ANA MARIE: Good morning.

MEGAN: Hello! I now have coffee brewing, it smells good enough I almost feel like I don't hate the world.

ANA MARIE: I am discussing hotel reward points with other reporters and eating bacon and fruit. THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS.

MEGAN: Bacon is always a part of the breakfast of champions, and I have now determined what I shall be eating once we finish. Porky deliciousness, which is really just a way to bring up Ted Stevens, who Palin has decided should resign.

ANA MARIE: FINALLY. Next, Palin will appoint herself as replacement.

MEGAN: You know that's coming.

ANA MARIE: Though I do not mean to suggest that Obama is inevitable!

MEGAN: Somehow, though, I don't see her having a warm relationship with Senator McCain when she gets there.

ANA MARIE: We on the trail have been discussing whether or not she will even invite McCain to Bristol's wedding — since he is, you know, the reason why she has to get married. In a just world, he'd officiate.

MEGAN: But they love each other! They always planned to get married! I'll bet she invited him for the gift because you know he ain't flying to Alaska.

ANA MARIE: I actually don't mean to be cynical about that. I mean, I am, but on the other hand: I thought I'd marry my high school bf, too.

MEGAN: Me too! True story: remember those machines in the mall that print business cards and invitations? We printed a fake wedding invite one time.

ANA MARIE:Who do you think WILL have a warm relationship with Sen. McCain? Mel Martinez?

MEGAN: Lindsay Graham's love for McCain will never, ever die.

ANA MARIE: No. He will die wearing the wedding dress he picked out.

MEGAN: He will have to be buried in it. I mean, you gotta admit, he does look really fabulous in it.

ANA MARIE: Guy behind me: "The first polls close in six days, nine hours, and two minutes."

MEGAN: Ok, Rainman. And where do polls close at 5:30?

ANA MARIE: West Viriginia? Maybe he's lying. Some kind of elaborate voter fraud project.

MEGAN: Maybe I am just better at math? It's slightly less elaborate than printing up flyers complete with logos and shit to pretend that Election Day has been moved. I mean, really?

ANA MARIE: What, it hasn't? Shit. I was looking forward to collecting more Hilton Honors points. Also, someone tell Mickey Mouse.

MEGAN: Dude, if they moved it to this week, I would totally be okay with that. It's Wednesday and I'm too tired to move to get the coffee I can now smell. I'm so bored I spent 5 minutes reading about Kwame Kilpatrick's cell and sexy texts just to not think about the election any more and then the damn reporters snuck it in there at the end anyway. Bastards.

ANA MARIE: I was watching a zombie movie last night and couldn't help wondering which party they'd vote for. This election has infected my brain.

MEGAN: I think the zombies, like al Qaeda, would want McCain to win, if only because, what with his arms, he seems like one of them. Yeah, I went there.

ANA MARIE: It's okay. It's hard not to.

MEGAN: Oh, and it turns out that Ashley Todd is not a McCain plant trying to turn people against Obama, she's a Ron Paul plant pretending to be a McCain plant trying to turn people against Obama to turn people against McCain. Soooo crazy. She's like the Manchurian Candidate and shit.

ANA MARIE: Personally, I think zombies would vote for Ron Paul!

MEGAN: He would be like the Pied Piper for zombies, I would agree. All that yelling, they'd be really distracted. Bonus points: after they voted, Ron Paul's living supporters could then serve as sustenance for the zombies. Bonus, bonus points: Democrats could finally accuse Republicans of mining the cemeteries of this great nation for voters.

ANA MARIE: There's a "Chicago machine politician" joke in there somewhere but I haven't finished my bacon.

MEGAN: I need a bacon butler in the morning. And a coffee steward.

ANA MARIE: So did Cindy McCain.

MEGAN: But why did she need John McCain?

ANA MARIE: I think the proper emphasis is, "Why did SHE need John McCain?" Or maybe, "Why did she NEED John McCain?" Sorry, that's totally the lack of bacon talking.

