Politics and Parenting

Many candidates for presidents have run as fathers. What's different about being a mother?
Well first, most of them aren't running as fathers. It's never touted as a selling point. So it's absolutely different for a woman. The standards for what it takes to be a good mother are very different than being a good father. So when you see women running for high-level office, they tend to be past childbearing age, don't have a bunch of little toddlers. So Sarah Palin is a very unusual circumstance--she's still in childbearing age, has a handful of young kids, one that has Down syndrome, so that's not something you really see. The question of what constitutes being a good-enough mother is going to come up more than it ever has.

There have been some questions about whether Palin should be running for office in the first place, given that she has such young children. Do you think her daughter's pregnancy is going to raise more of those questions, about Palin putting her career before her parenting responsibilities?
The standards are definitely not the same for men and women. Running for office is a subset of culture and, by a wide margin, women are still the primary caretakers of children. Joe Biden is going to have to be very careful about how he deals with this. I think it's going to be women who are by and large going to be more judgmental. People will be quiet about criticizing a woman who makes this kind of choice, but I think that women will judge the decisions she's made in her career and how that relates to her children.

How do you think a male candidate would be judged in a similar situation to this?
One past president you can look at is Ronald Reagan. His children, including Patti Davis, misbehaved in pretty extreme ways [such as posing in Playboy]. But it seemed that he was the Teflon president, that somehow he was able to detach himself from that. I would suggest that it would be far more difficult for a female candidate to detach herself from it [if her offspring misbehave]. When [former New York City Mayor Rudy] Giuliani was running for president, it was quite well known that his two children weren't speaking to him [after his messy divorce from their mother, Donna Hanover]. I would dare say if a woman was running for vice president or president and had two children who didn't speak to her, it would be a much more significant hindrance. She couldn't just detach herself from that kind of situation.

Where will Americans place the blame for the pregnancy? Does it go to Palin and her parenting skills?
If Sarah Palin turns out to be more complicated than the attractive Alaska governor, the person who is likely to get most of the blame is…McCain. There will be the charge that the campaign didn't vet her properly. They will leap to blame the candidate for president more than they will focus on Palin.

Also, if things really unravel, she's a tough customer. I've warned friends and colleagues. She's very articulate and very tough and obliviously prepared to take the slings and arrows. I'd be slow to underestimate her. If something does go wrong, if she does seem less appetizing, then it will be McCain and his campaign staff that are ultimately going to be judged the most.

© 2008