I have long experienced at first hand the way that some men try to belittle and exclude women in public life through aggressive and often painful forms of name-calling and public humiliation.
I have also, certainly, heard “white” men– and women– use similar forms of name-calling to belittle, humiliate, and exclude African-Americans, Muslims, Arabs, gay people, and even occasionally Jewish people from the public discourse. When I, as a straight, “white” woman hear such appeals to a supposed ethnic or straightnik solidarity that the perpetrators imagine I might share with them, it is sometimes a challenge to know how to respond. What I always like to do in such circumstances– and certainly try to do– is draw a clear line by saying I find such language offensive and don’t want to stick around to hear it.
I actually don’t hang around a lot with people who say such ugly things. And it’s been a long, long time since any guys of my acquaintance used language around me that was openly demeaning to women.
Maybe that’s largely a function of my selection of companions.
So what does it tell us about VP candidate Sarah Palin that, as Governor of Alaska already, she would
- (a) agree to go on a radio show run by two guys who had built their audience precisely by throwing demeaning language around very freely, and
(b) during the on-air interview, after they have called another leader in the state’s Republican politics both a “cancer” and a “bitch”, she would do nothing but give a nervous little giggle before assuring them warmly that she has enjoyed being on the show with them?
I have found all the reports of Palin’s behavior on that occasion– as ably presented here by Juan Cole– extremely disturbing.
Even without taking into consideration that the political rival in question, the Republican president of the Alaska State Senate, Lyda Green, is herself a cancer survivor. Though of course that makes it a lot worse. (And we should surely assume that Palin knew of Green’s health status at the time.)
In Juan’s post there, he also adds a clip from a GOP fundraiser earlier this year when a woman very loudly asks John McCain — in relation to, I imagine, Hillary Clinton– “How are we going to beat the bitch?”… and there are prolonged and loud guffaws of complicity all round, including from John McCain.
Both incidents tell us a lot about these two people who aspire to lead our country.
Neither of them drew any lines in the sand at all against the public use of such hateful language. Both seemed to me to be a little embarrassed by their interlocutors’ use of the B-word. But that didn’t stop eithert of them from laughing at it. And most importantly, neither of them did anything at all, right there and then, to dissociate themselves from the general idea that such language is quite acceptable and “okay” to use in pubic political discourse.
Palin reportedly, later, issued a public apology to Green. (But it may have been of the exculpatory form that “I am sorry if Ms. Green took offense at what was said”… blaming the victim for her reaction, rather than the perpetrators for their hate-fueled boorishness.)
But how about her reaction at the time, which came across like a couple of short bursts of possibly nervous giggling?
She didn’t stand up to her interviewers then at all. Not one iota. She giggled along with them.
John McCain is not a young man. If Palin becomes president, is she the kind of person we want answering the 3 a.m. phone calls when there’s an international crisis?
Not her. And not McCain either, for reasons too numerous to mention.
Helena,
First, I think that you’ve fallen into the same woman-demeaning trap that you decry.
Palin, you tell us based on a brief audio taping, which may have been doctored, gave a “nervous little giggle” or “possibly nervous giggling” and then “she giggled along with them.”
Do men ever demean themselves by “giggling?”
Couldn’t it be possible that Palin was made uncomfortable by such talk, and responded as you or I might, with a short, dismissive little laugh and than a “See you around?” What would you have her say in a radio interview: “Now wait just a minute, this woman might be a political rival but I will not stand to hear her demeaned this way and furthermore . . .?” Or would it have been better if she had not “giggled” but said: “I agree with you?”
We all get trapped sometimes by others’ comments and laugh our way out of them, changing the subject. Laughing means that we disagree, not that we agree.
Check out Palin’s “coming out” speech in Ohio and tell me you’re not impressed with her speaking ability, compared to the aloof Obama, for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJWRX_Gs8uU
I’m not in accord with her politics, but as a person (particularly one of the female persuasion) I think that she deserves a fairer shake than you’re giving her.
Don
scan the newssites. say nothing.
There but for the grace of God go we all.
It must be pleasant to belong to a political faction so tiny that it contains nobody whose support can occasion even the slightest embarrassment.
Pleasure has its pricetag, however: one is not to complain of having no influence in the real world.
Happy days.
Don, were you really impressed with that speech?! I was not – not in the least, even after I managed to get past over her horrid screechy voice.
