So. This is what being pandered to feels like.
John McCain picked Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and mother of five, to be his running mate to woo women like me.
He seems to think that my girlfriends and I are so disappointed that an utterly qualified woman is not going to be president that we will jump at the chance to vote for an utterly unqualified woman for vice president.
FOR THE RECORD
A column by Susan Reimer in Monday's editions misspelled the last name of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
The Baltimore Sun regrets the errors.
You gotta love a guy who thinks things are that simple.
Women already outvote men in this country, and it isn't because we like voting for all those women on the ballot.
Does McCain think we will be so grateful for a skirt on the ticket that we won't notice that she's anti-abortion, a member of the NRA and thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution?
His selection of Sarah Palin is insulting on so many levels that I am starting to feel like the Geico caveman.
You want to look like a maverick and like you think outside the box? Pick a woman for a running mate.
You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down syndrome child.
(When James Dobson, the conservative Christian radio host who fancies himself a kingmaker, jumped up to say that the selection of Palin means he can now "pull the lever" for John McCain, I almost felt sick. I don't know what I'll do if she trots out the story of her 5-month-old baby to shore up the Republican base.)
Palin's personal story is very compelling, but it reads more like a movie pitch than a resume for national leadership.
Champion high school athlete, beauty queen. Married to her high school sweetheart. Car-pooling supermom who went from PTA activist to mayor of her tiny (population 9,000) Alaskan town.
Fisherman, sportswoman, hunter. Speaks truth to power in a state corrupted by oil. Has a son headed to Iraq. A woman who made the decision to carry to term a baby she knew to be developmentally disabled.
She makes John McCain, Naval Academy graduate, fighter pilot and prisoner of war, look like just another grouchy, old, rich white guy.
Oh. Right. He is.
And that's the other point here. McCain is 72. He has had at least four go-rounds with melanoma, a deadly cancer.
Under the circumstances, the decision to choose this woman over the likes of, say, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson looks less like a stroke of genius than a stroke. It looks crazy. It looks wacky.
And that's the other part of this decision that is so infuriating.
