SO WHAT exactly do we have in Sarah Palin? A compelling new political voice, as Barack Obama so generously opined? A tough-talker who will energise the Republican Party and blaze a trail for the next generation of American women? No, what we have is a good ol' boy with ovaries and the most breathtaking example of tokenism since Geraldine Ferraro was shoe-horned on to the ticket with Walter Mondale in 1984.
I still cannot get my head around the sheer gall of John McCain to place before us as a prospective US vice-president, Miss Congeniality from Wasilla, Alaska; this curiously-coiffed, little-known political lightweight. Sarah Palin was chosen for one
reason and one reason alone. Not her stance on abortion – anti, even (reportedly) in the case of rape or incest. Not her affiliation with the National Rifle Association or her taste for moose burgers. Not because she has a son heading off to Iraq, and a desire to despoil the Alaskan wilderness by drilling for oil.
She was chosen simply because she is a woman, and, McCain and his advisers clearly hoped, would scoop up the legions of female Democrats left aggrieved and suddenly undecided by Hillary Clinton's forced exit. Well, a word to the wise, boys. It takes more than a hair-do and a womb to win a woman's vote; at least it ought to.
You have to hope that Hillary Clinton's supporters are disaffected because Hillary Clinton was denied her chance at the top job. Hillary Clinton the respected senator, the woman with the forensically intelligent mind, the international outlook, political nous, and burning commitment to social justice. To imagine that you can dangle before the electorate any other woman and that will do is arrogance and ignorance in the extreme.
Hillary had my vote, metaphorically speaking. My husband is an Obama man and we vied with each other to see who could get a bumper sticker first, our interest in all things American heightened by three years of living in Arizona. When his arrived before mine, I covered it with a homemade Mike Huckabee sign – a man who gives him nightmares – and he drove around for two days until he noticed. We've watched it all. The primaries, the debates, the punditry, delighted, initially, at the options before the country after eight years under a president of very little brain. We got the children interested too, and my daughter picked up quite quickly on the fact that people were making much of Hillary's gender. When she lost the Democratic nomination to Obama, my 12-year-old was astonished, having decided that she was the more experienced candidate.
The saddest thing of all was telling her that this was perhaps not so astonishing after all because the US is a nation that can't even watch an evening network news show that is fronted by a woman.
In 2006, Katie Couric, a much-loved morning show host, became anchor of the CBS Evening News. She made history and shortly afterwards started shedding viewers. Her newscast now attracts 5.5 million viewers, compared to NBC Nightly News (8.9 million) and ABC World News (6.9 million), both of which have men at the helm. In the months before she took up her post, pundits discussed at length and with poker faces whether or not the US was ready for a solo female anchor on its weekday network newscasts, in the same way they discussed whether the US was ready for a woman president.
In an unguarded moment earlier this summer, Couric, who has spent her tenure doggedly defending her ability to do the job and is fully expected to be canned before too long, wearily told an interviewer that she understood exactly how Hillary Clinton felt: "I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance, and realising what Hillary Clinton must have realised not long ago: sexism in American society is more common than racism and certainly more acceptable or forgiveable."
It was an unfortunate juxtaposition, and she was roundly lambasted. The truth is she needn't have brought race into it all. She was spot-on about the tolerance of sexism alone, as this presidential campaign has gone on to prove.
We might have hoped that we had moved on from the days of the 1984 campaign when Geraldine Ferraro was advised to wear a bulletproof vest by her security detail, so angered were some of her fellow countrymen that a woman was in the race.
The truth is we have not actually come so very far, and for all the talk of 18 million new cracks in the glass ceiling – how tired is that phrase sounding? – it has been deeply dispiriting to see how hobbled by gender female politicians remain. The message the US is sending our daughters is that it's all right to be strong, opinionated and clever, as long as you are someone's wife. Just look at Michelle Obama. A woman who could probably run the country with her eyes shut, but what do you think her chances would be if she were running in place of her husband? And it's all right to be a woman in politics as long as you understand your limitations.
John McCain may have thought he was being terribly clever. But by picking Sarah Palin, he has simply confirmed the unpalatable truth that gender still matters a very great deal to a nation that should know better, and one that is so quick to condemn others for restricting women's rights.
And don't let us sit back smugly over here and imagine that we have already moved beyond this. One Thatcher does not constitute gender parity.
But back to the US. Let's imagine the unimaginable. Obama loses. John McCain is incapacitated and Sarah Palin steps into the Oval Office.
A breakthrough for token women everywhere? You must be kidding. Just watch how quickly they try to get her out.
The full article contains 1006 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