And in any case, I do not care for political speeches, and rarely listen to them. They are nothing more than P.R. exercises crafted by marketing people based on focus groups and whatever other techniques they use to figure out how to influence the public. I am more interested in the candidates’ substance than what the marketing people tell them to say.
I do not find using the word giggle to describe a giggle in any way sexist or demeaning simply because the giggler happens to be female any more than I should have been criticized and called misgynistic (which I was) for pointing out how grating her voice was. We all know what a giggle sounds like, and she did giggle – twice. And in fact, Helena, unlike everyone else who has brought up this incident, was generous enough to give her the benefit of the doubt by suggesting it sounded like a nervous, uncomfortable giggle. I have heard her reaction inaccurately described as “cracking up” over the remark. Do you prefer that more damning description over the more accurate “giggle”? Seriously, Don, when did you suddenly become Mr. P.C.?
political question: does anybody know what Obama’s stand on use of cluster bombs is ?
Thankyou
Don Bacon– I really disagree with you. When you hear bigot-speech, you really should call it out and dissociate yourself from it as soon as possible. Even if she’d not done so the moment they used the first slur– “cancer”– she should have done so with the second… or failing that, at the time of her goodbye. something like “Goodbye guys, but before you go I want to tell you I found it very offensive when… ”
That’s what I would do. I don’t even aspire to be the ‘leader’ of a state (or indeed, anything much.) She is now running to be one heartbeat away from a HUGE leadership position.
And she can’t even stand up for the decent values of civil discourse when they are violated?? It is totally not hard to do.
What Helena said.
And I thought uber-Christian types like Sarah Palin were deeply offended by anyone’s use of “bad words” – you know, like the “b” word?
Shirin
Al Jazeera has just picked up the news.
Do you think it disqualifies her from dealing with Arab or Muslim leaders?
Which news, Frank? I don’t think you mean the giggle at the “b” word, so I assume you mean the news of her 17 year old unwed daughter’s pregnancy? If so, I would say that certainly does not enhance her credibility in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
So do you think that would make it a matter of public interest?
Some of the “Christian” comment I have seen isn’t overly impressed.
The choice of Sarah Palin by senator McCain provides us, I can agree, with more information about him than about her.
At the same time what kind of self-awareness can she possibly possess to cause her to accept the position?
This is turning out to be a squirrelly pair. At least Cheney, while not particularly ethical, was knowledgeable.
Yea, but you know, she’s good looking!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/democrat-joe-bi.html
Perhaps, Helena, you should get right on the phone to Obama/Biden headquarters for that remark?
JES, I think there are quite a lot of levels at which Biden really doesn’t ‘get it’ on women’s issues. When he introduced his wife to the media after Obama named him as running mate, he said something like “She’s really good looking but the problem is she has a doctorate.”
A problem???
Give me a beak!
Palin and McCain on the B-word business seems quite a lot more serious than that.
Maybe we can excuse Biden on generational grounds but personally I’m not inclined to cut him much slack for that. (He was also the one who earlier assured us that Obama was “clean.” Meaning that most African-American people aren’t??)
I am not a Biden enthusiast, for many reasons including his past pandering over Iraq. I see why Obama chose him, but I sure hope Obama lives a long and productive life, including the next eight years as Prez.
“She’s really good looking but the problem is she has a doctorate.”
A problem???
Give me a beak!”
Are we all this hyper-sensitive now? Biden’s positions on women’s issues certainly do bear examining, but come on! I would take remark as an attempt at humour by means of irony, and the message I hear is “not only is she really good looking, she has a doctorate. I doubt very much that he considers it a problem that his wife has a PhD.
Surely we have not become so insecure that everything every politician says must pass the “perfectly P.C.” test before it becomes acceptable to us.
Thank you Shirin. You are a star!
Lets go back to watching the Republican Party tie itself in knots. It is far funnier.
We poor benighted disenfranchised Europeans are quite enjoying the Farce while trying to avoid going to war by accident and keep paying our mortgages.
The guys in Teheran must be wetting themselves laughing.
Speaking of how our sisters are treated and what may or may not be a reasonable reaction to their actions, (especially in the company of political elephants), let’s spare a thought today for Amy Goodman. Another victim of American Democracy, which no longer demonstrates respect for gender any more than it does for humanity as a whole.
