Palin, Bachmann 'All Wow,' No Substance

Hillary Clinton proved in 2008 that a serious female politician can have a "wow factor," writes Gail Collins. Clinton's transformation "from a perfectly-fine-but-slightly-boring presidential candidate to a really terrific campaigner" came too late to save her own bid for high office, but it gave Collins hope for the next wave of women in politics. Then she watched the Sarah Palin-Michele Bachmann rally in Minnesota and lost that hope.

"The problem is that they’re all wow and no substance," she writes in the New York Times. Meanwhile, sensible female politicians like Martha Coakley and Kay Bailey Hutchison "actually seemed to get more boring" and got drubbed in their respective elections. "There’s a feeling abroad that politicians can only get attention by sounding a little nutty," laments Collins. "I am rethinking my opposition to boring campaigns."
(More Sarah Palin stories.)