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No doubt Hillary Clinton could fill Condi's high-heel boots and still have time left over to advise Michelle on what not to do as first lady. (Remember when Rice took the job almost four years ago and described her mission as building on the foreign policy achievements of the previous four? Quick work, when you think about it; wonder what she turned to after lunch?) Only, if America wanted a third Clinton administration, wouldn't it have gone for the real thing? I get that in tapping some of these Clinton folks for his transition team and new administration Obama is trying to avoid some of the mistakes the Clintons themselves made when they blew into town with their Arkansas friends and '92 campaign team and made clear they didn't need anybody to show them around or tell them anything. But at what point does this "new'' team start to seem a little too familiar with the way things have always worked and a little too much like the "old Washington'' that Obama campaigned against? I hope he doesn't forget that in both the primary and the general, voters saw experience as less important than a new direction and a new way of doing business.
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Did anyone else notice that Obama’s victory speech last night (which started out a little stiff and stump-speech-y, I thought, then soared to the firmament with that Ann Nixon Cooper kicker) never mentioned Hillary Clinton? Believe me, this isn't PUMA resentment speaking—he was by no means obligated to mention the woman who ran a fierce, interminable, and at times dirty campaign against him, and he may well have had good political reasons for not doing so. I just don’t understand what those reasons were. After all, it was a speech about getting past the old resentments and limitations, and as Obama pointed out, the 106-year-old Cooper was born disenfranchised for two reasons: She was black and a woman. After the rhetorical valentine he'd just sent out to McCain, who spent the past two months framing him as a shady, dangerously naive socialist, why not reach out to Hillary supporters with an acknowledgement of the politician who tempered his campaigning steel in the primaries? Was it just a matter of keeping any hint of old-school Clinton politics at bay?
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My beloved Liz Lemon—er, I mean Tina Fey—isn't the only one suggesting that Sarah Palin's focus has shifted from 2008 to 2012. Today, trying get a jump on the post-election story before the polls even open, much less close, a host of politicos are placing their bets over who will emerge from the broken GOP as the next to be (unofficially) crowned party leader.
When John McCain chose his running mate, he was rightfully lambasted as cynical for passing over experienced insider men for an accessible outsider woman. In the end, he was right on one count: that a swath of the American public—though one which perhaps may not be wide enough to elect him tomorrow—felt so disenfranchised by the people who hold power in this country that they would line up behind someone who reflected and could articulate their own proud feelings of ordinariness. (This profound cultural conflict—rooted deep in issues of education and economics—will require far more systemic thinking than the fuzzy feeling of "unity" Obama hopes to usher in tomorrow and beyond.) Where McCain may have been wrong—and this is big—was in his perception of this election as a game of identity politics.
People have talked plenty about whether Obama is a post-race candidate for a post-race America. I've generally taken issue with that notion—and should he be elected, my heart positively swells with the notion of the descendant of slaves raising her children inside the White House. But by the same flawed token, did Sarah Palin become a post-gender candidate for a post-gender America? Of course, Palin has certainly worked her gender in this race: from that flirty wink and sky-high Manolos to her uber-mom positioning. But like Obama's race hasn't been the totalizing meta-narrative of his candidacy, neither has Palin's gender, and just as this hasn't been an election year for single issue voters, it hasn't been one for single-identity ones either, despite what pundits may have predicted from the outset. We entered this race all aflutter about our first female presidential candidate. We're ending it considering the next one with hardly a shrug about her gender.
While I am hardly a Palin fan, and for myriad reasons shudder to imagine how she might develop with the next four years to study up, the fact that neither her supporters nor her detractors seemed to make a big deal about a female commander in chief (remember those days?) suggests that in unexpected ways, we've come a long way during this long march to Election Day.
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I swore off Sarah Palin for the week, but I can't resist a comment about her wardrobe—and a few questions for all you smart ladies. First, I find it telling that many outlets (including Slate and our blog) continue to refer to the shopping spree as "Sarah Palin's" shopping spree and talk about what "she's" done, when we know that Republican handlers bought the clothes and arranged for the wardrobe. But how active was she in this whole thing? Was she more or less outfitted than Biden was? Would we use the same kind of language of implication if we found out that Democrats had selected for Joe Biden a wardrobe costing $150,000? Or would we assume more distance between the candidate and his clothes? Would the party EVER spend that much money on a man?
