Cohen: How Palin’s campaign made me appreciate Hillary Clinton
By Ben Cohen
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Q: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a bulldog?”
A: “Lipstick!”
Huh?
That’s a joke Sarah Palin, the new bane of my Democratic existence, has been telling. You see, Palin is like a bulldog, as she is running for vice president, but she wears lipstick. Or maybe it’s that she’s a hockey mom who doesn’t wear lipstick, making her a bulldog.
I don’t know. I just work here.
Sexism has been a big issue in this election. It’s been an issue since Hillary Clinton first tried to get the Democratic presidential nomination, or at least since she realized that she might not win.
With that, and with the sudden ascent of Sarah Palin up the political ladder, both parties, as well as the mainstream media, have been falling over themselves trying to figure out how to handle a woman in presidential politics.
To really get a good idea of where sexism is in our society, let’s look at what it can mean. One definition has it as buying into gender stereotypes, like the idea that women are constantly emotional, that men celebrate sloth or that anybody doing anything normally associated with the opposite gender means they have issues of images or are homosexual.
As a man, I would have a problem if I didn’t spend all my time thinking about sex, beer and football. I find this offensive, as it both paints the male gender as rather unambitious but also criminally excludes baseball.
The other definition for sexism is a bit more relevant to recent debates in the political world. It seemed, for some time, like one of the major political parties would, for the first time in history, have a female candidate for president.
Others have run for the position, but none had the credible chance that Clinton did. And once she was in the race, the debate about sex in presidential politics began. “Can a woman lead the country?” “Are Americans ready for a female president?” “Is Clinton feminine enough?”
Before we go on, the answers to those questions are, respectively, “yes,” “most of them” and “Lord knows.”
But back to business, when the issue of a woman running for president came up, Clinton’s campaign took notice and responded. When her cold demeanor was blamed for an early primary loss, Clinton would make an appearance where she would break down and cry in front of the press. When she was deemed too weak and “feminine,” she would have a photo taken of her rather awkwardly downing a shot of whiskey.
Through it all, many of her supporters cried “sexism” at those who did not support her campaign. The bait was set, and the country took it hook, line and sinker.
Now the GOP has given us Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former beauty queen with five children. The GOP has used her as a tool to keep throwing the issue of gender at the Democratic Party, which has settled on the man who kept Clinton from achieving the feat of being a female heading a major party’s ticket as their champion.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his party must be weary of debating gender, and putting Palin on the Republican ticket prevents them having a respite from it.
Of course, Palin is nothing like Clinton. The majority of her exposure to national politics has come in the few weeks since she was put on the ticket.
She had no straight answer for ABC’s Charlie Gibson in a recent interview when he asked her for her opinion on the Bush Doctrine and what it is. She’s also never had to debate somebody like Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, a man who isn’t afraid to tear his opponents a new one.
What Palin doesn’t do is challenge Obama the way Clinton’s candidacy did. Rather, it shows us the other end of the spectrum of gender roles.
Although I was never a fan of Clinton as a candidate and still think Obama was the better of the two, the GOP’s newest superstar has made me look back at what Clinton’s campaign meant and have some new appreciation for what she brought to the table.
Cohen is a Topeka senior in political science.
Discussion
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Ben,
You may want to visit this link to get the true picture on Gov. Palin and how ABC manipulated the interview. http://marklevinshow.com/gibson-interview/ Charles Krauthammer did a pretty fair job of dismissing Gibson's dismissive gotcha Bush Doctrine question.
"A former beauty queen with five children." It's nice to see you're doing your part to eliminate the sexism that "has been a big issue in this campaign."
Hack.
Given the utter crap you used to write for the opinion page, Brandon, I consider you calling me a hack to be a compliment.
Btw, I wouldn't have needed to include those things if there was anything else about her that actually sounded flattering.
Palin will make Joe Biden look like a complete fool when they debate. The reason you don't like her is because she is causing McCain's numbers to spike and is going to push him over the top. Its ok if you disagree with her on issues but to attack her just because she is a republican and not a democrat is unprofessional. But then again you aren't a real journalist. But hey at least you have mastered the liberal bias.
Brandon and Ben, grow up and knock it off, please.
To the gentleman above me: Regardless of how I feel about Sarah Palin's policies, I can safely say that Joe Biden, who has 30-odd years of foreign relations experience, is not worried.
How will a gaffe-machine like Sarah Palin make Joe Biden look like a fool? Does sheer ignorance win debates? Or is she just going to rely on some neocon talk show host insisting that the debate we see on tv wasn't what really happened?
Palin's joke was about pit bulls, not bulldogs.
You say "many of her supporters cried 'sexism' at those who did not support her campaign," but I personally called out sexism only when I witnessed it, such as an Obama supporter who claimed that the Presidency was "a man's job." There was also sexism in Obama's attitude, and his refusal to call out the media on the obvious sexism that the mass media displayed. But no one I saw cried "sexism" just because someone didn't support Hillary's campaign.
On the other hand, I was hit a number of times for being racist because I had unsavory things to say about Obama.
I don't follow your reasoning about appreciating HRC in retrospect, now that you see what Palin represents. What kept you from seeing that before? I can't fathom why you saw/see Obama as a better candidate than HRC.
And why compare Palin with HRC at all? HRC is out of the picture, Palin is in. Palin has to be judged as a possible President, and the only comparison of any relevance is between her, Obama and Biden.
In this light, she compares favorably to all three of the men running, in that she has executive experience, i.e. experience in actually running a government. This gives her automatic credibility. This credibility doesn't make up entirely for her lack of knowledge of international affairs, and this will be a major drawback for her in the debate with Biden.
But credibility is primordial, and it is one point on which Obama loses out to everyone else. I can't believe anything he says. I could believe everything HRC said. What she said in summer 2007 she is still saying now, and those things are what the country needs. Obama has now taken many pages out of HRC's playbook, but I just can't believe it when he says the same things as her.
So I see this race as between ?/Biden and McCain/Palin. Fortunately, there is also the alternative Nader/Gonzalez, and then the Green and Libertarian parties. This year, I will vote Democratic down ticket, but for President it will be Nader or McCain.
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