As new polling shows her costing him more votes than she might win, John McCain’s running mate is, in her own way, doing a number of services for the Republican Party and the nation as a whole.
For one, Sarah Palin is proving that gender doesn’t count in bringing ignorance (pace Dan Quayle) and mean-spiritedness (shades of Spiro Agnew) to a national ticket as she promises a balanced budget after four years of a McCain Administration and keeps repeating blatant lies about Barack Obama’s tax proposals. Feminists can rest easy now that she and Hillary Clinton have shown women to be the equals of men in both venality and statesmanship.
Perhaps even more valuable is Palin’s demonstration, by her meteoric rise and downfall, that media exposure cuts both ways in politics as well as show business (i.e., Britney Spears and Paris Hilton).