Maybe Obama can make a change I can believe in and actually take a stand about the overt oppression that recently lead to Amy’s arrest among several others?
Roland, let’s not forget Amy’s colleagues Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kaddous, who were assaulted and injured by the police in the same incident.
As for Obama making a change, things were not better than this at the DNC, and if you think Obama is not part of the same system, you will be disappointed.
This country is well along in its evolution to police state. Don’t expect Obama to reverse that.
Yes Shirin, quite right let’s not forget Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kaddous, thank you for pointing those ommissions out. Also the other American journalists from I-Witness Video etc “pre-emptively”, and at gunpoint reportedly from a number of addresses.
As for Obama, indeed I surely would be. I won’t, but that is precious little comfort when a sufficient number would.
You know, watching the video and listening to the accounts of Nicole, Sharif, and Amy I felt really afraid in a way I have never been afraid before. They were in a lawless situation where the police could do whatever they wanted to. In Nicole’s case at one point one officer was holding her down with a boot on her back while another was trying to drag her by the legs. And for what? Trying to do her job as a journalist. She and Sharif were clearly the victims of an assault since they had behaved peaceably and had done nothing to put the officers in fear of them. It was clear here and at the DNC that pains had been taken to deliberately conceal the identity of the individual police officers.
It reminded me of experiences I had in Berkeley in the ’70’s when it was very clear in one instance after another that it was the police not the demonstrators who were rioting. Only this was worse.
Roland, what is it about Obama that makes you so certain that he is somehow different, and outside of the system, and that he will reverse the terrible course the United States has been on for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations alike?
Heaven forgive me for defending Joe Biden, whose vaunted foreign policy “expertise” is not at all evident to me, but was he not a co-sponsor of the Violence Against Women act?
Shirin its just you didnt use the conditional “would” but the future “will” . The (perhaps archaic) subjunctive tense is how people in my region make such conditional statements.
I fully agree and don’t actualy believe Obama would make any such stand, unless he was forced to by political pressures that I see no sign of. I will therefore not be disappointed when he doesn’t.
The fact is that Obama will, (will as opposed to would), not even faintly raise an eyebrow at this video of fascism in action, enacted by US police. He will lead a chorus of silence among the “liberal” elite. This, even when he is now the enshrined democratic presidential nominee, is undeniable proof that Obama is neither a leader in any heroic or transcendant sense, nor maveric, nor any kind of “democratic” revolutionary nor MLK, nor JFK, Rooseveldt, Lincoln or Jefferson in waiting. I would not now think otherwise even if he were as “outwardly special” as a sapphic paraplegic innuit HIV positive moonist, just like me:) Not even with Kucinich’s endorsment of him.
Obama’s overt lack of critical action demonstrates required personal qualities are simply absent. So what perplexes me is why so many supposedly rational and honest people convince themselves otherwise. Wishful thinking? Cognitive disonance? If so it is of such a magnitude that “choosing” the President is no closer to a rational choice than crowning a Queen is. Why not just examine the entrails of a Diebold machine to find the next President? Not that some Queens aren’t worse than others. I mean sure, McCain would most likely be a noticeably worse President. Neat.
Roland, my English comprehension and grammar are really quite decent, and I caught your use of the conditional. :o} What was not clear was to which condition you were referring, so I took it to mean not “if I believed that I would be disappointed (but I do not believe it so I will not)”, but rather “if that happened I would be disappointed (but it will not, so I will not)”. So, what we have is an imperfect communication, not a lack of English comprehension. :o}
I have never become enamored of a politician, and like you do not understand how it is that so many otherwise bright, reasonable people do. Charisma is an empty, superficial quality, and for me form is nothing without content. It has been a long time – adolescence, I believe – since I have been carried away by someone’s charisma. In fact, it is rather boring. It seems we are the exception in that regard.
On a slightly different, but related note, I did not bother to watch Sarah Palin’s speech, but heard snippets of it after. Wasn’t it adorable that she managed to rote memorize a few foreign policy-sounding items? Didn’t you just want to smile and pat her on her little head? And don’t you wonder whether she had any clue at all what she was saying? And do you think that transparent little ploy fooled anyone into thinking she is really a foreign policy wonk? After all, she does live right across the strait from Russia.
