But what is significant is more about what it says the average Sarah Palin supporter thinks about the job of the President than what they think about Sarah Palin. Most of us think of a Hockey Mom (actually Soccer Mom) as something of a superwoman, capable of juggling many activities at once. Kind of a Social Secretary for her children. Her primary responsibilities are to get the kids to their activities on time; make sure the home stuff, like housekeeping and dinner, are taken care of; make sure the kids do their homework and maybe even help with it; and sometimes to do all this while working a 9-5 job.
In other words, a Hockey Mom's responsibilities are to take care of a million details on time, but not much in a decision-making capacity.
Which, it seems, must be what the Republicans see the responsibilities of the President to be. The President is more of a figurehead than a decision maker, taking care of the responsibilities of handing out work assignments, and reporting back to the people, behind the scenes, who are actually making the decisions. The voting public MUST think of the Presidency this way - they elected Little Bush twice, and it is obvious the Shrub didn't have the mental capacity to understand what was going on in the US, let alone in the rest of the world.
So, a Social Secretary for the people who are actually in control, seems like a good description of what they see the job of President to be. And who could be better to fill that role than a Hockey Mom, unless it is a senile 72-year-old ex-POW?
And who are these people actually in control? They are a group of Corporate Leaders who either feed the campaign directly, or indirectly through ex-lobbiest advisors. I'm not really a conspiracy theorist - I'm content to think that each Corporate Leader, whether they come from oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, or whatever, are primarily interested in their own (or their companys') best interest. Kindof like each child is interested in his or her own activities, and it is up to the Hockey Mom to make sure they all get served.
Given the emphasis the McCain campaign has placed lately on eliminating "Corporate Welfare", I am even more convinced this is an accurate vision of who REALLY runs the US in a Bush or McCain administration. Who needs Corporate Welfare if you own the President? Besides, the Republicans don't really want to get rid of Corporate Welfare - they just want to get rid of welfare to corporations that compete against their benefactors.
So the idea of a Hockey Mom or a senile 72-year-old who nearly flunked out of undergraduate college is PERFECT as the next President. Even better than a Shrub who actually did go to Yale and Harvard Business School, even though he did his best to not crack open a book the whole time he was there. Neither Hockey Mom nor McCain will even pretend to know enough to run the country, so it will be easy to keep them in their place as Figurehead and Social Secretary.
The sad part is that the American public thinks so little of the job of the President that they might elect a Hockey Mom one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the job.
posted by rbruck 
