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Beneath the drama, was there a hint of faux outrage? Republicans privately celebrated how each new attack sent more votes Palin's way. The size of the crowds doubled, the money poured in, and in a matter of days, McCain was running five points ahead of Obama. The culture war was so rich and fragrant, you could miss the little civil insurrections: a host of conservative brains detaching themselves from the conservative heartland, which still beat for Sarah.
But in the end, the critical showdowns occurred between Palin and two other working moms going about their jobs, who four years ago would have been in no position to wreak such havoc: Katie Couric, whose cool questions yielded scalding footage; and Tina Fey, whose most lethal SNL skits didn't always bother to rewrite Palin's statements but merely repeated them.
Couric managed a remarkable feat for a woman making $15 million a year: she made herself invisible. She was not the feminist's avenging anchor or the snide dean of admissions or any of the archetypes she might have been tempted to embrace, given the stakes. She just asked her questions, then asked again, and can you give us just some example — and stayed far enough out of the way that Palin had the stage entirely to herself and proceeded to self-destruct.
Plus, it was Palin's great misfortune to uncannily resemble the country's hottest comedy star. But Fey could not have succeeded without the help of the toxic sexism of the McCain camp. So great was their apparent distrust of Palin's abilities that after the rollout, they kept her in a lockbox. Asked about Palin's lack of foreign policy experience, McCain adviser Charlie Black reassured us that "she's going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years." She had no chance to define herself, so Fey got to do it for her, and by the time of Palin's debate with Joe Biden, you weren't really sure which would turn up. Palin was a good sport, even appearing on SNL herself; but by then, the damage was done. On Election Day, voters concluded in exit polls, 60% to 38%, that she was not qualified to be President.
But the arguments have not gone away. The Republican National Committee is still inventorying her wardrobe. Her very name can turn a cocktail party into a cage fight. Her appearances on behalf of Senate candidate Saxby Chambliss drew huge, exultant crowds. A CNN poll of Republicans in early December put her in the lead for the 2012 nomination. She wound up second only to Angelina Jolie as the most searched woman on Yahoo!
In the meantime, Clinton has been tapped to become America's face to the world. Was this the Year of the Woman or the year of incremental progress, or neither? You had to ask yourself if it was an accident that the two most powerful women in our national life just happened to be among the most polarizing. Both Palin and Clinton called themselves feminists, though the Sisterhood might not be so quick to validate Palin's membership card. Neither woman could resist playing the victim of the mean male media — though a poll after the election found that nearly two-thirds of women felt Palin got more bad press because of her gender, which is twice as many as thought Clinton was unfairly treated.
"The personal is political" may be feminist gospel, but like any article of faith, it can be taken to extremes. Everything about Palin seemed personal: an energy policy reduced to "Drill, baby, drill," an economic policy embodied by Joe the Plumber. We knew too much about her clothes and her kids and her hunting habits and far too little about her priorities and principles. It was enough to make you grateful for Obama's near total lack of sentimentality and emotional transparency. We don't care how he feels; we care what he thinks and what he does.
Palin may have lost, but she will now be the place where part of her party at least can park its ambitions for the next year or two. That's not a bad return on a long-shot investment; in the bombed-out no-man's-land of Republican rivalry, she starts out with a valuable piece of real estate that she was wise to consolidate. The most interesting thing about the evolution of Sarah Palin will be watching who she becomes, and whether she offers a philosophy that is bigger than her personality, a claim to leadership that rests on more than a wink and a promise.