Chris Satullo: Hard to figure whom Palin will attract

Sarah Palin sounds like a really neat person.

Her decision to give birth to her son Trig, knowing that he had Down syndrome, was brave and admirable.

And I've always believed that, in evaluating political candidates, experience may be important, but innate qualities trump it.

So, until America gets a better chance to watch, hear and take the measure of this bolt-from-the-white running mate of John McCain, we should refrain from judging whether Palin makes a plausible vice president.

But this I can say right now: Politically, I don't get this choice.

The notion, apparently, is that Palin will appeal to any women still seething over how their champion, Hillary Rodham Clinton, slammed her noggin into a glass ceiling named Obama.

Really? The poignancy of Clinton's primary failure was that she'd worked so long and hard, done so much, mastered so many issues, prepared so well - still to be denied. She was the woman whom no one could fairly call unready. Her loss then spoke to the experience of so many women in the workaday world.

Palin? Every story about her since McCain stunned the nation Friday mentions that Palin was, in her youth, a beauty queen. OK, cue in grumbling about the unregenerate sexism of the political press, but here's the problem:

Conservative male voters have told pollsters for years they weren't comfortable with the idea of a woman as commander in chief.

So why expect them to vote for a woman who two years ago was mayor of a town of about 8,000?

The answer, whispered but unmistakable: "Yeah, but she's hot!" She has no foreign-policy experience, has barely traveled overseas. "Yeah, but she's hot!" She gets mixed reviews from politicians in her own party in Alaska. "Yeah, but she's hot!"

As for women who supported Clinton, I just can't see them easily switching allegiance from their dogged feminist hero to someone they may well view as an arriviste prom queen.

Then there are Palin's views. Now, not every voter totes up issue stands as dutifully as journalists tend to imagine. The literature of political science is rich in evidence that many American voters make their choices viscerally, illogically. Some Clinton fans are just in the mood for reckless revenge against Barack Obama, I suppose.

But still: Are most women who love Hillary Clinton really going to slide over to a woman who is stoutly antiabortion, pro-gun and pro-drilling? In other words, to someone for whom Clinton herself would not vote even if it meant her huge debt to Mark Penn were to be canceled. Isn't it insulting to assume they will?

Palin's status as a mother of five, with a special-needs baby, produces swirling currents that are hard to chart. Liberal feminists will bristle at any suggestion that her maternal duties would detract from her public service, but how many of them will vote GOP anyway? I'm wondering more about social conservatives. How can that thought not trouble them?

From Phyllis Schlafly on, this unresolved contradiction has lain at the heart of the conservative family values argument: Women are supposed to focus on hearth and family, to put nurture ahead of professional ambition - but the publicized advocates of that position tend to be women of considerable fame and attainment.

So, now we have a mother of five, one an infant, who will uphold family values by leaving her children for long swaths of time to campaign for the No. 2 job in the entire nation.

Shouldn't that work against her appeal to the socially conservative base?

Maybe not, but that would just show how deep the hypocrisy runs in those quarters.

Another irony watch: Each campaign is supposedly dying to appeal to no-nonsense, working-class voters, people who roll their eyes at effete coastal elitists. On each side, this was supposedly a big part of the running-mate calculation.

OK, have you gotten a load yet of the names that Joe Biden and Sarah Palin gave their children?

Biden's kids are Beau, Hunter and Ashley. Palin's are Track, Bristol, Piper, Willow and Trig.

Whatever happened to Bob or Dave or Nick? Can I find a Jenny, a Tiffany or a Jane somewhere?

They're all wonderful kids, I'm sure, but their names seem drawn from the index of The Preppie Handbook.