The Outsider’s Insider: A terrible predicament for all American women

So now we know that Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher—and no Dan Quayle, either.

The Republican vice presidential nominee’s debate performance against Democrat Joe Biden met the expectations of groupthink. All that was really asked of Palin was to reassure Republicans who’d grown frantic about her empty ramblings during big-time media interviews. In the debate, she was stylistically steadfast, if substantively thin. Heck, we’ve had plenty of male candidates who fit that profile, so you can’t really knock Palin for such an affliction.

Still, there is something about Palin that gnaws at me, and it isn’t the way she wilted under the soft light shined upon her by CBS’ Katie Couric. It isn’t that I disagree with her on just about every single substantive issue I can think of, and probably some I haven’t thought about.

What bothers me about Palin isn’t even Palin. It is that she’s become the novelty act—at times, the freak show—of the campaign.

Her mark in history may well turn out to be like that of the Pet Rock, one of those artifacts that has little value except as an object that is dissected for its cultural significance. During the brief but happy life of the Pet Rock in the 1970s, millions of Americans shelled out $3.95 to purchase an ordinary gray stone, packaged in a small cardboard box complete with an official “Pet Rock Training Manual.” The fad petered out in six months, but not before the promoter got rich and thousands of backyards became Pet Rock graveyards.

On Thursday night, millions of viewers were compelled to watch the vice presidential debate out of cult-like curiosity rather than a call to civic duty.

Certainly some voters watched because they wanted to be convinced that the Alaska governor is qualified to be vice president, or to determine once and for all that she is not. Republicans attracted to her social conservatism and her family story wanted to cheer her on. Surely, some liberals were itching to see which of Palin’s debate moments would provide the best fodder for Tina Fey and the writers at “Saturday Night Live.”

Palin has become a sideshow: See Sarah stumble through the Couric interviews. Watch Sarah wink while debating oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Gawk at Sarah’s beauty-pageant swimsuit competition on YouTube. Laugh as Tina does a better Sarah than Sarah herself.

This is a terrible predicament not only for Palin, but for all American women.

For decades we’ve protested the way we are objectified, only to have a governor running for vice president turned into an object. She is an object of over-the-top partisan projections, from the left and right. She is an object of scorn. And in some quarters, an object of sympathy.

For the most part, I do not blame Palin for this—though it would be nice if she didn’t make it sound as though she dropped by the vice presidential debate because it happened to be on the way home from Costco.

But which young, ambitious male governor, upon getting the call to join the national ticket from his party’s presidential nominee, would humbly say, “no thanks, I’m not ready?” Some have said that Palin should have refused the promotion as if it were her responsibility—and not McCain’s—to have chosen more wisely. Some conservatives who at first took delight in skewering liberal feminists with the rhetorical equivalent of Palin’s moose-gutting knife now are aghast at the gaping holes in her knowledge revealed in network interviews.

McCain and his campaign bear full responsibility. Palin’s initial introduction as one-tough-reformer turned quickly into a sales pitch for one-tough-hockey mom, capable of nursing an infant and nudging legislation to passage at the same time. Palin wasn’t expected to know anything about throw-weights. She was there to ease the Republican right’s worries about McCain, and, it was implausibly suggested, to attract former Hillary Clinton supporters.

The way Palin was sequestered from the media helped transform her into a calcified figure to be seen but not heard. Like a Pet Rock, she wasn’t supposed to escape from the yard or require genuine training. She only had to stand and absorb every odd projection of the national imagination.

Now Palin has survived her debate. But this isn’t qualification for the vice presidency. That is the nub of it.

Palin’s candidacy isn’t shattering the glass ceiling for her or any other woman. It is killing us with a thousand cuts.

Marie Cocco is a former writer with the Washington Bureau of Newsda where she covered economics, taxes,Capitol Hill and the White House. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com. Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group