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Friday, September 12, 2008
Do Democrats have a double standard about Sarah Palin’s family choices?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Wow. Talking about shopping around a desperate theory. Now we’re being schooled in feminism by the far-right wing of the Republican Party? Chastised for offending women by Rudy Giuliani, a man who let his wife know of his plans to divorce her via a press conference?
Many have worked to get us to where we are today in terms of parity, but it’s the GOP who tore into the Family Leave Act, slammed proponents of equal pay for equal work and ruthlessly mocked Hillary Clinton for the very parenting philosophy that makes Palin’s complex multi-tasking possible. (And can you even imagine the uproar from that crew if Chelsea Clinton had gotten pregnant at 17?) Apparently “it takes a village” only makes sense if it’s an Alaskan fishing village.
Cries of sexism from such unlikely quarters would be laughable if they weren’t effective at distracting voters from the only concern about Sarah Palin that matters: What if something happens to John McCain? What would a President Palin do on Day One? The more folks focus on that issue, the more they’ll want to put Sarah Barracuda back in the tank.
Democrats aren’t alone in championing issues that matter to women. Many Americans yearn for a commander in chief whose knowledge of foreign policy doesn’t come from a teleprompter. They value a Supreme Court that isn’t stacked with justices ready to force women to keep the pregnancies of their rapists. They want stem cell research. They want schools with fewer teen parents and more sex-ed lectures. They’re amazed by denial of our role in global warming — and disdain for the real work in combating it. Finally, they’d like to elect a true agent of change, not someone who says she stands up to Washington, when in truth she pesters Washington for handouts.
Sure, there’s been a Paris Hilton-level buzz around Alaska’s feisty “hockey mom.” Yet when political window shoppers morph into values voters, they’ll discover that a McCain/Palin ticket is even worse than a Bridge to Nowhere—it’s a bridge back to the Bush White House. As that realization hits, working moms and dads alike will walk on by the slick selling of Sarah Palin.
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Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
In November, I believe we’ll be able pinpoint when the Democrats lost the presidential election. It won’t be with the electrifying news of Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket, but a few days later when prominent Democrats and the press began publicly questioning whether a mother of five — including a special-needs infant — could or should be a good vice president.
If they had treated her like any other candidate: no problem. But questioning her because she was a working mom suddenly stripped the Democrats of the progressive, tolerant image they’ve spent years building. Democrats have long made their money from attacking conservatives as chauvinistic, intolerant and bigoted, and from positioning themselves as the only champions for women’s rights. And even though that’s all hogwash, it spread — largely because the press believes it to be true. Many younger working women believed it as well and voted for the Democrats in droves.
Then suddenly - here comes a Republican woman with whom working moms can identify. And “women-power” Democrats start the most jaw-dropping, hypocritical attacks. Liberal power-broker Sally Quinn explained that the vice presidency “is extremely time-consuming” and that because Palin’s children have special circumstances, “That is a distraction, and when you are in a position like that, suppose she became president in the next several months, she would have an enormous number of distractions on her hands. And I can’t believe that she would be the dad and her husband would be the mom.”
Wait a minute, did she just say out loud that a woman wouldn’t be able to do a challenging job because her children would be a distraction? That a husband isn’t capable of being just as good a parent? As Rudy Giuliani memorably exclaimed at the Republican National Convention, “When did they ever ask a man that question?”
The impact of this situation comes less from the question itself — it’s healthy to be able to raise touchy subjects — and more from the revelation that the Democrats aren’t the only champions for women and can seem just as “intolerant.” In an era when women are increasingly aware of alternatives to the old approaches to women’s rights, that paradigm shift will decide this election.