BoatBanter.com - Conservative Columnist Asks Palin to Bow Out

September 26, 2008 12:00 AM

Palin Problem
She’s out of her league.

By Kathleen Parker
National Review

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream
against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming
downstream — away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president —
and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a
certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her
personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But
circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey
mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a
more complicated picture has emerged.

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is
increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she
doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans
comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United
Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious,
charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug
her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had
executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively
small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that
frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John
McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis
and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a
refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern
successful working mother.

Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided
through it.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now
Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident
candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been
pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform
brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held
breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in
case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex
is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut
the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example
of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in
allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re
talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his
track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can
surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue
like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had
boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at
poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to
be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to
be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for
some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe
Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a
woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are
reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks
the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to
second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces
the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She
can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend
more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her
family first.

Do it for your country.

— Kathleen Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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