Shirin
I did not bother to watch Sarah Palin’s speech, …… Wasn’t it adorable that she managed to rote memorize a few foreign policy-sounding items? Didn’t you just want to smile and pat her on her little head? And don’t you wonder whether she had any clue at all what she was saying?
If you take the time to watch the video you will watch what she does to her boy. She gives him Prince Harry Problem.
His face is now on the target list of every hostile sniper in Iraq. So can he be deployed to a forward area?
Career over for his superiors if he (God Forbid) gets dinged.
Frank, I have zero sympathy or concern for anyone who joins the military at this time. If they don’t know at the time they sign up that they are going to be sent to a foreign country to kill and maim people, and destroy things, then let the Darwin Principle apply. If they think they will enjoy killing and maiming people and destroying things, then I don’t care any more about them than they care about their victims.
As for what she has done to her boy, it should be apparent by now that for Sarah Palin personal ambition is more important than protecting her children’s privacy, dignity, and lives. I find her utterly appalling on every level that matters to me.
I find her utterly appalling on every level that matters to me.
Now now, none of these should matter except her competence as a civil servant and loyalty to the principles of the constitution. there I’d agree with you 100%- her views on government I think are problematic, more in line with the religious right than the libertarian wing of his party… in general a depressing and cynical maneuver (not that Obama is above such things.)
So once again I’m resigned to vote for the communist or the green (i’ll let more cynical people gun halfheartedly for Obama, thanks.)
Frank, I have zero sympathy or concern for anyone who joins the military at this time.
Then you shouldn’t expect them to take anything you say the slightest bit seriously. How do you think your cannon fodder votes?
Shirin
I can see where you are coming from.
However it was only when I saw Kosovo and realised what Belfast and Derry might have become that I appreciated the role of military force in restoring order.
So blanket condemnation might not hold.
The death rate in Baghdad is being reported as less than it was, though still appalling, due to better tactical and strategic deployment.
Wilf Owen captures the sense of hopeless guilt you feel at the loss of some young life seduced by some old story.
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Frank, in the case of Iraq it was military force that created the disorder and carnage in the first place, and order has not been restored to Iraq at all, nor will it be as long as the U.S. military is there.
As for the decrease in the death rate in Baghdad, there are a number of factors that contributed to that that have little or nothing to do with the U.S. military.
It is also a fact that as part of The Surge™ the U.S. military increased its use of aerial attacks by a factor of seven or so. Knowing what we know about the indiscriminately deadly and destructive nature of air bombardment the carnage from that, much of which went unreported or misreported no doubt came very close to making up for the decrease in internecine killing.
As for Kosovo, without endorsing that particular action, I am compelled to point out that unlike Iraq and Afghanistan it was not an act of naked aggression undertaken by the U.S. for the purpose of conquest.
PS Humanitarian war is an oxymoron.
I agree.
Helena has a book that describes the results of non intervention in Rwanda. I am reading into the mess in Dar Fur.
But getting into that would take us far away from the suitability of Paris Hilton to be President in Waiting of the US.
Shirin, OK I was being vague, my only defence is that I thought I had the unintended interpretation covered by the subsequent qualification. However, the simple test of any attempt at a pithy sentence is whether you inform or confuse people. I’m just glad I don’t write slogans for a living. Anyway quite seriously I just put it down to dialects, as we often misunderstand American English here.
No, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Palin, but I’m sure she can read a teleprompter better than George seems able to.
On an infinitely more serious note, did you see what Juan Cole said about the Goodman outrage in “Informed Comment”?
“That something was very wrong with at least some of the police response in Minneapolis is demonstrated by the arrest and manhandling of Amy Goodman and two of her staff members. They were there as press. They were not throwing anything. I know them, and have been on the show numerous times. They are honest, committed people, and if they say they were wrongly treated, they were.Over the weekend, Democracy Now! reporter Elizabeth Press had been arrested, apparently for planning to film police response to the protests.”
You would think Cole might be happy to see something of a competitor with a different agenda in jail, seems he has other concerns, along “First they came for the Communists” lines. We are well past the first visit now they have come for Amy Goodman.
There is an informative blow by blow account by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.Com
Footnote
A British soldier has been killed on patrol in southern Afghanistan. He was from 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment, but has not been named. He died yesterday when an improvised explosive device was triggered while he was on a routine foot patrol in Sangin, Helmand province.
