From Seneca Falls to … Sarah Palin?Odd, yes, but there we are. Still, history suggests issues of policy will ultimately trump the politics of identity.By Julia Baird | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 13, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Sep 22, 2008
WHEN Walter Mondale chose New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984, he set off the briefest of crazes. The sheer newness of the first female vice presidential candidate for a major party delighted the media and—initially—the public . . .
It was not, to say the least, an entirely successful campaign. Much of the coverage was dominated by Ferraro's refusal to disclose her husband's tax records. Ronald Reagan carried 49 out of 50 states, and 56 percent of women voted for him, up 10 percent from 1980. But what Ferraro was most surprised by, in focus groups convened after the election, was that stay-at-home mothers had been horrified by her candidacy, despite the fact that her three children were teenagers. "What we found was that some women felt intimidated," she says now. How would their husbands view them if they were just staying at home rather than shattering glass ceilings and conquering the world? "I thought, 'God almighty, how did that happen?' … They thought it would somehow hurt them. That if I could do all these things—be a supermom or whatever—how would it look for them, if 'all' they were doing was taking care of their children at home?" They wondered, she says, if it would jeopardize their marriages.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Sarah Palin is also being grilled about her capacity to negotiate with the Soviets (well, the Russians, but they are acting like Soviets at the moment), asked if she will still cook for her family if elected vice president and praised for her chic glasses and copper highlights. But this time, women are flocking to her, cheering her can-do attitude and her unabashed embrace of the hockey-mom label. After her nomination as the Republicans' vice presidential candidate, the Washington Post/ABC poll reported a remarkable 20-point shift toward McCain. The new NEWSWEEK Poll also finds that some movement occurred: in July, John McCain led Barack Obama among white women by 44 to 39 percent; now his lead is 53 to 37 percent. There was no shift among white men, although other polls vary. One in three white women says she is more likely to vote for McCain because he chose Palin as a running mate.
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What is now known as the Palin Effect seems to be overturning almost a century of wisdom about the way women think and vote. Republican women, who have long been loath to vote for mothers of small children, are suddenly defending the right of women, or a woman, rather, to return to work three days after giving birth, and to seek higher office with five kids—one of whom is a pregnant teenager, and another a newborn with Down syndrome. Some Democratic women are threatening to defect to the Republicans—even if it means voting for pro-life candidates—just because Palin is a woman.
The hyperbole of the hour is bipartisan. Conservatives are gleeful, liberals gloomy. Republicans are pushing a simple narrative to explain the Palin bounce: for women of whatever party, Palin is one of them, a working mother whose values resonate with other working mothers even when her views may not. As the GOP chortles over the current reversal of fortune in the polls, Democrats are sputtering, also favoring a simple narrative explanation, blaming McCain's Rovean tactics and bullying of the media for Palin's star turn in the race—a star turn that has, for the first time since the defeat of Hillary Clinton, given Obama's supporters significant pause about their man's chances in November.
These competing arguments are ultimately unsatisfactory because their answers to a crucial question are unnuanced. And that question may be the fundamental one of this election: what do women really want . . .?
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