Tonight I had an epiphany and I now don’t feel very good about myself. I have been almost rabidly against Palin. My education, intellect and travels abroad made me confident in my disgust for her and the people who supported her....the women who supported Palin. After all, she is absolutely not qualified for the job.
Actually, she still is absolutely not qualified for the job. I am a president of a company with 13 employees and 60 or so subcontractors. "I have executive experience.’ I was also in middle management for a 1.5 billion dollar company. Therefore, I must be qualified to be lets say be the new CEO of General Motors with its current financial problems and being an international company with 200,000 to 300,000 employees. Obviously I am not qualified and neither is she....however that is not the point. Many women don’t care and now I get it.
Two days ago I was on a plane. It was from Phoenix to Denver. We in a plane where the seats were really small and therefore we were very close to each other. I sat next to a woman from a small town in Texas. She was going to help her sister whose husband had died pack up her things because she couldn’t afford to stay where she lived in Nebraska anymore. My first thought was....if she can’t afford Nebraska, where can she afford? She said to me almost shyly....What do you think about that Palin? My first thought was OMG I think she is sooooo scary and soooooo inexperienced. I didn’t say that though. Something inside me listened. She was excited about her...for real. I wondered why. I got to know this lady’s life some. She had four children and ten grandchildren. One daughter and her husband and their children had moved back home because they couldn’t afford to be on their own. We talked about kids and how they sleep too much. We talked about how young people don’t seem to want to work. We talked about having our parents get old and having to take care of them and how that was really hard. We found common ground.
I didn’t realize it then. It was only tonight that I realized that for this woman and for so many other women in America they look at Palin as the possibility for freedom for women. Most small town woman have not felt freedom to choose a different life. Everyone focuses on the right to choose an abortion but for many women what does that mean to them. How about that that does not matter really. They haven’t yet felt that they have any other choices anyway. They have no way out. Palin is where many of those women feel they have come from but has risen out of...or maybe to the top of. She gives them hope that they will not always be destined to the way they live their lives or if not them then maybe their daughters.
I have wondered why Hillary had not gone against her more. I am a woman but not a mother. Maybe Hilary feels for those women who want to believe that someday there is a different choice for them or at least for their daughters. Maybe she empathizes with them and with Palin. All I know is that tonight I did not feel as confident in my arrogance. I still absolutely believe she is not qualified to a a heartbeat away from the presidency. However, I feel embarrassed about my misunderstanding about what she could represent to others. There is something about.....walking a mile in someone else’s shoes