"Having five children in six years is the best training in the world for speaker of the House," Nancy Pelosi said after she was elected to that post last year. "It made me the ultimate multi-tasker and the master of focus, routine and scheduling." Asked how motherhood provided an understanding of national security, she said, "Think lioness when you think of women in politics. You threaten our cubs, you're dead."
Yet many of the same people who didn't blink at - indeed, applauded - Pelosi's claim that motherhood qualifies her to be second in line for the presidency now harp that the same circumstance disqualifies Sarah Palin from being first.
That is just one of the many hypocrisies Palin's candidacy exposes, and Democrats are palpably panicked. It was easier to maintain the pretense that multimillionaires such as John Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama identify more with working-class Americans when Republican candidates were wealthy blue-bloods such as the Bushes. Palin is not of that ilk - and Americans can sense the difference.
"I'm a working mother, and she speaks for me," 40-year-old Pamela Hamlett told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. "She understands a household budget, she understands a government budget. She doesn't come from money. She's someone like me, and we work for every dime we get."
Media outlets that report only hagiographic profiles of Obama are frantically trying to discredit Palin, as was evident when ABC anchor Charles Gibson interviewed the governor in Alaska. A transcript of the full interview released by the Media Research Center reveals the extent to which ABC went to portray Palin as dangerously hawkish.
Among the parts of the interview that landed on the cutting-room floor was her response when Gibson asked about U.S. relations with Russia. "You're in Alaska," she pointed out. "We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States and Russia. They are our next-door neighbors. We need to have a good relationship with them. Well, I'm giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relations with all of these countries, especially Russia.
"We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along."
The portion of the conversation ABC aired was when Gibson asked Palin about pre-emptive strikes, and the governor responded that we have a right to protect ourselves if there is unequivocal evidence that our nation is about to be attacked. Undoubtedly ABC hoped to make Palin look like a war-monger; the answer only made her look sensible. Wasn't that the "lioness" quality Pelosi said made mothers fit for high office?
Contrast that to what finally outraged Barack Obama last week. Recall that when asked about terrorists who want to destroy America, Obama remains cool and calm, promising that he will sit down and talk to the fanatics, and everything will be just fine. But when the McCain campaign accused him of alluding to Palin with his "lipstick on a pig" remark, Obama got fist-pounding mad.
Palin got fired up by the prospect of Americans being attacked; Obama got fired up because he was attacked. It could not have been a clearer demonstration of which ticket genuinely puts the country first.
Much to the Democrats horror, Palin is viewed by many Americans as the candidate who represents real change. Despite Obama's slick talk and silly pretense of identifying with ordinary peoples' struggles, more and more voters now view Palin as the more reliable ally. No one has said it better than Hamlett in explaining why she trusts Palin: "I believe that if I sent her to the grocery store, she'd come home with change, and I couldn't say that about Obama."
