The gender game
It's not her brains that landed Palin on ticket
ST. PAUL -- Before workers could get the confetti sucked out of Invesco Field, John McCain lobbed a doozy.
The 72-year-old senator, who will accept the GOP nomination this week, named 44-year-old Sarah Palin, the little-known governor of Alaska, as his running mate.
"I am so excited. It was such a surprise," said Sarah Simoneaux of Alvin, Texas, who was in Minneapolis on Friday for a National Education Association convention.
It was the historic nature of McCain's choice that had Simoneaux -- chairwoman of the NEA's Republican administrators caucus -- gushing.
"My grandmother, who was a Republican in Texas back in the '60s, is smiling down from heaven right now because women have made such huge strides in the Republican Party," she said.
McCain's choice should be seen as a giant leap forward for the Republican Party, just as Barack Obama's nomination by the Democratic Party was historic.
Unfortunately, with respect to the GOP, the moment is tarnished.
Palin, Alaska's youngest governor, cut her teeth in politics by blowing the whistle on members of her own party, so she is a reformer.
And I don't want to diminish her accomplishments. Any time a woman is able to balance the responsibilities of being a wife and the mother of five children, including an infant with Down syndrome, with running a state, that is an incredible feat.
Because she is virtually unknown outside of Washington, she is the perfect image to dangle in front of voters who want change but don't necessarily want Obama.
"She's got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today," McCain said. "She knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for," he said when he introduced her to a crowd in Ohio.
No doubt, Palin is probably a real fighter.
But I thought McCain was the fighter, the maverick, the guy who could clean up Washington -- at least that is what he has been telling voters for 19 months.
Suddenly, he needs a running mate who has held state office for only two years to help him get the job done?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
"It's always safer in politics to avoid risk ... but I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things," Palin told reporters during her debut as a vice presidential candidate Friday.
I really like Palin's spirit. Too bad she's gotten snared by the political game.
She ought to know it is her gender McCain's after, not her brains. She's the bait, and McCain's gone fishing.
Palin's on the ticket because she's a woman and McCain's trying to reel in the angry Hillary supporters.
But McCain's campaign ought to know by now that their candidate can't win that way.
In fact, these guys are making the same mistake Clinton's campaign made during the Democratic primary.
Instead of sticking to Clinton's theme of "experience" vs. "change," they tried to mimic Obama's message of change.
Elsewhere, imitation may be the best form of flattery, but in a political campaign, it just makes your candidate look desperate.
You just can't beat someone at their own game.
Worse yet, the Palin choice feels sleazy.
Informed female voters aren't going to be fooled by a political stunt, even one that has a worthy end.
Granted, Palin might win over the Democrats who are looking for an excuse not to vote for Obama, but Democrats who have labored for 19 months trying to win the White House aren't going to be lured by smelly bait.
There's something else.
Just as there is an ol' boys network, there's an ol' girls network, and the ol' girls aren't happy.
"I know Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a phone interview with NBC.
Palin said she wants to "challenge the status quo and to serve the common good."
There's no reason yet not to believe her.
Trouble is, political games rarely serve the common good.