Monday, September 22, 2008 - Posts
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Today’s Washington Post offers yet another fascinating article about the many ways in which Todd Palin holds a quasi-official role in Sarah Palin’s political world. Last week’s piece on the CNN Web site similarly highlighted the blurry boundary between Todd Palin’s efforts to help out his wife with the childcare and, er, run the state of Alaska. Todd Palin was copied on hundreds of e-mails having to do with state business (Palin campaign spokeswoman Meg Stapleton is quoted explaining, "[T]he governor is asking him to print them off or take care of business.") Salon describes him as helping write the state budget and generally “lurking around” the statehouse. The New York Times has him gaily co-exercising his wife’s veto power and browbeating her subordinates over the telephone.
We all agree that Todd Palin exerts some significant degree of unofficial power over his wife’s administration, but no one seems to know what to do with that fact. We are definitely not subjecting Todd Palin to the treatment experienced by Hillary Clinton when she and her husband first unwisely tried to market themselves as “two for the price of one.” That scared the bejeesus out of America. But reports of Todd Palin’s broad involvement in his wife’s governing is characterized variously as benign stay-at-home fathering that somehow spills over into personnel matters or some kind of inevitable Alaskan brand of personal/political blurriness.
I keep wondering if overtly criticizing Todd Palin’s outsize role in his wife’s executive life runs afoul of the ever-blurrier Palin sexism foul line. You would think the opposite would be true: If Sarah Palin is being assisted by a powerful male with an uncertain portfolio and a hankering for secrecy, wouldn’t that sexism? I know we live in upside-down world these days, but isn’t it sexist not to worry that the reason Sarah Palin can so effortlessly do it all is that the first dude is doing a lot?
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