Smart Is Beautiful

Imagine this….Little Johnny gets in a fight with one of the bullies at school and ends up with a black eye and a bruised ego.  Who do you think Little Johnny wants to call?  His Mommy of course!
Imagine this….Little Susie spent all her allowance on candy and now she doesn’t have enough money to go to a matinee with her friends.  Who do you think Little Susie will likely turn to?  Again, her Mommy!
Little Johnny will most likely get a kiss and stern talking to about the dangers of fisticuffs, but I doubt she’ll teach him how to negotiate an effective peace treaty with the playground tyrant.  After Little Susie is lectured on responsible spending habits, she’ll probably be given enough cash to go to the show, but again, it’s doubtful that she’ll be asked to master the finer arts of budget analysis before she’s given her next allowance.
As I see it, the reason so many Americans have embraced Sarah Palin is because she’s an idealized version of the Great American Mother.  Hell, it’s been her rallying cry from the start!  I swear if I hear the words “hockey mom” come out of her mouth one more time I may have to tell her to “Puck Off!”
But more to the point…
Like Little Johnny, America is getting her butt kicked by middle-eastern bullies in a war that’s looking more and more like the New Vietnam. Like Little Susie, we’re broke to the point that the American Dream of homeownership has become the American Nightmare instead. 
I guess it’s only natural that we long for a comforting, maternal figure right now.  We want nothing more than to hear her say, “Gosh darn it, you’re a good kid and you just don’t deserve this.  Johnny, how about I give you enough cash for a lengthy ground invasion of Pakistan? And Susie, let’s find you enough funding to stabilize the  distressed credit markets so that we stay so deeply in debt we don’t notice the government is taking over our banks.” 
I think the affinity for Palin is especially strong for those over fifty, since she so closely resembles the American idealized version of motherhood – Jackie Kennedy.  And I have no doubt that this resemblance is being encouraged by Palin’s stylists. 
Like Kennedy, she wears her hair in a modified Breakfast at Tiffany’s beehive almost all the time.  She seems to favor the fashion icon’s choice for boxy little suit jackets.  I’ve rarely seen her in a pair of pants, unless she was posing for one of those “wilderness girl in Alaska” pictures, and those serve only to further that Kennedy-esque, early 60s style since gender-neutral pants were worn only for recreation.

           
In the days before the Civil Rights Act and Roe v. Wade, women’s fashion was nothing if not ladylike and proper.  Much to my chagrin, almost 50 years later, I think a lot of voters still measure a woman by how good she looks in a pair of peep-toe pumps than the practicality of her politics.
Fashion and frivolity aside, should the next presidential power be decided out of our longing for comfort and a familiar face?  If that were so, it would seem Hillary would have been a stronger choice for the Democrats.  After all, she’s been in the public eye for 16 years now.  And she has a lot more in common with Jackie Kennedy than their status as former first lady.  They both call New York home.  They both attended an elite, all-girl college on the east coast.  And they both stood by an adulterous husband. 

           
Maybe all Hillary really needed to win the hearts of the American people was a pillbox hat and a box of Miss Clairol in a Deep Chestnut Brown?