Courting the Women's vote

We here at Under Which Lyre have not blogged much on politics (or blogged much at all, really). I hadn't found the campaign too interesting (with the exception of Hilary v. Obama) until recently when I watched the both McCain and Obama at Saddleback.

I have also found McCain's recent choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate very interesting. The choice is a bit baffling to me—she has been Governor of Alaska for only two years, and before a brief stint as the chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, mayor of a town of about 9,000 people. She also has no strong background in foreign policy, which is troubling considering that the 72 year old McCain is a cancer survivor and may very well pass away in the next four years.

Of course, she's a social conservative and an evangelical, and McCain had not been that attractive to the religious right. (I would agree with Andy Crouch, and disagree with the folks at This Recording, that the best thing about Sarah Palin is her choosing have to have her child despite the diagnosis of Down Syndrome.) McCain has also decided to meet Obama on idea of change in Washington and has therefore nominated an outsider with a record of working against the political establishment in Alaska. And she's more attractive than McCain, Joe Biden, and even Obama. And then there's the idea of winning the women's vote, courting Hilary's disenchanted voters, which Palin made abundantly clear with her reference to Clinton's "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling. Which is a long way of bringing me to my point:

I think that the idea of McCain trying to help "break the glass ceiling," or even of McCain courting the women's vote, is humorous at best. Why? Courtesy of the Drudge Report:

In his book The Real McCain, author Cliff Schecter claims that John McCain made extremely ugly remarks about his wife Cindy McCain during a tirade witnessed by three reporters and two aides. "At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, 'You're getting a little thin up there,'" Schechter writes. "McCain's face reddened, and he responded, 'At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.' McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day.

There isn't really much to say after that, is there?