Over the past few days, astonishing comments made by Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin (Biden lashes out at Palin’s ‘pro-America’ comment – CNN.com, Oct 17 2008) and Minnesota Congressional Rep. Michelle Bachmann (‘Anti-American comments hurt Minn. rep’s campaign – Associated Press, Oct 20 2008) got me thinking about how women really operate in the political world. Where do these women come from? How did they end up getting a national platform for their outrageous political views?

Both Palin and Bachmann have a history of making fairly extreme statements, and neither has been called much to task for it. In fact, the “elite” national media serves as an unwitting partner, by dismissing them or simply poking fun. Tina Fey’s dead-on bit as Sarah Palin is cute, but it only trivializes Palin. And caricatures are never taken seriously.

In the October 18 edition of http://dumpbachmann.blogspot.com/, William Prendergast credits local media with aiding and abetting Bachmann’s rise to power: “Bachmann has been making extremist hateful statements for the best part of a decade, and the local media never reports them. Thus: most of the voters in Minnesota still think of Bachmann as a mainstream conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan.”

But I wonder if somewhere deep down, many Americans secretly prefer women to handle politics that way. Push into the crowd, throw a sharp elbow, then call the person who complains about a broken rib a sissy. Pick one of those no-holds-barred fights filled with the aggressive and divisive tactics that define the macho, “winner take all” political paradigm Karl Rove has elevated to an art form. It’ll make you look strong, aggressive, in charge.

These are the people who see elections as a game to be won, rather than a decision to be made. They don’t inform Americans as much as they seek to inflame our most basic emotions: anger, fear, hatred. Women don’t do that. Mothers of children don’t do that. In fact, we teach our children not to do that:

Play nice.
Don’t hate.
Be polite.
Include everybody.
Don’t call names.

Those are all the rules some choose to abandon to play today’s rough-and-tumble political games. It’s just really surprising – and to me, terribly disappointing – when those “some” are women.