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We still have about 150,000 troops in Iraq, and it's not clear how or when we're going to get them out. Meanwhile, our top military commanders are telling us we urgently need more troops in Afghanistan, where we've been losing ground and taking increased casualties. So this would be a great time to casually contemplate war with Russia, wouldn't it?
Of course it would! Today, we fire up the Cold War, courtesy of Sarah Palin:
Palin: [Ukraine and Georgia] deserve to be in NATO....
ABC's Charlie Gibson: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?
Palin ALIN: Perhaps so.
(Hey, we're already in two wars—what would be so wrong with a third? Let's go nuclear this time!)
Sorry—but that's not taking a "hard line" with Russia. That's taking a naive, dangerously irresponsible, nearly insane line. Sane candidates trying to show they're "ready" for the presidency don't chat cavalierly on national TV about pursuing a policy that would "perhaps" obligate the United States to go to war with the world's largest nuclear power.
Just as Palin did not appear to be familiar with the Bush Doctrine during her intervew with Gibson, she didn't appear very familiar with the NATO treaty or what specific acts it might or might not require of the United States on behalf of an ally [the treaty requires parties to "assist" a NATO ally that has been attacked but does not mandate any particular form of assistance]. And she sure sounded like she'd never thought for more than a millisecond about the potential consequences of the policy she was urging, nor of the consequences of the war with Russia we might "perhaps" be obligated to undertake.
(Hint: not good.)
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Yes, Dahlia, you are absolutely right. We should STOP talking about the Lipstick Lady. Madame Governor really shouldn't be treated as a full-employment program for female pundits. (Check out Katha Pollitt's refusal to play this game here.)
And I will. I can stop. Really. I can!
Right after posting on this small point, which struck me late last night:
Yes, Palin may have energized and excited a constituency of Republican women who identify with her views and her approach to life. But she has also energized and outraged another entire demographic of women: those who oppose her politics and her approach to life. Lately I have been inundated with emails—some repeats, but most quite individual—from women who are appalled that the nonfeminist Palin could be put up to represent them and who are trying to figure out What To Do About It. From my inbox, it seems that liberal, progressive, Democratic, and feminist women's anti-Palin projects are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.
It will be interesting to see which group has more votes.
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There you go again, you pointy-headed Ivy Leaguers: trying to “understand” current events through the study of “history” (undertaken at Yale, of all places!). Sure, it’s fascinating to read about the Renaissance origins of the image of the mother-as-regent, fiercely protecting the husbands and sons who are really in charge of the realm. But isn’t it enough just to understand deep in our gut that Palin makes people feel, in some inchoate way … er, something vaguely positive about women and values and family and babies? Something warm and wonderful and maverick-y that inheres in her very person, independent of (indeed contrary to) any action she’s taken in office or any policy she espouses?
The smell of my daughter’s clean laundry makes me feel warm and wonderful about families, but I’m not electing a pile of it vice president of the United States. I’ve had it with hearing about Palin’s family. I want to know what the next administration we vote into office is going to do for our families—yours and mine.
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A guest post from Yale law professor Judith Resnik and Yale law student Allison Tait:
Sarah Palin as ferocious political mother-where have we seen her before, depicted with child (and an occasional dog)? In portraits on museum walls. Think Catherine de Medici. These are the 16th-century women who, as either queens or regents, reigned after the death of a man (their husband, the former king) and on behalf of their children. Barring exceptions like Elizabeth I, male heirs, not widow-queens, inherited the power to govern. But if the male heir was too young, his mother, as regent, had the power to rule. And once in power, these women sometimes plotted to try to keep it, while seeming to serve in a temporary and secondary capacity. Catherine de Medici acted as regent and adviser to three sons, effectively ruling France for almost 30 years. Fifty years later, Anne of Austria, the queen made famous in the Three Musketeers, challenged her late husband's will in order to claim exclusive power of the regency and broaden the scope of her powers.
By selecting Sarah Palin as regent-to-be-a heartbeat away from constitutionally holding the power of the president-McCain positioned her as the vibrant guardian on behalf of a candidate whose age raised questions. Palin is a coup because she enables McCain to send a double message: that women can be rulers but only temporary and secondary ones, more mom than monarch. (McCain, by the way, showed off at the convention his own lineage as son and grandson of admirals. Never mind that at the Naval Academy, he was at the bottom end of the class.)
Palin is playing the regent role to the hilt. The image of her holding her new son shows that she derives authority from motherhood and also invokes her particular Christian beliefs and opposition to abortion (provided through the back story of his birth). Palin's Christianity is much in evidence in other ways: See this New York Times article, which concluded that "her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it, has come a conviction to be God's servant."
This mixing of church and state also has an anchor in the Renaissance. As Princeton historian Theodore Rabb explained in his recent book, The Last Days of the Renaissance and the March to Modernity, during the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders looked to God for guidance and invoked God as justification for their actions. Modern democratic leaders look to facts, expert advice, law, and popular will. But McCain-Palin, like Bush, seek to entrench a modern version of returning to rule under the grace of God.
The other distinctive facet of Renaissance leadership was the glorification of war. From art to literature, it was the destiny sought by leaders. Rabb argues that the development of gun powder undermined that premise, as explosions of human flesh undid the romance of combat. Images of war's horrors, like Goya's corpses, displaced rococo portrayals of war's heroics. Yet in her acceptance speech for the nomination, Palin referred not only with pride but almost with joy at the war her son was soon to see. McCain went further by asserting that war had made him better-that he went away reckless and self-interested and returned committed to his country rather than to himself. But now we have not only too much gunpowder, but also nuclear and biological weapons. The right icon is Picasso's Guernica, reminding us that we should be far from these Renaissance notions of leadership and war, not reviving them.
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So I take my eye off Planet Palin for a half a minute—and by the time I get back, Dahlia has sworn off the stuff altogether, and the rest of you are acting like what Barack Obama said about lipstick is no big oink; are you kidding? I am so outraged, I am ONLY going to communicate in down-home phrases re: pigs from now on, in a kind of sarcastic solidarity with my fellow feminist John McCain. That'll show him how the hog eats the cabbage!
Seriously, I take all my cues on sisterhood from John, because who respects women more? That's why Obama'd have hardly anything to work with if he wanted to make an ad in response. Well, except for the footage of McCain laughing and then saying, "Excellent question'' when asked, "How do we beat the bitch?'' OK, and maybe that clip of the minister asking McCain if he really called his wife the c-word. I'm not sure Obama should rely on the 1986 story in the Tucson Citizen quoting McCain telling a joke about rape—even if it was a lot like the one that drove his buddy Claytie Williams out of politics. I guess if Obama really wanted to get down in the mud, he could reference the stripper McCain dated, or the gentlemanly way he behaved with his first—oh, who are we kidding?—with both of his wives. If Hillary's gotten over that—what's the word I want?—deferential joke he made about Chelsea, then who are we to go there? And it would be a total cheap shot to use the footage of him telling biker dudes of America that the mother of four of his children would make a great Miss Buffalo Chip. But John McCain, friend of the female? My friends, that would be a change.
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