Next of kin have been informed.
Roland, the other night when I was watching Amy’s Nicole’s, and Sharif’s accounts of their assault, battery, and arrest I had the most chilling feeling. The significance of what is happening in and to this country came home to me in a way it never has.
As for Palin, I think people had better pay attention. She is a very scary person. You know, the first time I saw her I got a very creepy feeling about her, similar to the feeling I got when I first began seeing Condoleezza Rice, even before I knew anything about her. I have learned to pay attention to that feeling, and certainly everything I have learned about Sarah Palin since then has only served to confirm my intuitive first impression. When I have watched and listened to bits of her speech she gave me that same creepy feeling. There is something very wrong there. Funny, I had my hair done today, and my hair dresser got the same feeling from her. That weird, uncomfortable “something evil this way comes” kind of feeling. People should not underestimate her or the effect she can have on Middle American types.
Shirin
If you look at the photgraphs of McCain and his running maid together and look at the body language you start to see her upstage the old man.
She is in fact running for President.
I can’t remember if this phenomenon is called folie de grandeur.
Vadim, it seems miracles are possible. Here is something we can agree upon strongly, if not 100%. Who knows, we might be kindred spirits after all.
Palin’s views toward government are severely problematic. As for her competence as a civil servant, not to mention her ethics, her record makes that highly questionable. For example, apparently as mayor of Wasilla, at that time a town of 5-6,000, she started her term with zero deficit, and ended it with the town $19 million in debt. Her record as Governor of Alaska also has some items that call her competence and ethics into question. And she has told a number of brazen, documentable whoppers in her short tenure as a national candidate, which arguably merely proves she is a politician, but which are still cause for concern.
As for her “foreign policy” credentials, obtaining her first passport in 2007, living in the closest state to Russia, and being able to rote memorize (and badly mispronounce) a list of foreign-policy-sounding items (which she probably did not have a clue about – could she find Eye Ran on a map? – does not inspire confidence.
And I do agree that a politician’s personal life is usually irrelevant, but in the case of a politician who makes “family values” (as opposed to family values) such a central issue, her conduct in that regard does have to become part of the evaluation. I don’t blame her for the fact that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant (although it does kind of call into question her views on an abstinence only approach). However, any parent who makes an issue of “family values”, and then is willing to sell out her children’s privacy, dignity, and lives for, let alone use them in furtherance of her political ambitions (e.g. insisting that her children are off limits then flying her daughter’s babydaddy to Minneapolis for a photo-op, and having him sitting prominently next to her pregnant daughter during her speech, plus what Frank mentioned about her Iraq-debacle-bound fool of a son) has to have her entire value system, not to mention what she wants to impose on the population, viewed with skepticism. The word hypocrite does come to mind, among other things.
Depressing and cynical maneuver? Definitely! And apparently Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy (speaking off mike – or so they thought!) think so too.
As for the cannon fodder, the following:
1. I don’t care whether they take anything I say the slightest bit seriously or not. I wish them no ill, I hope they return safe and whole, and appropriately educated by their experience, but if they do not, they did it to themselves.
2. As for how they vote, I understand that a significant percentage of them are contributing to Obama’s campaign (I hope they are not doing so based on the illusion that Obama intends to do anything but reconfigure the occupation, because he made that clear from the beginning).
3. My war heroes are those who have the astuteness and courage to say no, and those who recognize and acknowledge that they have been part of a huge crime, and are committed to organizations such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace.
Frank,
I have never been a supporter of Hillary Clinton for President, mainly because of her history and her statements about areas that matter the most to me. However, the idea that the likes of Sarah Palin could be the first female President of the United States while someone of the calibre of a Hillary Clinton cannot get nominated is beyond my ability to deal with.
Frank, we know the results of non-“intervention” in Rwanda. What we don’t know is what would be the result of “intervention”. Military violence nearly always makes things worse, not better, at least for a very significant number of the human beings upon whom it is used.
As for Kosovo, I doubt very much that those who were killed or maimed, or who had a loved one killed or maimed or had their lives destroyed by the “intervention” would agree that it was a good thing.
Humanitarian war is an oxymoron.
Shirin
We are getting into deep water here.
Rwanda had a million dead in a couple of months. I think you do the analysis to identify the greatest good of the greatest number and choose the least worst option.
