A man would have been laughed off the stage. But she's a woman, so the fact that she didn't cry was enough
IF YOU had a burst water-pipe and your home was disappearing under a deluge, who would you call for help? A qualified plumber – who just happened to be male – or a woman who had once held a spanner for five minutes? In your moment of distress, would
you go for the able professional, or would you think, "What the heck, let's give the girl a chance?"
Watching Sarah Palin, the US Republican vice-presidential nominee, in last week's televised debate with Joe Biden, her Democrat opposite number, I was left with the distinct impression that America might actually go for the unqualified girl with the spanner.
Since the two candidates met in that debate, the general consensus has been that Palin did well, perhaps even better than Biden (though it must be said that expectations were low). Even Hillary Clinton has called her "a composed and effective debater" (Bill called her "hot", but we know which part of his anatomy makes his decisions). I'm left wondering if I saw the same debate as everybody else.
It was politically savvy – or downright cynical – of John McCain to choose a woman as his running mate after the Democrats dumped Hillary, but the more I see of Sarah Palin, the more I realise, with a sinking heart, that her gender is the one and only reason she's there at all.
The gentlemanly, old-school Biden treated her with kid gloves. That's his choice, of course, but it was understandable since she shamelessly exploited her media image of an ordinary, small town Alaskan, "hockey-mom". Conversely, the self-styled "pit bull in lipstick" spent last Sunday attacking Barack Obama, starting with the words: "OK, the heels are on and the gloves are off."
But she played cute during the vice-presidential debate. She used phrases such as "doggone it" and "you betcha!" and winked (I was waiting for "Aw, shucks!" but thankfully it never came). She'd memorised the names of two foreign leaders and repeated them constantly to show us how much she'd practised (Kim Jong-Il of North Korea was no big deal, but President Ahmadinejad of Iran must have taken her ages).
But her foreign policy consisted of saying that on a clear day in Alaska, she could see Russia. Her economic policy consisted of saying how worried "hockey moms" were about the financial crisis. If she'd been a man, she'd have been laughed off the stage. But she's a woman, so the fact that she didn't cry and seemed breezy and likeable was enough to get her praise.
This is sexism, pure and simple. Palin has no experience of international politics and her experience of anything outside of Alaska is pretty limited. She knows about gas, wolves and moose, which is great if you live in Alaska, but not so helpful if you're deciding whether to withdraw troops from somewhere called Iraq.
Her mediocre debating performance proved that she's there simply because she's a woman – or maybe because she's a simple woman. Either way, if you want to help rule the world in these troubled times, it's not enough to be feisty, down-to-earth and have given birth. If your selling point is that you know very little but are good at banging on about your strong, half-formed opinions, why bother with politics? Be a newspaper columnist instead.
If Palin genuinely deserves to be at the pinnacle of government, she hasn't shown it. Whatever your political persuasion, you have to admit that powerful women such as Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel and Mary Robinson achieved high office by being good, intelligent and capable politicians, not good moms.
In many cases, women in such positions have had to be much better than their male counterparts to be taken seriously and get anywhere. All Palin has to do is remember where Canada is and she's a golden girl.
Palin is there to bring McCain more female votes, but it's patronising and insulting to the women of America to expect them to gratefully fall in behind her, as if one woman is much the same as another. The Republicans are saying, you couldn't have Hillary, but you can have this one. She's believes different things and she's nothing special, but look! She's got two X chromosomes! That'll do, won't it? Er, no.
I think what bothers me most about Sarah Palin is that if she really is an ordinary woman with a mediocre mind, she's useless. And if she isn't and her folksy persona is a ruthless attempt to hide a dazzling intellect and political talent from a public which responds to the common touch, she's lying. If this is the case, whichever is true, America can't win. But Palin just might.
The full article contains 824 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
