I just got back from Canada, where they're having, in the words of the Torono free weekly "24 Hours", an "envy election." While the candidates debate over who will get into the debates, and growl over commercials showing puffins pooping on Liberal Leader Stephine Dion (Imagine having a moose shit on Obama on a commercial). I began to remember a precident from long ago, the first woman to be Prime Minister of Canada and how she fared. Avril Phaedra Campbell was known as "Kim" to most people, and her history is most instructive to current situation.
On New Years' Eve 1987, Kim Campbell was washed up. The former Vancouver school board vice chair had managed to get elected to a seat in the British Columbia Provincial legislature as the junior member of a two person district (she got less than 25% of the vote), and wasn't doing very well. Her marriage wasn't working out all that well either. The way things were going, the 41 year old lawyer it was all downhill from here.
She decided to make a change. So she got in touch with the local Progressive Conservative club and managed to wangle her self a nomination for a seat in the federal parliament which was extremely marginal. In 1988 there was an election, and to the surprise of many, actualy won, although the PCs won nationally in a landslide of sorts.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney gave her a job handling "aboriginal affairs" for a couple of years, and when he saw she was one of those who was slightly competent and good looking, made her Attorney General and Minister of Justice, a post she held for three years. She was remembered for being a hard ass, mostly for her treatment of David Milgaard, who was an innocent man convicted of rape and murder. His getting out of jail was an embarrassment, Mulroney responded by giving her a new job, Minister of Defense. Then, with a popularity rating in the single digits, the prime minister decided to resign. Kim Campbell, decided to run, and decided to ditch all that useless baggage, like her husband. With the excitement of the first Female Prime Minister in the offing, she won. She was on top of the world and had a huge bounce in the polls, so she had the Governor General dissolve parliament and proceeded to run the worst campaign in the history of Western Democracy.
She attacked her main opponent's deformity, she made a whole bunch of pointless attacks, and she dropped in the polls like a rock. She went from a majority to two seats and neither of them were hers. She literally went from Head of Government of a major country to unemployed with nowhere to live in three months.
The hooplah over Sarah Louise Palin is ephemeral too. The election isn't about her and the debates haven't started yet. She'll wind up somewhat better than Kim Campbell, she's still the governor of a state.
An epilogue: out of pity, her successor made Kim Consul General in Los Angeles, She now lives in Paris, France, being one of two former G8 leaders (the other being former Italian premier Bettino Craxi) living in exile.