The XX Factor: What women really think.

Never Underestimate a Woman With a French Manicure and the Smell of Fish

In nature and on presidential tickets, symmetry is attractive. So both parties are offering us something old; something new; and something red, white, and blue, since both veep nominees have sons shipping off to Iraq soon.

Though I think it's smart that Sarah Palin is overtly pitching to the Hillary Holdouts—duh, isn't that the point?—it will be interesting to see how strong supporters of abortion rights react to a woman who really did a lot more, as Rachael said, than just talk about the value of every life; she consciously decided to take responsibility for the life of a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Apparently, she's so hard to fluster that after her water broke, she finished giving a long address before heading to the hospital. So it was perfect that her baby, born just last April, slept sweetly through the hoopla in Dayton today, in her sister's arms.

Giving her speech, Palin wasn't the second coming of Cicero, it's true. But she did put me in mind of my Kentucky grandma, who could do everything from plow a field to braid a rug, and taught me to fish with a cane pole. That's the sort of warm association that will be way more helpful to her party than a fourth senator would have been. At first glance, at least, this fishing, (basket)shooting, can-do kind of gal is not just a frontierswoman, she's bloomin' Daniela Boone.

On the personal level —where voting decisions are actually made—there is a lot to like about this PTA mom, high-school jock, and former union member, who can see Joey Biden's working-class roots and raise him, what with her high-school sweetheart of a fisherman hubby and her eau de saumon aroma. "We both grew up working with our hands,'' which have a French manicure now, I notice. She even coaxed what seemed to be a genuine smile out of McCain, who often looks like he has a toothache on the stump. She embodies his "reform'' message better than McCain himself does, since she actually waved off the famous bridge to nowhere: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks,'' she said today, to wild applause. "If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves.'' And with her emergence on the national scene, I can hardly wait for the Northern Exposure reruns.

On the other side of the ledger, it seems that we could wind up with another president who can't pronounce nuclear. But for some reason, it doesn't grate as much coming from her.