Turning undecided into "Hell, no"

I was having a gut check moment this evening, and couldn't help but wonder if I'm the only women out there who feels this way or if I am but one of a silent but seething female majority. I'm hoping (and praying) it's the latter.

My gut check? That whatever my feelings about Senator Obama and his potential as president, the introduction of Sarah Palin to the race means that it has become absolutely imperative that the McCain/Palin ticket not reach the White House. Obama might be inexperienced; he might be a little shallow on the details when it comes to how he would run the country on reaching the oval office. But I don't think there's anyone who seriously believes an Obama presidency would be anything other than honorable and thoughtful in its intent. And frankly, honorable and thoughtful is sounding awful damn good right about now, especially when you consider the alternative.

For those of you wondering, the alternative is not McCain. At least it's not the John McCain that many of us could have seen ourselves voting for in a presidential election in 2000. That McCain is long since gone, having packed up for good when the new McCain decided that winning the presidential race was more important than principles, ethics, or even telling the truth. Having abandoned all the causes that once made him a maverick reformer, the 2008 John McCain is now, in the word's of Jon Stewart, nothing more than a "reformed maverick" - a little sad, more than a little pathetic, and a lot a Bush Republican.

So, no - John McCain isn't the one we ladies should be worried about. Sarah Palin is the politician who should be striking fear into the heart of every woman in this country, especially if you consider yourself a feminist. I know that most American women haven't been fooled into thinking that McCain's nomination of Palin is anything more than a calculated publicity stunt and an obvious pander. We're savvier than that. Nor are we stupid enough to believe that in the absence of Hillary Clinton on the ballot, any old vagina will do. Whether we supported Hillary Clinton or detested her, for the overwhelming majority of us that opinion had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with who she was as a woman, a wife, and a politician. We loved or loathed Clinton on her merits, so let's do the same for Sarah Palin. Here are the key facts about Sarah Palin, politician:

• Charge victims: As mayor of Wasilla (that holy site of the vaunted 'executive experience'), Palin personally signed off on a budget that reversed existing police policy and charged rape victims for the cost of their own rape kits. The kits cost? Anywhere between $500 and $1200. That's a pretty steep rape tax, if you ask me.
• Exploit children: Until recently, most McCain supporters would have been hard-pressed to say how many children McCain had; he just didn't bring them into the political conversation. I respected him a lot for that, especially since it would have been so easy to exploit the fact that two of his sons were in the military and would be deploying to Iraq. When asked about them as recently as a month ago in an interview with TIME, McCain refused to comment. Rather than following in McCain's classy lead here, Palin threw her Iraq-bound son, Track, in front of a national television audience at the RNC. Not content to leave things there, she repeatedly (and erroneously and exploitatively and...) insisted that Track was deploying to Iraq on September 11th (in fact, his deployment ceremony was on that date). For the coup de grace, Palin turned that very deployment ceremony into a political event for the cameras. On September 11th.
• Demonize fathers: While Palin's actions in the Troopergate scandal remain under investigation, the one charge we can document is that Palin's continued insistence on disparaging State Trooper Michael Wooten in front of his children resulted in two rebukes from the judge handling her sister's custody case. Apparently the verbal abuse that Palin and her family heaped on Wooten in the children's hearing was such that the judge said he felt it constituted "child abuse" and, had it continued, would have been grounds for reducing Palin's sister's visitation privileges.
  
• Abandon young mothers: Palin believes so firmly in the importance of young mothers taking responsibility and having their babies that she has not hesitated to make political hay of her own daughter's teen pregnancy and her subsequent decision to have the baby and marry the father. But what of other pregnant Alaska teens who are not so fortunate to have support from their families and a partner who is in the picture? Palin was so concerned about them that earlier this year she "used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live." (See the full article here.)
  
• Ban books: As far as we can tell, Palin never actually banned a book as Mayor of Wasilla. But she certainly asked the librarian about the possibility of removing books from shelves on at least two separate occasions. Palin claims these conversations were rhetorical. Can you think of any benign reason for a mayor to have a rhetorical conversation with the local librarian about the possibility of book banning?
  
• Destroy dissent: What happened to the librarian who refused to consider banning books from the library or the state police chief who refused to fire her state trooper brother-in-law or the countless other members of city and state government who got in Palin's way during her tenure as mayor and governor? In almost every case, they lost their jobs or were threatened with the prospect of being fired. Many of these folks served at the pleasure of the mayor (or the governor) and as such Palin had every right to remove them if she wished. However, many of these positions were also supposed to be free from partisan politics. That Palin's removal of many of these state officials seems to not only have been politically but also personally motivated is especially chilling. And it has more than passing similarity with the U.S. Attorney firings that dogged Bush throughout much of 2007.
• Still not convinced? Don't take it from me - take it from someone who had a front-row seat for Palin's particular style of politics.

Any one of these issues by itself could perhaps be forgiven. Taken together, however, they paint a picture of a politician who is riding the coattails of a feminism she obviously despises; a woman whose family values she portrays as her most important political asset, but who is willing to throw her own family (and yours as well) under a bus if it provides her with a professional boost; a vindictive and secretive executive who is pathologically incapable of separating personal foes from political opponents.

Ladies, if you want to ensure that the long tradition of excluding women from the White House carries on for another generation, here's my suggestion: elect McCain/Palin 2008. Palin may become the first woman in the White House. If she does, I promise she will also be the last.