Not very long ago it was being noted that Barack Obama is the first Black to have a realistic chance of being elected to the presidency, unlike Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So far as I've determined, no one has yet made the similar observation that Sarah Palin is the first woman to have a legitimate opportunity for the vice-presidency. She's not the first ever to be nominated by a major party—that was Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, in 1984—but it was most unlikely that the Democrats' nominee of that year for chief executive, Walter Mondale, would have beaten Ronald Reagan no matter whom he had chosen as his running-mate.
The contrast between Ferraro and Palin is striking. The former is a characteristically disagreeable feminista, for whom "Ferraro" is actually a maiden name (considering, however, the dishonest business practices of her husband John Zaccaro, perhaps it's justifiable that she doesn't want to be associated closely with him); the latter is despised by feministas for providing further proof that one can be a "strong woman" without being one of them.
In addition to the Palin-Ferraro contrast, there is an interesting comparison between Ferraro and Obama. Ferraro was practically unknown before Mondale made his inexplicable selection of her; rose to sudden prominence as a consequence of the novelty of having a woman as a major-party's nominee to be vice-president; and, soon after this novelty wore off and the election ended in defeat, returned to nearly her previous level of obscurity. When she was dropped from the Hillary [sic] campaign for daring to state the obvious about the Obama campaign, it marked the first time in almost 24 years that most of the people had heard anything about her. I expect a like outcome for Obama: once he loses the presidential election—and there has never seemed to be much reason for doubt that this will happen, given the public's preference for moderates (McCain) over extremists (Obama, even by Democratic standards)—the media's love affair with him will end as did that between Napoleon and Josephine, and perhaps only a few years from now, he will (as I've stated previosly) be nothing more than the answer to a trivia question.
