McCain, Palin and Tokenism

I have been thinking a lot about McCain's choice for Vice President and I have to say I finally understand it. Carl Rove and his cronies who are running the McCain campaign made the call of picking Governor Palin as VP. McCain had only met the woman once before the announcement, so I seriously doubt it was his call.

Sarah Palin, though she is a lovely and intelligent woman falls into the same category as Alan Keyes. Keyes runs for President almost every year as a Republican in the primaries. Everyone knows he has no chance of gettig the nomination, but he does provide a service for the GOP. Keyes is African-American, and as such he puts a "diversity" spin on what has always be a "white guys club". Though I believe Mr. Keyes really believes he can get elected, the GOP looks on him as a convienent token. I suspect Mrs. Palin is filling the same role.

After all the complaits about experience levels and cheap shots at Obama for being a Junior Senator, it is inconcievable that the GOP would select a former mayor of a town of 9000 people and the Governor of Alaska for the past 20 months as the VP. The Vice President is a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and to put someone with so little experience in that position is both reckless and unfair. It is unfari to Sarah Palin, because she will be subjected to enormous scrutiny and pressure even if she isn't elected. It is reckless because having her as Commander in Chief is either a thoughtless choice, or an admission that the GOP machine will actually be running everything anyway.

Sarah Palin is being used as a token. The GOP is assuming that women voters are so easily distracted by the thought of a female on the ticket that they will ignore everything else. They forget that Hillary Clinton was not popular just because she was a woman. She was an experienced and smart lawmaker who worked hard to develop her following. Part of her appeal was certainly because she was a woman, but had she not been a stellar candidate anyway, that wouldn't have gotten her beyond the first coule of primaries.

The cheap trick of having a token on the ticket shows a disrespect for the women voters of this country and though it might work on a few people blinded by her gender, it wil not work on the intelligent women voters in this country who understand that McCain is no friend to women's rights.