Palin's out of her depth, and we hold our breath

Susan Reimer

October 13, 2008

In the early days of The Movement, as we ground-zero feminists were calling it then, we tried without much success to explain to the white men who were running things how affirmative action was supposed to work.

"You don't run out and hire the first woman or the first black person you find on the sidewalk and call it a day," we said.

"You spend the extra 10 minutes and the extra 10 bucks recruiting and interviewing until you find a woman or a minority who has the qualifications to do the job.

"Trust us," we said. "They are out there."

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That's not what John McCain did when he chose Sarah Palin.

I imagine him in a fit of his famous pique, after getting word that the conservative Republican base would not permit him to pick his friend Joe Lieberman or his other friend Tom Ridge as his running mate, saying through clinched teeth, "Fine. Get me that girl from Alaska."

Now women like me find ourselves cringing.

Not because of her NRA, right-to-life or evangelical politics. Not because she abused her power when she tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska state police. Let's leave all that aside for the moment.

We are cringing because one of our sisters is dying like a bad comic on open-mike night, and we can barely stand to look.

We are watching one of our own under the klieg lights, and that overwrought sense of empathy that is a woman's gift and curse is causing our mouths to go dry and our stomachs to tighten.

Whatever your politics, you are rooting for Sarah Palin not to, as Queen Latifah said on Saturday Night Live, "cry, faint, run out of the room or vomit."

Some conservative commentators, including George Will and Kathleen Parker, who were smitten when McCain announced her as his running mate, are now recalling those early reviews and concluding that she hasn't got the chops for the job. And not just for the job of president, God forbid.

They don't think she is smart enough to be vice president. They think she is inexperienced to the point of being dangerous.

Ouch.

I watched Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden and I had to remind myself to breathe. I kept waiting for the screeching tires and the busting glass.

Seventy million television viewers - 20 million more than watched the first presidential debate - tuned in, and it wasn't to hear her thoughts on Wall Street oversight. Like NASCAR fans, they were waiting for the car to slam into the wall.

Before the debate was over, I felt like I was watching Legally Blonde III: The Campaign, during which spunkiness triumphs over substance again.

Palin likes to play the Joe Sixpack Everyman card, and there is no doubt this multi-tasking mother of five knows more about what is going on in the average American family than any of the men on either ticket. She gets it because she lives it.

Women are saying this is the reason they like her. She is one of us.

But I don't want anybody like me to be vice president.