Hillary, Palin, and a few Good Men

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Sarah Palin versus Hillary Clinton in 2012?

As Cafferty said on CNN, it's never too early to look ahead. I write this on the eve of the elections, that vacuum when political pundits have finished having their say, and now news anchors and analysts are like patients waiting for the doctor's report: a perfect time to ease away from the tension and gossip about 2012. One viewer wrote in and said a toss-up between Clinton and Palin would be like pitting Albert Einstein against Paris Hilton. In America, I'm not sure that's bad for Palin. A study published just last week by Northwestern University's psychology department actually found that American voters are more likely to choose a candidate based on looks and attractiveness, and that attractive candidates were also considered competent. Strike One for Hillary.

But at the end of the day, it's your ability to make tough decisions and run a country, right? Well, no. Another study a study from the Green Mountain College in Vermont has found that assertive women are less likeable. In fact, both men and women in this American study gave negative ratings to women who made verbal statements of assertiveness. Strike Two.

Now, before we start boasting of having had assertive/attractive women in positions of real power at least twice in our own recent history, remember both Indira and Sonia would never be caught dead in a pantsuit. Hillary's choice of costume has already been trashed by no less than Donatella Versace for being too masculine. And just when everyone was saying maybe America is just not ready for a woman president, Palin has shot up the popularity charts purely on her beauty contestant good looks, forcing even the Pakistan president to utter compliments unbecoming of a head of state. Strike Three.

The fact is that Americans tend to vote on likability. George Bush's policies and grammar may be the stuff of global merriment, but ask the Republican on the street why he's voted Bush to power for 8 years, while he'll agree or even join in the endless ridicule, at the end of it he'll say, "because he's a Good Man'.

Has John McCain taken up the mantle of the Good Man? It seems so. How else can one explain such a close race? I'll be honest. John McCain has been rasping hoarse that 'Mac is back'. But he cannot hold a candle to Obama on either individuality, likability, rectitude, or oration. This race is about race. If Obama were a white man, the polls would be predicting a landslide, not single-digit points of lead.

It was in the 2004 Democratic National Convention, that Barack Obama first registered with blistering clarity on public consciousness. He was speaking in support of John Kerry, and it was then that many predicted his meteoric rise from that one keynote speech. Obama spoke of the 'audacity of hope' in what is now his signature rhetoric, drawing on inispiring personal stories and a rousing oration. As a student covering the election for my college in Boston, I distinctly remember getting goosebumps, and my hair standing on end as I heard that speech, wondering, 'who on earth is this man?'. Like thousands others, I googled him up and found precious little. But I was hungry for more of that fresh face and refreshing talk in a jaded political spectrum. Kerry's ineffectual campaign, and George Bush's second triumph followed (a Brit newspaper's headline the morning after the election bluntly asked how half of America 'could be so stupid'). But Obama and that speech never left me, it had made a deep impression on whoever heard it.. and it was that speech that got him where he is today - on the brink of history.

Irrespective of if Obama makes it, or if Mac indeed comes back, I'll remember this election for its attractiveness. Both Palin's and Obama's. As a woman voter, I'll wish I had deep pockets for a super designer wardrobe like Palin's, and as an Indian voter, I'll wish we had a leader like Obama - young, inspiring, and earnest. A certain regional political leader in Mumbai, who but for the violence he has been unleashing, reminds me of Obama in some ways, and could well have been as inspiring as him. For now, I guess I'll have to be happy with CNN!