These questions seem important because how we think about women and their clothes is different from how we think about a man and his clothes. Clothes are one of the many ways it's more complicated to be a woman politician than a man; women have to spend more time coming up with a look than men do. Historically, men have had a uniform that connotes authority, and women haven't. Most female uniforms have signified subservience: I'm a helper. Think nurses, stewardesses, etc. By contrast, many male uniforms have signaled power: I'm a protector/decider. Think doctors, cops, businessmen in power suits. (Of course there is also a subset of lower-status male uniforms.)
One imagines Palin isn't that active a participant in her makeover. But she is being dressed up and positioned to look her best. As someone pointed out to me today, in the VP debate moderated by Gwen Ifill there were several shots of Palin and Biden from behind, showing off Palin's shoes, her nice legs, and other, er, assets. And whether or not she chooses any of this, she's implicated in it—setting off these sorts of conversations. It's analogous to many of the problems Hillary faced, and it says to me, at least, that we still have a long way to go before we really get used to women in politics.
Finally, if we're gonna talk about these things: How much does Biden's wardrobe cost, do you think? All you men who read XXFactor: some of you must have a sense of how much this snazzy-looking suit (which he wore during one of the VP debates) cost. I'm at meghanor@gmail.com if anyone has an educated guess...
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Noreen,
I'm with June. I don't think it's fair either to pick on Palin because of her wardrobe. (C'mon, isn't there so much more to pick on?) You dress up to go to a job interview. Campaigning for the vice presidency is a very long job interview on a much bigger playing field. There's no reason I couldn't do my job in pajamas or sweatpants, but we have a code about what we wear to the office and in public. And if you were interviewing applicants for a job, you would not pick the one in sweatpants. It's an unfortunate side effect of our visual, 24-hour celebrity culture that you have to look gorgeous all the time now if you are in the public eye. And I don't blame Palin. This is not her doing. She is only complicit in the big machine that this is all a part of. But if you are going to play the game, you have to wear the uniform.
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I'm still not worried about Joe the Plumber. For one thing, the guy's now the most famous plumber in America, and I'd say he's got a future as a Fox News star.
But for another, Emily, he's fine either way: If he buys this company and it doesn't make enough to push his personal income over $250,000, then he gets no Obama tax increase, and depending on his income level, he very likely gets one of those Obama tax cuts. Lucky fella. And if his company's profits do push him over $250,000 (I can't find the link, but I believe that in an interview he says they probably would), then his marginal tax rate would go up a tad under Obama's plan, but he's still making far, far more than most of his fellow Americans—and keeping most of it, too.
So what's the problem here for Joe? He'd rather not have his marginal tax rate increase. OK, I get that. But no one—certainly not Obama—is suggesting he didn't work hard to get his money, or that he's not "entitled to keep most of it." We're talking about a small increase in the marginal tax rate for Americans in the top fifth percentile of incomes, not about nationalizing Joe's plumbing business. (Much as I'd like free government-provided plumbing ...)
I guess I just don't see why Obama's comment about wanting to "spread the wealth around" strikes fear into anyone's heart. That's what the progressive income tax is supposed to do—and no one really questions the core concept, just the details (What should the highest marginal tax rate be? What should the income threshold be? etc.). Right now, given the stunning levels of income inequality in this country, both parties agree that we need to spread the weath around a bit. The question is just what mechanism will most effectively do the trick. Is it improving education while cutting taxes for all, as McCain proposes?Or is it tax cuts for the lower 95 percent and marginal tax rate increases for the wealthiest 5 percent, including, hypothetically, Joe the Plumber—if he hits the big time?
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Let's stop feeling so sad for poor Joe the Plumber, who just wants his teensy little piece of the American dream. In his original comments to Obama, Joe explained that he was about to buy a company that would make profits of about $270,000 a year. If that profit bumps Joe's own income over $250,000, then he'll be making more money per year than roughly 95 percent of his fellow Americans. In that case, yeah, as Obama explained to him, Joe won't be getting that middle-class tax cut.
