If I am a gentleman, and you are a lady, then who's going to put the pig out of the parlor?

Last week we had dogs with liptsick, this week it's pigs.

But apparently what's good for the dog is not good for the pig. McCain has lashed out, suggesting that Obama was making a veiled porcine allusion to Sarah Palin. McCain seems to have forgotten that the "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" line was his own (one of his better ones, actually), used quite recently in reference to Senator Clinton's heath care plan. No one then claimed that McCain was calling Clinton a pig, but then Clinton had never compared herself to a dog and, in any case, probably wears lipstick less often than former beauty queen Palin.

So now the party who fought the Equal Rights Amendment tooth and nail, the party who used to scoff at “political correctness,” the party who have consistently treated feminism like a persistent skin disease are now apparently outraged by some perceived sexism against Sarah Palin. Is anyone else confused?

As a good self-flagellating "new man" who came of age during the rise of the politics of identity in the late 80's/early 90's, I've done my best to spot the sexism and to feel guilty for it. Yes, critics have questioned whether she is a good mother but, quite frankly, if Obama had been parading a baby around amidst the noise and klieg lights at the DNC in a similar ostentatious display of parental adoration, I have the vague suspicion that that too would have provoked comment.

The fact is that Palin has been trading on her motherhood and, in doing so, has invited comment. It was her choice to flaunt being a “hockey mom” as a credential and to make a point of her role as a mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome. She has made her motherhood a part of her political identity in a way that few male politicians would do with fatherhood precisely because she knows she can get political mileage out of being a female candidate. She has every right to do so. But her critics have every right to call her on it.

McCain’s outrage is every bit as silly as the outrage over Clinton’s JFK comment during the primaries, and let’s hope for everyone’s sake he drops it quickly. Distractions such as this, along with the feigned outrage over supposed sexism in the election coverage, should be relegated to the darker corners of the blogosphere along with speculation over Obama’s suspicious middle name.

And as for the implications of lipstick on pigs vs. lipstick on dogs? Can't we talk about something simpler, like the Russian intervention in Georgia, or the feasibility of cellulosic ethanol? If only.

The "Um"

In the run-up to this year’s election, the press and the blogosphere have treated us to thoughtful analyses of such pressing topics as flags in bags, shotgun marriages, hugs for running-mates and lipstick for dogs. So I have no fear of sounding lowbrow if I continue in this venerable tradition of dwelling on non-issues and discuss the “Um.”

Conservative pundits and bloggers have already been having some fun with Obama’s debating style, in particular his habit of saying “um.” Liberal bloggers have taken similar pleasure in McCain’s green screen and rigor mortis smile during his RNC speech. But the “um” matters. It tells us something about Obama. It tells us that he thinks.

Obama is a product of his education, and approaches problems as a lawyer and an intellectual. He takes nothing for granted, and is known by those who have worked with him to be almost pedantic in his scholarly insistence on gathering the advice of experts before coming to a conclusion. The “um” is like that little watch icon on your computer, it tells you that there’s something going on in there. It’s a reflection of his style of thinking and decision-making.

It must be said that “um” is the sort of thing that can get you killed as a fighter pilot. But I cannot help but think that, for all his vaunted experience, McCain the politician might have benefited from the occasional “um.” He has admitted as much in his comments about sometimes taking quick decisions and living with the consequences. Clearly there was not much “um” before he chose corruption-and-scandal-prone Palin as a running mate, although the consequences of that are not yet clear. McCain’s style of decision making is to come quickly to a conclusion and then back it up with unflinching conviction. In that it is similar to George W. Bush’s decision-making, quick and bold, but not always considered. It is um-less.

Obama’s lofty oratory and his halting, considered debating style do not endear him to the new breed of talk-radio conservatives who show consistent contempt for anything intellectual. They will mock the “um” as yet another reminder that Obama is one of those over-educated elite lawyers we are all told we should mistrust, even as they praise Palin’s wise-cracking and McCain’s folksy plain-talking. But they forget that there are many Americans who do not consider intelligence to be a bad thing, many on both left and right who fear the gut reaction more than they fear the perceived elitism of rigorous intellectual analysis. To those of us who would rather place our faltering economy and fragile security in the hands of a cautious thinker rather than a quick-reacting maverick, the “um” reflects a welcome brand of small-c conservatism.