MEGAN: I am seriously going to have to go cook some damn bacon when we finish this.

ANA MARIE: Should we talk about Nicolle Wallace and her sexy under the bus pose?

MEGAN: Yes, I think we should. I'm glad she decided to tell Fred Barnes he'd better apologize.

ANA MARIE: She didn't really tell him that, she just busted out the whoop ass.

MEGAN: Which, good for her, make him squeal like the bitch he is. Who says women can't play political hardball? Don't fuck with Nicolle Wallace.

ANA MARIE: Usually it's just Bill Bennett that makes him do that. She's the velvet fist in an iron glove or whatever. (Speaking of Bill Bennett.) What I loved about Nicolle? She set her sights on Fred and did not let him out during that entire interview. SHE INVOLVED HER DOG IN THE MESSAGING. She's scarier than Mark Salter. He would just hurt you.

MEGAN: Did Fred Barnes make her puppy cry? That bastard!

ANA MARIE: Nicolle can DESTROY YOU. (From the interview: "We reached Wallace Monday night, enjoying a rare evening at home with her dog, Lily, who also joined the conversation at one point. "That's Lily protecting me from Fred Barnes," Wallace explained.")

MEGAN: Nicolle should figure out who suggested to Freddie Back that it was all her fault and destroy him. Rick Davis seems like enough of a backstabbing little diva to do it.

ANA MARIE: I think she has some ideas. No one in the press corps does tho... Seriously, favorite game right now is "who would be so stupid as to get on Nicolle's bad side?" Okay you have just made the obvious point that I should have. Davis. Totally. Wanted to do go to Saks himself

MEGAN: Also, let us take on short moment to point out that the purchases were all made by Robocaller extraordinaire Jeff Larson.

ANA MARIE: Who hasn't even denied it!

MEGAN: With whom one imagines Wallace doesn't necessarily work that closely.

ANA MARIE: Here's the other thing: Wallace is a Bushie. She knows how to hide illegal expenses. There would be no RNC disclosure of Wallace purchases. I kid, obviously. Though I only say that because I think she knows how to have me killed.

MEGAN: It does seem pretty junior varsity, I agree. And Nicolle is not JV squad.

ANA MARIE: Hold on. I have to get wanded.

MEGAN: Tell him to do it the sexy way.

ANA MARIE: I've been wanded! Wanded is one of the words I'll miss from the campaign. That and "manifest." As in a staffer telling me, "I'll manifest you." It sounds like one simply APPEARS somewhere.

MEGAN: Manifest destiny is all I can think of when you say that.

ANA MARIE: See, I think of manifestations.

MEGAN: I think I have proved once and for all that I paid way too much attention in class.

ANA MARIE: And I pay too much attention to the SciFi channel.

MEGAN: So, shall we briefly discuss the irony of the woman who wants to change the Constitution to give herself more power if she wins accusing her opponent of wanting to change the Constitution?

ANA MARIE: Do you think Palin would recognize the Constitution if she saw it? Like, the text? Maybe the part about guns...

MEGAN: I'm not sure she would recognize it if it walked up to her on the street Schoolhouse Rock style and slapped her for all the shit she's been talking about it behind its back.

ANA MARIE: But then she would shoot it.

But that's not the only coded language these Conservative queen-makers use in relation to Palin. Kristol referred to her as "my heartthrob" on Fox News in July; Barnes noted that she is “exceptionally pretty"; Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor at the National Review , wrote in a column that Palin is “a former beauty-pageant contestant, and a real honey, too. Am I allowed to say that? Probably not, but too bad.”

As many of her most ardent fans have noticed, Palin is a very attractive woman. And noticing this wouldn't be bad — it would just be human — if it didn't seem that this is her main qualification in the eyes of even her most serious-minded supporters. Kristol, Barnes and Gerson, in discussing why they were so initially enamored with the Governor of Alaska, mentioned her star power, her hockey mom biography, her charisma, and almost as an afterthought, her record as a "reformer," which at this point has been pretty thoroughly debunked (see her troopergate abuse of power and her bridge to nowhere fibs).