Cry me a river. (The guy makes way more than money, I'll bet, than any of us poor XX bloggers. Maybe we can get him to redistribute a little free plumbing over here? Free plumbing for all: That's MY idea of the American dream.)
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May I treat this blog as a touchy-feely women’s group for a moment and share something that happened to me this weekend? I was walking with my 2-year-old daughter in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park when, coming over a hill, we caught sight of a huge American flag—I’m talking huge, like half the size of a football field—spread out over the grass of the great lawn. Kids were running up and down the length of the flag while grown-ups sat cross-legged at intervals, sewing on stars and stripes. As it turned out, this was part of a local Obama fundraiser called the Mending Bee for Change; you could contribute by buying a star or get sponsored to stitch the flag.
I didn’t have a cent on me, so my only contribution was a grass stain created when my kid went for a vigorous roll on Old Glory. But something about seeing that homemade parachute-silk flag spread out on the grass, being quietly mended by some and merrily trampled by others, gave me a feeling I don’t think I’ve had in its pure form since childhood: I guess you could call it patriotism, but really it was more like (to use a word that’s nearly been denuded of meaning in this endless campaign) hope. It was just so moving to experience the American flag, not as something politicians brandish to prove a point (I wear one on my lapel! Oh yeah, well, I wear a big sparkly one on my lapel! Hey, I propose amendments against burning them!), but as something for people to gather around, dance on, and mend.
I’m not a believer in the Obamessiah by any stretch—in fact, I pity whichever one of the candidates inherits the mess we’re in. Especially with the economic wreckage now being handed to him, how can our next leader not be a disappointment? But whatever happens, we’re at a historic moment: possibly on the brink of electing an African-American president, yes, but also on the brink of ending a war, creating a national health-care program, and (O frabjous day!) sending George Bush off to cut brush in Crawford, Texas, forever. On Saturday I allowed myself, for a moment, to imagine my future self telling my grown daughter about the time she played ghost underneath an enormous American flag. That was right before Obama got elected, I’d say, and things started to change.
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Dahlia,
I also agree with you about Sarah Palin being a divider not a uniter. Over the last few days she has been going after Obama in racially coded language in her attempts to link him to '60s-era radical Bill Ayers. I find this dismaying and dangerous. When she says Obama "is not like us," or that he doesn't "share our values," she is signaling to her mostly white audiences that they should be worried and fearful of this guy, who is not only black but also a closet Muslim who hangs out with domestic terrorists. (Read: unpatriotic black militant.) For someone who can't speak with any intelligence, or in a coherent sentence, on the substantive issues, she sure is well-versed in the politics of personal destruction.
As for Rachael's view that Palin's experience might not scream "heartland," but her personality does, I must say I'm doubtful her down home, aw-shucks personality is real. It screams shtick and feels forced. It reminds me of someone who is faking authenticity. I was also amused by how she cited soccer moms like herself worrying about the economy and feeling "fear regarding the few investment that some of us have in the stock market," making it sound as if she is of modest means. And the next day we learn that she and the first dude are worth $1.5 million. Real authenticity does not need to be announced and showcased at every turn. Palin is wearing a flashing neon light saying: "I'm authentic! I'm authentic!"
As for her now suddenly remembering that golly gee, jiminy cricket she does actually read newspapers, specifically the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Economist, I guess that would explain her wide-ranging expertise on foreign policy issues.
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The most telling moment for me: Gwen Ifill asks both candidates to acknowledge their own worst flaws, their “Achilles' heels.” Biden jokingly thanks Ifill for suggesting that his worst flaw may be a lack of self-discipline before citing his “excessive passion” for the American people. A little disingenuous, to be sure, like the moment you tell a prospective boss that your only fault is working too hard. But Palin? She says nothing to address Ifill’s question in the entire 90 seconds of vaguely patriotic gobbledygook that follow (though somewhere in there Ronald Reagan makes an appearance, along with the shining city on the hill too, though, also). In other words, when directly asked to talk about any imperfections in her character or record, she ignores the question. Given George Bush’s well-established aversion to introspection, shouldn’t her handlers have coached her to have some kind of response prepared for this utterly foreseeable question? Or is obliviously high self-regard now considered a positive quality in a leader?
