Cue Lloyd Bentsen

Dan Quayle: I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency. I will be prepared to deal with the people in the Bush administration, if that unfortunate event would ever occur.

Judy Woodruff: Senator [Bentsen].

Lloyd Bentsen: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy: I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
Vice Presidential Debate, October 5, 1988, Omaha Nebraska
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7gpgXNWYI

Where is Lloyd Bentsen when we need him? The distinguished Texas Democratic Senator, who died two years ago, probably would be rolling over in his grave to see what's happening now. More than actually rolling over, I imagine he'd be trying to find a way to tunnel himself out to settle another political-presumption score.

Someone needs to tell Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: we know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of ours. And Governor, you're no Hillary Clinton.

John McCain and Sarah Palin both evidently feel that all it takes is the mere possession of a vagina to win a woman's vote. Maybe in a few cases that's true. But it's also insulting. I've been doing a little unscientific and highly unofficial polling of my own and finding that the McCain running-mate strategy may not necessarily be a slam dunk. In querying my women friends whether around my neighborhood or within my own "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits," and throughout the blogosphere - both those whom I know and those I'm reading about whom somebody else knows, this may not be "Signed, Sealed, and Delivered" for the GOP.

A majority of the women weighing in with me have ramped up their overall cynicism about John McCain because of this. They see the choice of Palin as a bald-faced, even phony, ploy to tempt them by waving the X chromosome around in front of their faces. Attention all passed-over Hillar-ites! Candidate with skirt on Aisle One! One size fits all! If it's a woman you want, try our model! Yeah. That's the ticket.

But it isn't. Women aren't a homogenous group who all march in lockstep. And if McCain really thought he was trying to appeal to Clinton supporters, why would he pick THIS woman - who stands staunchly against almost everything Clinton has been working for throughout her life as an activist. There is no blind gender loyalty. We aren't wooed just because the prospect wears lipstick and high heels and dangle earrings and speaks with a voice in the upper registers. It doesn't matter what kind of mom she is - hockey, soccer, cookie-baker or not. A Hillary Clinton voter wants a Hillary Clinton-style candidate with Hillary Clinton-style priorities. Such a prospect would have to honor and want to secure a woman's fundamental right to have the last word over what happens to her body - particularly in its most intimate parts. Hillary's agenda, like ours, features progressive issues like universal health care, family leave, equal pay for equal work, a solid defense of our delicate ecosystem and all its endangered creatures, and a determination to look beyond a simplistic knee-jerk quick-fix like drilling, drilling, and more drilling to solve our energy crisis. Sarah Palin offers none of this.

It speaks to an innate disrespect and lack of understanding of the complexity of the sisterhood that John McCain would pick such a woman as a running mate. It certainly betrays an audacity of conniving to spring this before the embers of the fireworks at Denver's Invesco Field are completely cold. This wasn't so much an attempt to make history as to try a schoolyard one-up. It feels as though McCain is far more concerned about merely stealing Obama's spotlight and bigfooting the news cycle than it is about making a genuine leap forward for, and with, our country. This was sheer shameless pandering for the sake of pandering itself.

The night before, Obama had tried to make one thing very clear - that this election and the momentous longing for change wasn't about him. He'd gazed across the stadium and declared that it was about US, Democrats, Republicans, independents, Americans all. Two nights previous, Hillary Clinton directly challenged her supporters to ask themselves if they were in it just for her or for the causes and issues about which she - and they too - care so deeply.

John McCain made it just as clear with his appointment of Sarah Palin that it's not about us at all. It's about him. He'll give us the female candidate he wants us to have, not the one we prefer and with whom we've struggled shoulder-to-shoulder. He'll offer us the unknown novice with spotty credentials and beauty pageant experience when what really won our hearts was the woman with years of laboring in many progressive and liberal vineyards and whose track record of credibility, authenticity and leadership on these issues has been forged in the trenches over decades of struggle. Our views and our wishes have nothing to do with it. He might as well have trotted out Dan Quayle in a dress. Sarah Palin may presume to climb the ladder that Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferarro built, but she's not ready to carry their banner. In many respects, Palin hardly even speaks their language. And after having the number of encounters with McCain that you can count on the fingers of one hand, it's questionable whether Palin speaks McCain's language fluently, either. Does HE even know what he's getting into?

