I know how hard it is for some women to just say no, but when the phone call came do you think that Sarah Palin might have thought to say, “Actually, John, this isn’t a good time.”

I’m all for working mothers, but I’ve never known one with five kids including a baby with special needs, a son headed to war and a pregnant teenage daughter, to take on a brand new full time job that involves constant travel and being on call at 3 a.m.

Perhaps she could have said, “Thanks for the honor, but putting country first doesn’t work for me now. I need some more Alaska time. And right now we’ve got some pressing family issues.”

But really, is she ready to go face to face with Vladmir Putin?

Feminists push for equal opportunity. We want the same chances and choices as men. It’s always exciting to see a woman rise to the top, to especially see young women seek public office, no matter their politics. And to her credit, Sarah Palin has worked her way up from small town mayor to governor. But really, is she ready to go face to face with Vladmir Putin?

A cabdriver in Denver said of the Palin announcement, “John McCain must think that the American women are stupid.” He was referring to the silly assumption, nicely mocked by Samantha Bee on the Jon Stewart show, that all “Vagina-Americans” vote with their lady brains.

Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Okay, they both have nice hair. But anyone who looked to Hillary Clinton to keep us out of the next war, fix health care, protect choice and develop alternate energy sources is not going to be wooed by an abstinence-only cheerleader for Big Oil who thinks the war in Iraq is “God’s plan,” and apparently so is global warming.

Republicans did get the pop from the media they sought with Sarah Palin, successfully draining the buzz from Denver. Of course, now they blame the media for looking too closely at the woman who John McCain sprung on the world after apparently only meeting twice.

What do they expect? On the eve of the Republican convention, McCain trots out Sarah Palin, a stranger, I bet, to most everybody in the country, and he expects the media to give her a pass and not check her out. Get real John.

The Christian Right is thrilled, which is ironic. The motherhood-is-everything camp which likes to say that a woman’s place is in the nursery not the office, now would make multiple motherhood and impending grand-motherhood a qualification for handling North Korea.

Barack Obama has taken the high road by declining to comment on the unplanned pregnancy of Palin’s teenage daughter. But the rest of us, who are not as high minded, might question Sarah Palin saying that she hoped to keep the pregnancy private. Someone who comes from a small conservative town certainly knows how quickly a high school pregnancy becomes everybody’s business. And now she’s allowed the whole world to gossip about her daughter.

Is it sexist to expect more of a woman candidate than a man? No, it’s realistic.
We are still bumping against that ceiling and need the best and the most wise and worldly women to crack it.

As far as wanting someone with excellent mothering credentials to work with your president, look to Michele Obama.

Listen to What Was She Thinking on KRCB’s Another Voice.

Helen Mirren may have just helped out John McCain. At least in the ageism debate.
Many people automatically assume that a 63-year-old woman is too old for a bikini. And many argue that a 72-year-old man is too old to become president.

Both concerns come from the popular “ism” that a person’s chronological age is their most defining characteristic and therefore determines who they are and what they can do.

Helen Mirren has demonstrated that she does swimmingly in a red bikini, as evidenced in photos of her Italian vacation which won hurrahs for her flat stomach, smooth thighs and chutzpah. But, even though her physical charms appear limitless, and they are enviable, it’s still her superior acting that counts most.

Now, how about John McCain? We’ve got his various political positions to bat around. But is his age a fair target? I hope the Obama campaign can take the high road on this issue. First, because their guy, at 47, could be vulnerable to ageism from the other end. And because he doesn’t want to offend people over age 50 who are expected to make up half the voters in November. There are a lot of Boomers, especially ones hitting retirement age, who are sensitive to being labeled by the year they were born.

Men age, women rot.

I discussed the age issue with a couple of powerful Democratic women who you might expect to seize on any negative they could find on McCain. But they think his vintage should be left out of the contest. California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder know their “isms.” Both were Hillary Clinton supporters and smarted over the sexism that came out during her campaign.

Schroeder, who was in Congress for more than 20 years and made a bid for the presidential nomination in 1987, was a regular on talk shows earlier this year, blasting the media for its misogyny, likening the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the Salem Witch Trials. Schroeder saw some ageism, too, in the Hillary attacks, recalling Rush Limbaugh’s comment about Americans not wanting to watch a woman president grow old before their eyes. And even though Schroeder still thinks sexism was the greater culprit, she said, “There’s no question that sexism and ageism are very related. It’s the old thing about ‘men age, women rot.’

Were a woman contemporary of McCain to put herself out there, the response would be harsher, said Schroeder. For example, she thinks Dianne Feinstein would make a great candidate. But Feinstein is 75. And if she ran, said Schroeder, “they’d nail her on her age.”

The last time Lynn Woolsey ran for re-election, a columnist, who supported her younger male opponent, said it was time to get someone younger with more energy. Woolsey defended herself, saying, “I can’t help my age but I don’t believe anyone has more energy than I do.”

Woolsey, who is two years younger than McCain, said she doesn’t think 72 is that old. “Age isn’t the issue. But health and vitality are.”

Schroeder said that’s what people should be looking at – “to make sure the person has good mental faculties and is in fairly good shape.”

And then you can go after that person on the really important things – like the war, health care, immigration, women’s rights, messing with the ocean digging for oil.

The rest is no more relevant than how you stuff a wild bikini.