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Damn, man, whatever happened to Schadenfreude? Isn’t anyone here going to enjoy seeing Sarah Palin struggle tonight? God knows I can identify with the sympathy angle—I once gave a job talk at Brown that felt, from my end, a lot like that Katie Couric interview – but in no way does that translate into hoping she does well enough to redeem herself in the debate, in order to somehow represent on behalf of women in general. On the contrary: I’m looking forward to watching Palin flail (and come on, people, in an unscripted and explicitly polemical format she’s going to flail like an Alaska salmon on the dock.) To me, watching her incompetence get exposed is like payback for the last eight years of staring at a naked, and thoroughly unattractive, emperor. And you know what? I was a lot more qualified for that Brown job than Palin is for VP, but I still wasn’t the best candidate, and my prospective employers deserved to find that out.
I think both compassionate people like the rest of you and spiteful harpies like myself can agree that cutting Palin extra slack – whether because of her gender or her supposed persecution at the hands of “the press” – is a profoundly unfeminist thing to do. And while I agree that strategically, Biden will be wise to tiptoe around Palin’s gender (avoiding the appearance of condescension, etc.), I look forward to a brave post-feminist world in which, one day, the debate partners of lightweights like Palin will be at liberty to mop the floor with said lightweights—not because they’re women (or men), but because they’re arrogant fools.
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Campbell Brown is not the first commentator to claim that the McCain campaign’s monthlong muzzling of Sarah Palin represents “sexism” although she’s probably the most forceful. Andrew Sullivan has also railed against the sexism of the McCain campaign—which has more or less treated Gov. Palin like the Bush twins were treated—adorable but off-limits.
Not sure what I think about the tactic of blaming the boys for this, though. On the one hand it’s a clever response to the Palin trick of turning every quirk of every eyebrow into “sexism.” On the other, I can’t help but respond to it the same way Nayeli reacts to the grotesque “Declare Yourself” ads. Is this really about someone else’s choice to sew Palin’s mouth shut? Yuck. Why do we keep talking about women as though they lack any agency? Are we really going to condemn the McCain campaign for treating her as an object, with demands that they “free” her? I understand why smart women in the media are enraged with Palin’s refusal to engage them. It’s appalling. But I don’t think it’s good for women to direct that rage at her male keepers, handlers, or advisers, either.
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There you go again, you pointy-headed Ivy Leaguers: trying to “understand” current events through the study of “history” (undertaken at Yale, of all places!). Sure, it’s fascinating to read about the Renaissance origins of the image of the mother-as-regent, fiercely protecting the husbands and sons who are really in charge of the realm. But isn’t it enough just to understand deep in our gut that Palin makes people feel, in some inchoate way … er, something vaguely positive about women and values and family and babies? Something warm and wonderful and maverick-y that inheres in her very person, independent of (indeed contrary to) any action she’s taken in office or any policy she espouses?
The smell of my daughter’s clean laundry makes me feel warm and wonderful about families, but I’m not electing a pile of it vice president of the United States. I’ve had it with hearing about Palin’s family. I want to know what the next administration we vote into office is going to do for our families—yours and mine.
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I'm trying to get work done on something else—a piece of writing and thinking not related to the Alaskan body-snatcher who seems to have invaded our collective brain—but my mind keeps returning to the trivial campaign flap of the day, this flurry of feigned outrage about "lipstick on a pig." Rachael's right that the Obama campaign's unfortunate choice of this phrase to describe the cynical repackaging of John McCain's economic plan opens the Dems up to charges of sexism. But I honestly can't decide: Is the use of the phrase, even if it does include a veiled jab at Palin, really sexist? After all, this is a woman who, in a much-praised convention speech (now being endlessly repeated on the stump) referred to herself as a "pit bull with lipstick." Isn't Obama's repurposing of a related metaphor just pointing out that, beneath that lipstick, the emperor's pit bull has no clothes?
As is being widely blogged today, McCain used the same figure of speech to deride Hillary's health care plan back in May. (The Christian Science Monitor reports that Dick Cheney also used it to demean Kerry's war record in 2004, and that Obama used it earlier in the campaign to criticize Bush's Iraq policy.) As far as I can recall, the Clinton campaign, which was never slow to seize upon opportunities for umbrage, let the phrase pass unnoticed (if anyone has a clip to refute that claim, please send along). Then again, McCain did preface his comparison with the sentence "I don't like to use this term." Why not? What would his disclaimer mean, if not that the phrase was somehow offensive to Hillary?