As I study this Republican ticket fully revealed, I can see painfully well what we women, and we as Americans, will be getting into if the GOP prevails in November. The John McCain/Sarah Palin world isn't a world in which there's room for someone who thinks and feels as I do. I don't care how girlie she is or how many children she's had or how much multi-tasking she can do. She might as well be Rudy Giuliani - or even George W. Bush - in drag for all the common ground she shares with a voter like me, or with the women I know whose loyalty Hillary Clinton won the hard way. Palin is NO Clinton by even the most generous and elastic of definitions. If this is John McCain's version of change, or a way to underscore the now trite and nearly meaningless label of "maverick," it still amounts to little more than meeting the new boss who's the same as the old boss. The only difference is - the new one's wearing a skirt.

Comments

[tecumseh80]

What is really got me excited about Palin as VP is it now reveals how wonderful it is to have Senator Clinton not on the ticket. Her speech at the DNC was wonderful and my heart still wants her next to Obama, but Hillary (and other Democratic female leaders) can now unleash total hell without fear of any scrapnel hitting Obama. Do you not think that Senator Clinton is going to destroy Palin? The woman is the absolute anti-thesis (save gender) to Hillary. Palin shall actually serve to further destroy McCain's ability to draw in independents as we get closer and this move shall especially further mobilize the core of the democratic party against McCain.

[Boikin]

Thanks for making an arguement against her policies. It works much better than the qualifications arguement, given Obama's record. I doubt Palin expects to get most Hillary votes. She's probably targeting the women on the right and the middle (a majority of women that most "women' s groups" ignore.)

[wakupmagy]

When Hillary Clinton cunningly and coldly hit on Sexism as the last weapon in her "kitchen sink" arsenal, she whipped up a frenzy of bitterness among her supporters for which all the rest of us will now have to pay.
No one could have ever imagined that anything John McCain and the Republicans could possibly do could dim the glow of Barack Obama's acceptance of the nomination for President of the United States. Yet, thanks to Clinton and Mark Penn, et al, -- here it is. We will now leave the important issues of War and Economy as the media blathers on and on about the female candidate and how the Pumas feel about her.

Yuk.

[rampart231]

Very well said. This is really a poke in the eye of any progressive person. To nominate a person with her views on gay rights and womens rights is insulting. I will feel great when this"team" goes down in flames.

[kmac23va]

Someone already has...Debbie Wasserman Schutlz, a Clinton supporter from the primaries, has already paraphrased this line. I don't expect Biden to use it, but I do expect to hear it many more times.

Anti clean energy alternativ­es...she's more right-wing than the GOP Senate! Even THEY say we need to develop clean alternatives, they just want more drilling until then. And her statement you quote in this article is against the T. Boone Pickens statements, who is being hailed on both sides as someone who sees the big picture and is doing something about it.

This is what you get when you've only met the candidate twice in person. McCain is hoping she'll slide under the radar with only two months to go and her being the VP pick instead of president in terms of media vetting. In a 24/7 news cycle which be focused squarely on the GOP for the next week? She better worry about every ethics charge, because MSNBC already had someone involved in the Troopergate thing on.

Meantime, McCain had better see these reports about Pawlenty and Romney and be placating them. I think they'll end up being good soldiers, but he's not likely to get more than basic support. Like everyone thinks Obama is going to get from the Clintons...or was until they brought Palin in as a pander to Hillary voters. And don't use Hillary, have Chelsea go out and call it an insult to what her mom fought for!

[Poststep]

What about the 27 percent of Hillary supporters who said they would vote for McCain even before he picked Palin. All she has to do is give a great speech at her convention and the yokels in this country will decide they'd love to have a beer with her, after she stops breast feeding, of course, and it's "Meet your new Vice President!" According to the Republicans, she's more qualified than Obama and if anyone disagrees, they're sexist. It's all so cynical but, McCain's base, the press, is fired up and ready to go.

[videlicet]

We still have to consider the fact that the Rovians haven't done their makeover of her, and she seems smart enough to learn a few "mavericky" key phrases, maybe even in opposition to McCain's views - a couple of rebels! Woot!

But come November 5 none of what these two puppets said or promised will matter anymore, because the neocons will be firmly back in control. I truly hope not, though.