If we look at the case of Sebrenica, do you think the Dutch troops should have opened fire or called in air strikes and artillery on the Serbs?
This is a whole topic all of its own that we need to prime Helena on.
Nick Kristof at NYT reguarly proposes intervention in Dar Fur but the more I read the more difficulty I find in defining a war aim or operational objective for military intervention in East Africa and the Nile Basin and in defining the size of operation it should be.
Rupert Smith discusses these aspects in his book on the Utility of Force.
His cunning assembly and use of Artillery broke the siege of Sarajevo which I suppose was a humanitarian act.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/12/highereducation.shopping
I suspect the EU troops who escort the Serbian villagers from the Serb villages in Kosovo to the cash and carry every couple of weeks are doing a humanitarian act.
However I am old enough to know that I don’t know enough about this tricky subject to make any sweeping pronouncements.
Shirin
Just for info
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4692458.ece
Sarah Palin: northern star injects new life into lumbering campaign
An extraordinary display of raw political talent could trump Obama’s ‘pretty speeches’ and rally the religious right by Sarah Baxter in Detroit
The enthusiasm generated by Sarah Palin, the Republican party’s new “northern star”, on her first tour of Middle America this weekend has revived Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign to such a remarkable extent that she is outshining her running mate.
It is an unprecedented position of power for a vice-presidential candidate that carries great risks and rewards for McCain as he adjusts to operating in the shadow of a political phenomenon.
As the McCain-Palin road show took to the suburbs and small towns in the Republican party’s target states, fans were running to see her rather than McCain, the 72-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war.
“I only found out half an hour ago that she was coming,” said
But for comfort, here is the reaction of somone who actually thinks (and has a vote in the election) It remains to be seen how long it takes for these views to become mainstream.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4692133.ece
Admittedly the spectacle of electioneering is a painful test of anyone’s respect for the United States. In their ghastly harrumphing electoral extravaganzas the Americans show themselves at their worst – vulgar, venal, naive, dishonest, stupid, wasteful, tasteless and vicious. Priggish though it may sound, I prefer to ignore these periods of national hysteria; after all, politics is nasty everywhere, it’s just that America does everything in extremes.
But last week everything changed. John McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin was the last straw. It makes American politics look like a sick comedy. My faith in my native country had already been shaken by other elections and by other wrongs, such as the Iraq war (which I at first supported, to my shame). But the moose-hunting pitbull with lipstick is too much. I have never used my vote in the past, but if I had, I would usually have voted Republican. Today no rational conservative can vote for the Palin and McCain ticket. It makes America an international laughing stock. The fact that there has been a Palin bounce, after her charismatic speech, fills me with dismay.
This has little to do with Palin’s views. …….. unlike them I don’t in the least object to an ambitious woman being right-wing. I am rather right-wing myself, and Margaret Thatcher is one of my heroines.
……….
All the same, her selection was a shock. What horrified me was not so much the woman herself, though she is clearly entirely unfit to be vice-president or president. It was McCain’s cynical and sudden choice of her. Would you give power of attorney over your entire life to someone you had only met once, or possibly twice? Of course not. You would give the matter and the person very serious consideration. Yet McCain in effect is offering power of attorney over all the affairs of the United States and over all Americans, including me, to a woman he had barely met. I myself wouldn’t hire a house-sitter on such scant acquaintance.
Palin herself may not know what a vice-president is for, but McCain surely must. He must know that a vice-president needs to be someone the president can trust and rely on and work with. Such a person is not easy to find, even when highly qualified in other ways. It takes time. It’s a personal matter, a question of psychological fit and mutual understanding.
I had thought that McCain was, for a politician, an honourable man. Certainly honour is one of his top selling points. But who can think so now…..
Though he didn’t know Palin personally, he must have known a few facts about her. He must have known that she compares feebly with previous vice-presidential candidates. Her education is minimal, her real political and managerial experience very slight. The only previous woman candidate for vice-president, the Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, was well qualified, well educated and experienced; Palin can’t hold a candle to her. Palin’s experience is as nothing compared to that of Dick Cheney (congressman, secretary of defence and White House chief of staff), Al Gore (senator and congressman) or George Bush Sr (congressman, ambassador to the United Nations and China, head of the CIA). Being a vice-president is not just a matter of PR and homespun rhetoric, or used not to be.