Pigs and pit bulls: two animals popularly considered to be unpleasant (though both can actually make smart and loving pets!), both repackaged with a slapped-on coat of Revlon (personally, I like Cherries in the Glow). The difference, of course, is that the pit-bull joke puts an admirable spin on the image of the dolled-up beast: Pit bulls are to be admired for their toughness and tenacity (and lipstick only makes them cuter!) while a pig is just a pig, cosmetics or no. What do the rest of you XX-ers think: If the Hillary campaign had cried sexism over the same porcine imagery, would you have given it more or less credence? And would you rather compare yourself to a dog, or have someone else compare your ideas to a pig?
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For those who want something other than dismal polls to pore over and need a dose of underisive pointy-headedness, check out the Web site Edge. Over there a so-called Reality Club of liberal social scientists and others is discussing a very interesting essay by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "What Makes People Vote Republican." And the Republicans say elitists only sneer!
On the contrary, Haidt (author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom) argues that it's time liberals examined the self-righteous assumption that people vote Republican because they're narrow-minded and rigid. Perhaps there's something in the Republican moral vision that people prefer and that Democrats might learn from. "[M]orality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats ‘just don't get it,' this is the ‘it' to which they refer." XX fans might check out the response of one club member in particular, Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik (author of The Scientist in the Crib), which is especially apt in the Palin era. Gopnik writes about how liberals don't really know how to talk about the moral intuitions of child-rearing—the ethics of family caretaking—because those don't rest on individualist or universalist ideas. She points out that conservatives are confused, too, and urges joint thinking and talking.
It's all fascinating—yet also frustrating. Here's a club displaying the opposite of elitist condescension, yet in the process, they can't help opening themselves up to anti-elitist condescension. It might sound something like this: If you have to think this hard, you'll never really get it.
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The news that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant has me thinking about the nuttily mixed messages that Palin's selection (and the media presentation thereof) sends out to women. It's a cornucopia of paradox: Her candidacy is somehow supposed to be a glass-ceiling-shattering inspiration, even though she actively opposes feminist causes like equal pay and reproductive choice. Her bearing of a Down syndrome baby while governing a state makes her a praiseworthy mother figure -- but don't forget that she's also a tireless workaholic (more than one profile has noted with awe that she was back at work three days after the birth of Trig in April.) Now the pro-life, devoutly Christian (yet sexy!) supermom has a knocked-up teen daughter ... but since we've already established that keeping your baby no matter what is a badge of moral honor, this development may actually enhance Palin's standing with the evangelical base. Forget about left and right for a moment: If you're a young girl looking for a role model of a woman running for high office, how do you decode all of this?
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I spent the day of Hillary's concession speech at a college reunion with one of my oldest friends, and we were talking about the ways, negative and positive, in which Hillary's campaign has served as a role model for our (suddenly!) 41-year-old selves. One take-away from watching her over the last 16 months, we decided, was a motto that might have saved her campaign and could serve most women I know in good stead in our professional and personal lives: Don't Be a Victim. She was always at her best as a candidate when she lightly mocked gender conventions (like that moment in the New Hampshire debate when she deflected a moronic question about her popularity ratings with a wry "Well, that hurts my feelings.") When she actually did showcase her own hurt feelings (with the "pile-on" complaint, for example, or with any and all attempts to win the race-vs.-gender sweepstakes of oppression), she came off as the girl trying to get out of gym class because of her period. But to say that HRC should have toned down the whining is not to say she should have campaigned more like a man. I thought the much-derided tears-in-a-diner moment was a legitimate expression of exhaustion-driven vulnerability, and I hope Slate's Tim Noah is right that the diner sob (really, it was more of a sniffle) represents a turning point in the politics of weeping. With the pitiless mill we put them through, I'm impressed all presidential candidates, male and female, don't regularly crumble into sniveling heaps.
