mommy” to fill that role? When her child cries, will she be given the choice between America and little baby Trig? Which will she choose?

Is McCain’s choice a signal that he’s resigned to losing this election, and the choice of a woman was to make the party look good, as if they’re suddenly over their history of discrimination? Or is the whole thing a joke because he couldn’t get anyone to accept?

Sarah Palin has put herself in the position of abusing the issue of women’s rights, as has John McCain. Sarah Palin is undoubtedly an irresponsible choice to put one missed heartbeat away from running this country. And McCain’s choosing her twisted the entire women’s rights platform into something else entirely. Sarah Palin as VP isn’t the same as Hillary Clinton as VP, or even POTUS. Sarah Palin is a willing puppet, and is doing harm to women’s rights, not helping it. Sarah Palin is a mockery of Hillary Clinton and every thing she stood for. Most of Clinton’s supporters are going to understand that.

And women everywhere are going to be pissed in the years to come when a serious woman Presidential candidate comes along again, whether it’s Hillary or not, because clips of Palin will be shown and jokes about her clownish run at the White House will be used to discredit that woman candidate.

I, as a woman, am offended by McCain choosing Palin, and by Palin accepting the offer.

*I often feel the need to clarify when this topic is brought up. My personal view of abortion is that it is wrong. However, I don’t think the government needs to decide that for anyone, nor do I. On top of which, reducing the number of abortions will only happen with education and working harder to get people to consider adoption or not getting pregnant in the first place. But, I digress.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm and is filed under 2008 election, John McCain, Sarah Palin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.