A lot of people are comparing Sarah Palin to Dan Quayle. I think she is more like Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court as a replacement for Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall had successfully argued the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court on the behalf of the NAACP. That decision delegitimized segregated schools (it didn’t eliminate them). Marshall was (and is) a true hero to all African-Americans. To replace him with Clarence Thomas was a grave insult. Thomas lacked any kind of comparable record of achievement and opposed Marshall’s view of the law in countless ways. But Marshall was black and Thomas was black. That was supposed to be sufficient to please the black community.
Fast forward seventeen years, and the Republicans have nominated a woman to be the vice-president in a year when most thought Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic presidential nomination. Even though Palin cannot match Clinton’s record of achievement or her clear qualifications for high office, and even though Palin represents a decidedly minority view on women’s issues among women, she is supposed to please women.