But my friend and I also agreed that, for all the delusionality of the late stage of her campaign, there was something perversely admirable about Hillary's refusal to quit, her blithe disregard for the fact that a great demographic swath of our nation hates her guts. Wanting to please, to be seen as personable and reasonable and—in all senses of the word—attractive, remains a constant in female professional and personal life. Ours is a culture that views the openly expressed desires of older women as risible and grotesque (witness the subplot of the new Adam Sandler comedy, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, in which we're encouraged to laugh at the sex-starved grannies who line up to get their hair, and themselves, done by Sandler's randy Israeli stylist/hero.) As I watched the supposedly comic ecstasy of Zohan's clients on the eve of the Montana and South Dakota primaries, I couldn't help thinking, there's Hillary's base. What's so funny about what they want?
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I was not one of those people who cried when I heard Obama's now-famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Nor did I find it so spectacularly brilliant as to be beyond any critical analysis. I thought it was a really good speech, but I also felt it was too laden with buzz words meant to signal that he was indeed a different kind of black candidate. When he said: "There's not a black America and white America ... there's the United States of America," and the crowd went wild, I disagreed. We all know that there are two very distinct Americas separated by class and color. I understood that people embraced the speech because its sense of optimism went right to the heart of American idealism—not American realism.
I also did not get all warm and teary about Obama's Philadelphia speech last March. It was an important and necessary speech, for sure; but again, I found it too calculated and believe it was mostly meant to appease white voter anxiety about the Jeremiah Wright controversy and assuage fears that Obama might be a closet racist and black militant.
As I watched Obama's speech last night, however, I could not stop crying, and I was surprised by my reaction. It, too, was clearly a carefully scripted, political speech. So why did it crack through my cynical and hardened heart? Because it allowed me to take a deep breath of relief.
I've been holding my breath throughout the primary campaign, waiting with dread for his candidacy to implode—for him to be struck down by scandal, dirty political tricks, racism, a media obsessed with his being "the first black man" with a realistic chance at the presidency. And, of course, I thought the Clinton Machine might take him down. Seeing him on that stage yesterday, regal in his bearing, unapologetic for having stuck to his audacity of hope, knowing he had won a battle he fought hard for and won fairly, and with dignity and grace—two words that can no longer be ascribed to the Clinton candidacy—made me deeply hopeful. That's why I cried. I felt happy for him, for us, for this country. Yesterday's speech not only went to the heart of American idealism, it also wrote a new narrative for American realism. Whether Obama wins or loses in the fall, we all won something special yesterday.
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In a newsroom, you see right away that a high percentage of people who would like you to write about them—people with serious grievances of all kinds, against the cops or the city or the hospital or whatever—are at least a little bit crazy. Unfortunately, this makes it harder for them to get any action, because they're written off: "Guy's a nut.'' Which is especially unfortunate, because in a lot of cases, if the story is even half-true, of course he's a nut; that's what injustice in the long term tends to do to people. Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised if the generation that ran into more brick walls of sexism and racism than is currently necessary has some post-concussive issues as a result; they are entitled to their tirades—and to our respect, though I don't think we honor their sacrifice by refusing to see that they actually did accomplish something.
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I'm with Maureen Dowd today: The Obama who talks of grays and of complicated legacies and long evolutions, not just of high hopes and change, is my kind of guy. See, there's a reason the campaign isn't over yet—we need to see this man dealing with more than adoring crowds. And he's clearly thinking not just narrowly and strategically about the superdelegate count, but broadly about what the pattern of his primary successes and failures so far tells us about the country. This speech was a response to more than a flap over Rev. Wright, I would say. It was Obama's admirable effort to speak to an electoral puzzle that Matt Bai pointed out in a fascinating piece in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday. "To put this simply," Bai wrote, "Obama wins in major urban areas but can't seem to win in urbanized states, while Clinton wins in rural communities but consistently loses in rural states. Why?" Bai proposed a counterintuitive answer that says something important about race in America: Obama does well in areas with the least racial diversity—where there are either lots of African-American voters or very few (Wisconsin and Vermont). The actual experience of racial diversity—of living side by side, feeling hard-pressed, struggling, and competing for "a piece of the American Dream," especially during an economic downturn—may not build enlightened racial unity, but instead fuel skepticism about facile promises of harmony. It was exactly that sobering reality that Obama addressed head on in his speech. I call that audacity.