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October 19, 2008
Among Rock-Ribbed Fans of Palin, Dudes Rule
By MARK LEIBOVICH
BANGOR, Me. — It is not unusual for fans of Sarah Palin to shout out to the Alaska governor in the midst of her stump speeches. It is noteworthy, however, that the crowds are heavily male.
“You rock me out, Sarah,” yelled one man, wearing a red-checked hunting jacket as Ms. Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, strode into an airplane hangar here on Thursday. He held a homemade “Dudes for Sarah” sign and wore a National Rifle Association hat. Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” blared over the loudspeakers, and the man even danced a little — yes, a guy in an N.R.A. hat dancing in a hangar, kind of a Sarah Palin rally thing.
“I feel like I’m at home,” Ms. Palin said, looking out at a boisterous crowd of about 6,000. “I see the Carhartts and the steel-toed boots,” she said, the first reference being to a clothing brand favored by construction workers and the burly types who make up much of the “Sarah Dude” population. “You guys are great,” she said while signing autographs.
Guys think Ms. Palin is great, too, or at least many of those who come to hear her. They sometimes go to extraordinary lengths. “I woke up at 2 a.m. so I could get my work done before 6 and get here by 7,” said Mike Spencer, a chef from Dexter, Me. Mr. Spencer waited in the chilly hangar — in a “Nobama” T-shirt — for almost three hours.
At the height of Palinmania, soon after she made her national debut in September, Ms. Palin’s popularity among men was striking. Her favorability ratings were higher among men than women (44 percent to 36 percent), according to a New York Times poll, even though she was chosen in part because of her expected appeal to women. Since then, Ms. Palin has endured a tough month politically, and her favorability ratings have dropped among both sexes, but more so among men (down 13 points, to 31 percent in the latest Times poll.)
She has been widely attacked, even by a growing number of conservatives, as being essentially unserious and uncurious. “She doesn’t think aloud. She just ...says things,” the Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote Friday. “She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation.”
All the while, Ms. Palin’s stoutest defenders are often the Joe Sixpacks in her crowds, who shrug off her critics, ridiculers and perceived adversaries in the news media. They say they appreciate Ms. Palin for, above all else, how “real” and “like us” she is.
“Katie Couric and Tina Fey are going to do their thing, but it doesn’t bother me at all,” said Rob McLain, an insurance agent from Avon, Ind., who attended a packed Palin rally at an amphitheatre in Indiana on Friday night. Mr. McLain wore a “Proud to be voting for a hot chick” button and was joined by his wife, Shannan (“Read my lipstick” button on lapel), and his 6-week-old son, Jaxon (“Nobama” button on beanie).
“The criticism is part of the process,” Mr. McLain said, adding of Ms. Palin, “Who can’t trust a mother?”
The testosterone flows at many of her events. Head-banging guitar chords greet her: she entered a fund-raiser in North Carolina on Thursday to the decidedly un-dainty chords of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” “That was kinda cool,” she marveled from the stage. Everyone laughed. The event raised $800,000.
While there are plenty of women, including wives and daughters of male fans, at Ms. Palin’s appearances, they acknowledge they are outnumbered. “This is not a ladies campaign,” declared Linda Teegan at a rally in Weirs Beach, N.H., on Wednesday. She was taking a crowd snapshot. “There seem to be lots and lots of guys here,” she said. “I’d guess 70-30, maybe 65-35, men to women. It’s quite noticeable to me.”
The dudes tend to make themselves noticed. “You tell ’em baby,” a man yelled out at a rally Wednesday night on a high school football field in Salem, N.H.
And Ms. Palin tells ’em, peppering her rallies with references to guy-themed stuff — hunting, fishing, hockey. She introduced her husband, Todd, as Alaska’s First Dude.
“He is a guy who knows how to work with his hands,” she said to loud applause.
Her recent events drew scruffy high-schoolers in backward baseball caps, tank-topped bikers in bandanas and long-bearded veterans in berets. They crashed the rope line for photos and autographs. “Marry me, Sarah,” a man implored in Weirs Beach, N.H., while Ms. Palin held up a tow-headed toddler and patted his little chest. She ignored, or didn’t hear, the proposal, but signed the dude’s ratty baseball cap.
Yes, some men come to ogle the candidate, too. “She’s beautiful,” said a man wearing a John Deere T-shirt in Weirs Beach. “I came here to look at her,” he said, and his admiration for Ms. Palin’s appearance became more and more animated. Sheepish over his ogling, he declined to give his real name (“Just call me ‘John Deere’ ”).
But some male fans do seem to feel a deeper connection to Ms. Palin. To a surprising degree, they mention the unusual nature of her candidacy, the chance to make history, break the glass ceiling.
“They bear us children, they risk their lives to give us birth, so maybe it’s time we let a woman lead us,” said Larry Hawkins, a former truck driver attending a rally late Thursday at Elon University in North Carolina. Mr. Hawkins said he would rather vote for Ms. Palin than for “McCain and Obama combined.”
Men have done plenty to mess up the country, he said. “The sexual drives and big egos of male leaders have gotten in the way of politics in this country.” Mr. Hawkins said he talked to fellow truckers, and a lot of them feel the same way. “They think it’s time for a woman, too,” he said. “This one. Palin is our kind of woman.”
There is a kind of “conservative feminism” here, and several men cite the appeal of Ms. Palin as a can-do caretaker. She can be glimpsed lugging an overstuffed bag of books, papers and baby supplies onto her plane and bottle feeding her infant son, Trig.
“I love the idea of someone like her being allowed into the White House,” said Matt Cude, who drove three-hours to Weirs Beach from Jericho, Vt. It would be “absolutely fantastic,” he said, both for women and for the country.
Mr. Cude brought along his teenage daughter, Kate, who was holding a copy of National Review, with Ms. Palin on the cover. Kate made her way to the front of a rope line and asked Ms. Palin to sign it. Ms. Palin did so, signing her name in large letters across the headline, which said, “The One.”
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