So let them mock the “um”. With the bewildering array of complex issues our country is facing, I find the “um” kind of comforting.

Folks just like you...

McCain's and Palin's RNC acceptance speeches have shed some light on the campaign's election strategy. In the coming weeks, amid a flurry of swiftboating tactics from plausibly deniable third-parties "unconnected" to McCain, we will witness an attempt to put on a good cop/bad cop performance, with McCain cast as the dignified statesman and Palin as the conservative firebrand pit-bull (her term, not mine...). Saber-rattling over abortion and creationism will galvanize some on the religious right, but it won't win the election.

The choice of Palin's rhetoric, however, show another strategy at play. The "hockey-mom" routine, as silly as it seems, is a clear indication that the McCain team are going to paint themselves as "more like you" than Obama and Biden. In the coming weeks the McCain camp will barrage America with the same message over and over again: we aren't smooth-talking lawyers, we aren't fancy Harvard educated elitists, we're folks just like you.

They will get some mileage out of this. Now, this may anger some people, but the fact is that come election time we Americans love nothing better than to be told how wonderful we are. We are a great nation. The average American is painted as outstandingly brave and honest and hardworking and unselfish (How can we ALL be outstanding? What exactly do we stand out from? Cowardly lazy selfish foreigners, presumably...). The more a candidate praises us, the higher his/her popularity soars. Hence we are treated to Sarah Palin talking about the great state of Alaska (So which are the not-great states? Delaware? Hawaii? Rhode Island never seemed that great to me, it's so damned small.) From this near-masturbatory celebration of ourselves it is easy to proceed logically to the conclusion that the best candidate for higher office must look just like this superhuman "average American." Palin is just an ordinary hockey mom - hey I'm a hockey mom too, so yeah, she'd make a great vice-president. Sure, why not?

The absurdity is obvious. if you needed brain surgery, would you be tempted to vet your brain surgeon to be sure he/she was someone "just like you"? Personally I'd hope my brain surgeon was a hell of a lot smarter than I am. Someone whose intellect and judgement I could trust rather than someone who shares my religion or my enthusiasm for ice hockey. Unfortunately in politics a lot of Americans want their candidates to look just like them. The McCain campaign will use Palin in particular to pander to this sort of narcissistic nonsense. Obama is an extraordinary man. He is extremely well-educated, and was editor of the Harvard Law Review. In a sane world this would be to his credit. But no, this will be used against him. Graduating at the top of his class from the best law school in the country means he isn't your average guy. Neither is Joe Biden for that matter. Unless you are pretty extraordinary, they're not just like you. They're smarter. They know more about law and policy than you do, and are probably better able to muster the intellectual resources of those around them to analyze complex problems than you are. And no offense but maybe, just maybe, that's a good thing.

Particularly in the VP debates, the McCain campaign will attempt to portray Obama and Biden as slick overeducated lawyers, as not being folks just like you. How the Obama camp responds to this line of non-reasoning will be crucial in the weeks and months ahead. Does Biden need to suddenly take an interest in bowling? Should Obama confess to having gone to Harvard but plead that he spent most of his time shooting spitballs at Alan Dershowitz and wondering why all these lawyers can't just get by with straight talkin' like the rest of us? Heaven preserve us.

Palin's speech and torture

Palin's speech at the RNC was snarky and at times downright silly, but it was also disturbing. Her snide reference to Obama's strong stance against torture as worrying about whether or not terrorists have been "read their rights" shows her utter contempt for America's most basic principles. The fact that she would snipe at this as if being against torture is funny or foolish shows us just how little she understands the legal and moral foundations of our nation. If she's going to try to get political mileage out of the fact that her running-mate was tortured, she should at least have the decency and common sense not to implicitly condone torture in the same speech.

I would have hoped that the media would focus more on this than on the silliness of the whole "hockey mom" schtick. What we are seeing here is the emergence of her views on the nature of liberal democracy, the suggestion that our constitutional protections, domestic statutes and international treaty obligations can simply be set aside and mocked when it suits our immediate needs or responds to our current fears. Sarah Palin has revealed her contempt for the basic principle of rule of law. While it provides no end of fun to ridicule her feeble jokes about the decor at the Democratic Convention and, even better, her deliciously absurd self-comparison with a viscious breed of dog outlawed in many states for mauling children, the stupidity of these things speaks for itself. Her contempt for the basic principles of our legal system is what should be headline news.