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2 Puritan or Pit Bull The Framing of Female Candidates at the National Level Linda Beail and Rhonda Kinney Longworth Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy garnered tremendous levels of interest, polarizing the American public. From the day John McCain chose her as his running mate, much of what has been written about Palin has focused on discovering who she “really” is: establishing her credentials, exploring her issue positions , or predicting her political future. Is she smart enough to govern? Are her policy positions or familial situations hypocritical? Will she run for president? But perhaps more interesting than defining who Sarah Palin is would be analyzing why she touches such a nerve with the American electorate. Why does she ignite such passionate loyalty—and such loathing? How did her candidacy mobilize new parts of the electorate? Using the notion of “framing” popularized by George Lakoff, we explain and analyze the narratives told by and about Sarah Palin in the 2008 election: she is simultaneously understood and debated as a frontier woman, hockey mom, ordinary citizen and political outsider, maverick reformer, beauty queen, and postfeminist role model.1 We explore where those frames are rooted historically in popular and political culture, why they were selected, and how they resonated with the electorate. Finally, we discuss what the choices and perceptions of these frames tell us about American politics and the status of American women within that arena. As Lakoff notes, “Frames are the cognitive structures we think with.”2 Simple narrative structures with archetypal characters and events help us categorize new information into familiar stories that make sense to us: for example, a “rescue” narrative involving a hero who triumphs over some evil misdeed of a villain to save an innocent victim.3 Invoking these story frames is less a conscious, deliberate choice than the unconscious work of neural binding in our brains. And 25 26 Linda Beail and Rhonda Kinney Longworth these schemas are not merely cognitive; they carry emotional content as well.4 Thus frames powerfully structure the way we react to political events and why they matter to us. According to Lakoff, “Politics is very much about cultural narratives. For candidates it is about the stories they have lived and are living, the stories they tell about themselves, the stories the opposition tries to pin on them, and the stories the press tells about them. But in a deeper sense, politics is about the narratives our culture and our circumstances make available to all of us to live. . . . Cultural narratives define our possibilities, challenges and actual lives.”5 Research conducted over the last two decades demonstrates that while some frames succeed and others fail, in general “framing effects have the potential to fundamentally shape public opinion.”6 Psychologist Drew Westen concurs, stressing the importance of “networks of associations, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images and ideas that have become connected over time.”7 The metaphors and stories that are most influential appeal to our emotional and moral sensibilities. Westen’s work urges Democrats, perhaps too focused on the rational merits of particular issue positions, to take note of the more savvy ways Republicans have couched their proposals in language and stories that connect with voters’ hearts and values: “Political persuasion is about networks and narratives.”8 These narratives also create the criteria by which citizens judge which political information matters, because “frames influence not only what people think and feel about an issue but what they don’t think about.”9 Thus the frames we employ help us to focus on some factors as extremely important while discarding other aspects as not relevant. The Gendered Context of Elections Female candidates have had to think carefully and strategically about how they frame themselves for the voting public. We know that the public perceives candidates differently according to their sex. Just as party labels serve as cues for voters to assume information about a candidate in the absence of full information , a candidate’s gender is used to infer certain personality traits and leadership strengths.10 Psychological studies show widespread agreement about the division of personality traits ascribed predominantly to men and those attributed to women. A typical woman is seen as warm, sensitive to others, compassionate, and kind, whereas a typical man is viewed as decisive, self-reliant, willing to take risks, and assertive.11 Men and women in the political sphere are not immune to such stereotypes. Both survey data and experimental studies of hypothetical candidates dem- [3.143...

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