A word on Palin

I can think of hundreds -- maybe even thousands of reasons that I dislike McCain's running mate choice in Palin. It seems that she and I disagree on just about anything.

That said, perusing my mommy message boards this morning, I was struck dumb by the most common refrain in fellow mommies' disgust with Palin's candidacy: she is mother to a 5 month old special needs son.

I sincerely hope that this is not a new refrain from the Democratic Party who fought tooth and nail to soften Hillary's shrill appearance.

If we, collectively, want to work for "Equal pay for equal work" and have a woman serve as President of the United States, I hope that we can find better things to argue about Palin's candidacy than the fact that she's mother to a five-month-old. Personally, I don't understand how any woman can be together-enough to leave the house before noon with an infant, and I'd never make the choice to willingly give up those early months and years as a stay at home mom, but I fully realize that not every woman makes the same decisions I make -- and that those decisions are intensely personal, relying fully on the personality and needs of the woman and her family. I suspect, in the end, that the three girls in Sarah Palin's family are well-served by watching their mother work hard to bust through the "eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling" that Hillary made. I feel quite strongly that if women in this nation want a woman to be President some day, we need to stop attacking Palin and public servants like her for creating and building the strong experience that leads to qualification for Presidential service -- and, rather, agree or disagree with their political history and choices.

Or, at the very least, we need to hold our men in office to the same standards. What does it say to our children to attack a woman for taking on the Presidency and neglecting the needs of her children while at the same time congratulating a man who runs for Presidency with two young children of his own? I cannot imagine for a moment saying to my daughter, Well, dear, Fathers are unimportant and can commit their lives to public service but Mothers need to be home with their children at least until their daughters graduate high school or college. . .

To be clear, I'm no supporter of Palin. We disagree on everything from guns to the legalization of Marijuana, to same-sex marriage, and terrorism and Iraq. That said, I plan on attacking her on those issues and not on her choices as a mother and public servant. I sincerely hope that my fellow liberals do the same.