In recruiting Sarah Palin to be his running mate, John McCain has shown that he hopes to exploit what he believes to be a sexist vulnerability in the Female voting block. Namely, that disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters will betray her, her Democratic party, and the hard-fought ideals around which both have built a legacy simply because he has placed a successful, attractive woman on the Republican Presidential Ticket. In the pursuit of the Presidency,  McCain has opted to reduce a powerful and intelligent woman to a politically convenient “Token Female”.

This strategy is John McCain’s desperate answer to his lack of a credible record on women’s rights. McCain, who divorced his crippled 1st wife for his younger, now-prettier, beer-fortune mistress, believes that enabling a woman to come this close to being President is enough to cloak his legacy. To him, Feminism seems to be the lionizing of one, carefully selected woman, not the empowerment of the millions of women who believe in it. Women didn’t get where they are today by following Cinderella’s example. They got here by the grit of women like Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman.

John McCain doesn’t seem to understand how invested women are in the issues that concern them, such as access to birth control, sex education, and abortion. His campaign is banking on the assumption that women are emotional stereotypes, and he’s hoping that their response to a potential woman president will lead them to forget his record and vote against their best interests.

In making this decision, John McCain has put the “sexism card” in his arsenal against Barack Obama. Granted, the public dissent against Barack Obama by women who felt Hillary Clinton was snubbed creates the illusion that this was a smart political move. He can, if he so chooses, claim that because he chose to run with a female candidate, whereas Barack Obama didn’t, he cares more about the rights of women.

However, John McCain needs to take a lesson from Henry Higgens, another man plagued by problems understanding women. No man, no matter how powerful or suave he thinks he is, can manipulate a woman into becoming something she doesn’t want to be. John McCain may assume that he has a Pied Piper, but no matter how good the music is, women cannot and will not be so easily lead into harm’s way.

Palin Piper