It is undeniable that conventional attractiveness, regardless of gender, is a large part of political success; to deny this would be naive. Do you think Barack Obama would have had his meteoric rise to power had he been fifty pounds overweight? Why do you think Mike Huckabee got his lap band, or Biden his hair plugs or Hillary Clinton or McCain their alleged Botox? However, while Obama's looks, oratorial skills and biography, while certainly part of his packaging, are not the sole basis of his rise to prominence.

I spent the better part of yesterday thinking about Sarah Palin and what she means to women. After my initial rage over the choice of a severely anti-choice, anti-intellectual, theocratic woman subsided, I have tried to think about the ways the choice of Palin could be construed as a positive. She is a self-proclaimed feminist, and even though many people may think she doesn't qualify as one, the mere fact that she embraces a term that so many young women shun is important. I also decided that Palin's prominence could be a boon for little girls. Perhaps the next generation will be more inclined to join the political fray after seeing a woman so easily glide onto the Presidential ticket.

Then, last night, I read that John McCain announced on Fox News that he picked Palin, in part, as a counter to the "liberal feminist agenda," and I found my first claim deflating. McCain is trying to take a place of common ground that women might have with Palin — that we all call ourselves feminists — and make the word into something even more divisive than it already is. I suppose in the Republican party there is only one proper way to be a feminist, and that's to be pretty and pro-life.

This morning, I watched a few videos on Newsweek from the magazine's Women In Leadership conference, and was struck by the comments of former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers. "As long as human beings are sexual, and as long as attraction remains one of the dynamics that define life, you're never going to totally eliminate that. What you can do, is, one, women have to be conscious of it, because if you don't take it off the table, it becomes a distraction." Myers went on to talk about how Hillary Clinton purposely looked almost exactly the same every day — the same hairdo and pantsuits — so that people would not comment on her looks, they'd talk about what she had to say. When Palin winks and flirts with the audience during a debate and wears black, high-heeled patent leather boots to political rallies, it's impossible not to notice these things, and it's also impossible to argue that these actions don't become part of the conversation.

And this is what worries me about Palin's legacy to young girls. I don't think we should ever require female politicians to be asexual or unfeminine. The point of feminism is that you should be able to present yourself in whatever way you please along the spectrum. However, if a male politician were winking and mugging at the camera the way that Palin does, I would find it equally unprofessional. And I worry that when young women see Sarah Palin, they think, "I too can have a meteoric rise to power... as long as I'm also a beauty queen."

"Women are judged more harshly if they're not pretty," Myers says in her Newsweek video. "That's something we've all had to live with since junior high." Which is not to say that Palin does not possess other gifts. I think she is incredibly ambitious and savvy, though these things are not part of her public persona. She has always masked her ambition, something often seen as unfeminine, behind folksy talk and faux humility, like when she said, "I never really set out to be in public affairs, much less to run for this office."

But Myers also notes that people are given genetic gifts unequally, and while Palin's looks are an advantage for her, so were Bill Clinton's charisma and Barack Obama's intellect. Again, this would not be a problem if Palin had the political knowledge to back up her very carefully constructed and gilded image. Myers did say something heartening, though. "One woman can't change a culture, but if there are more women there can be a critical mass. If there's only one woman, the culture changes the woman." I think Palin alone will not be able to personally change a generation of women. But hopefully the combined impact of Clinton, Palin, Pelosi will inspire a critical mass.

The Insiders [The New Yorker]
Among Rock-Ribbed Fans of Palin, Dudes Rule [NYT]
McCain: Palin Is A Counter To The "Liberal Feminist Agenda" [Feministing]
"Palin's Looks Do Help Her" [Newsweek]

Earlier: Palin Dudes: "Proud To Be Voting For The Hot Chick"