FRAGILE! McCain campaign handles Palin’s exposure with care…and sexism

At the post, “Sarah is the Fresh Air,” on Blogher, I found this comment today:

When can she be interviewed by reporters – I find it disturbing that the McCain campaign isn’t allowing Ms. Palin to be interviewed by reporters. What are they hiding?

According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, possibly never:

Oh, well, wait – maybe in two weeks, said Todd Harris yesterday, a Republican strategist who was John McCain’s communications manager. Why not for at least two weeks? Listen:

And in fact, did anyone see Sarah Palin on the Sunday shows this morning? Nope. Just the boys. Governor Sarah Palin, the candidate about whom we know the least, remains the person we’re seeing the least often and hearing from the most infrequently.

But is this scarcity of Sarah due to sexism?

The McCain campaign is so afraid that she might make a mistake that they’ll keep her out of the voters’ view for at least fourteen days – when there’s only 60 days left for voters to choose. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic calls this move sexist:

The sexism that implies that someone cannot stand up to reporters because she is a woman is appalling. This entire pick, of course, is incredibly sexist, and the handling of her in the last week the most sexist double standard I have ever seen in American politics. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton saying she wasn’t going to answer questions for two weeks? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or Kay Bailey Hutchison? Or Elizabeth Dole? And none of these women were ever as close to global power as Sarah Palin now is. This is getting to Manchurian Candidate levels of creepiness. It’s deeply sinister and slightly terrifying.

And, Jay Carney wrote the following in regard to Nicole Wallace’s shrug off, in TIME’s blog, The Swampland:

…in [Nicole Wallace's] smug dismissal of the media’s role in asking questions of the candidates, Wallace was really showing contempt not for reporters, but for voters. I bet there are a lot of undecided voters out there who were intrigued by Sarah Palin last night, but who don’t yet know enough about her — what she believes, what she knows — to be comfortable with the idea of her as vice president of the United States. It’s important to them to know if Palin can handle herself in an environment that isn’t controlled and sanitized by campaign image makers and message mavens. Maybe she can, maybe she can’t. As far as Wallace is concerned, it’s none of their — or your — business.

David Frum, of The National Review, wants the McCain ticket to win and wants to see more of Palin. In his post, “Why Bother?,” he answers Wallace’s laugh-filled opinion that no one cares if Palin ever meets with the press by saying that he cares, because in order to win, McCain needs to go beyond the non-Elitist vote that the controlled messages hit:

If you want to win a debate, you have to come prepared to debate for every audience at every level. We can all understand that it is unwise to refuse Oprah. But it is equally unwise to do only Oprah. It’s not just Jay Carney who wants more. As President Bush’s current numbers suggest, so does Oprah’s audience.

What other evidence have we seen that the McCain handlers might be sexist?

In this August 30 New York Times article, McCain adviser Charlie Black, when asked about Palin’s ability to handle matters of foreign policy, says:

…that [John McCain] viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.

And then, in regard to the same question, but this time posed by Campbell Brown, McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds paints a similar image of a maiden at the feet of the experienced master:

Bounds: Governor Palin has the good fortune of being on the same ticket with John McCain, who, there is no question, is the most experienced and shown proven judgment on the international stage; he understands foreign affairs, he has a familiarity with the players across the globe—

Brown: Well, we know all that about John McCain, Tucker. I asked you about her, though, because we all know the role of the VP, as John McCain has defined it, is to be able to step into the job of the presidency on day one if something should happen to the president. So I’m asking you about her foreign policy experience.

What is going on here? Sure, often-maligned as not-too-bright former Vice President Dan Quayle was tightly-managed and, as Frum points out, very likely he shouldn’t have been – for more than superficial reasons. But would Charlie Black or Tucker Bounds have given the same portrait of getting educated at the feet of the master if the GOP veep choice had been Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee?

Let’s look at what the senior Bush’s campaign did with Quayle: they let him out, right away, and guess what? As this New York Times article from 1988 memorializes, he did a whole lot of talking, and getting into trouble.

So is the McCain campaign holding back because Palin is a woman, or because they fear what happened to Quayle? Dick Cheney wasn’t held back, nor was Bob Dole’s 1996 running mate, Jack Kemp.

Why is Palin being held back?

Subtle and not-so-subtle sexism. All of which needs to be called out.

I have almost a zero-tolerance for sexism at any level and don’t agree with the opinion that we dilute the cause of calling it out if we point it out when we see it, any of it.

For example, not all voters saw the sexism in the media coverage of Hillary Clinton. I tangled with Obama supporters in particular as to whether this New Republic image was sexist. And although I agree that Clinton didn’t lose because of sexism, it sure didn’t help her either.

The acceptance of sexism – subtle and not so subtle, from friendly and not-so-friendly corners, contributes to what I consider sacrificing the soul of feminism in order to at last get its face closer to the ceiling. By no means are we getting through any ceiling if the GOP ticket succeeds since Palin will be what got the man to where he is and will only re-entrench the image of women being the support behind the man.

The McCain campaign’s constant reference to Palin as a naif not only contradicts the image of a pitbull with lipstick, but reinforces the image that Palin is only the lipstick on the pig.

The result of tolerating these lower levels of sexism is the treatment of Sarah Palin that we’re seeing now, at the hands of the people who supposedly want to make her a queen in yet another pageant.

But many men and women decided a long time ago that there’s no value in winning the pageant trophy if all you get to do is look good while holding it.