John McPain is running scared. But when you run scared, you always get lost, and John’s looking a little like a befuddled senior who got lost on the way home, wandering around the neighborhood unsure on which door he should knock to find his family. Apparently, he thinks he found his VP family in Palin. All I can say is, hey, his choice just made the work of Democrats that much easier.
Pushing Palin on what he hopes will be contrarian Clintonians willing to cross party lines and issues simply in order to cast a vote for a woman. Good lord, how old-world sexist and condescending could McPain get? But he’s so out of it, he doesn’t even realize why his choice won’t sit well with women, even Republican women with any sense.
Women aren’t satisfied with being window dressing anymore. And that’s what Palin is in this case. McPain actually thinks women will be so flattered by his asking a woman to be on his ticket that they’ll vote for him out of gratitude. Sorry, McPain, the days of women being grateful for crumbs tossed by men who think it won’t be noticed that they’re keeping the loaf for themselves is over. Over. Over. Over.
But McPain doesn’t get it.
If he wants the female vote he should think about equal pay, health insurance, making female contraception covered by insurance — um, just like Viagra is covered for men, ending the war sooner rather than later, and oh, yeah, doing a bit more for women than choosing one who can support him in the lifestyle to which he wanted to be accustomed and one who gilds his “put me in the White House” ticket with a slick coating of estrogen.
But McPain’s selection in a running mate also shows an egregious slip in confidence in his own electability and in his own party. He’s obviously no longer confident that he can win with the Republican vote alone. No, he’s convinced he’s got to mine Democratic votes to combat Obama’s tidal wave of mojo. And typical of McPain’s 1960s-macho-thinking, he’s convinced himself he can get those votes from what he evidently views as the “weaker” sex — lemming-like ladies or Stepford-like sistahs, dumbly following the scent of their own kind as defined, of course, by a man.
McPain’s choice will have an unfortunate effect on smart Republicans, as well. Let me break it down: Elect McPain, in his seventies, with Palin at his side. The only thing to keep Palin from becoming President will be the luck of continued good health in John McPain. Palin as President? Not on anybody’s watch.
Look, I’m going to be 70+ one of these days. I feel for the guy. It’s apparent he’s tired and a bit unsteady in his physical step, though he works hard to hide it. The look on his face is one spookily reminiscent of Ronald Reagan in the days when his grasp on details started to wane. It’s a look of nearly-not-noticeable concern and surprise. “Am I in the right place?” his eyes seem to be asking as his head sort of bobbles from side to side, with that “What did I have for breakfast?” grin on his face.
But not every seventy-something is as physically frail-seeming or as mentally out of touch as McPain is — and while truly, I’m sympathetic toward the constant barrage of slings and arrows on our person as we age, McPain is not aging well. And we all know what the first year in office does to the aging process of presidents.
Picking Palin reveals McPain’s uncertainty about the world he’s finding himself in. He’s a lost throwback from another era who hasn’t grown with the times. There are plenty of people like that out there. But they shouldn’t be in the White House.