"Mrs. Palin, who supports and apparently even participates in such cruel and barbaric a practice as hunting wolves by chasing them in airplanes to the point of exhaustion, and then shooting them, did not endear herself to the causes many women espouse."

The United States has once again made history, and this time not in the cruel and despicable manner that is its usual custom. With the election of African-American Barack Obama as president, a new milestone has been reached. Mr. Obama becomes president when the nation faces some of the most difficult times in its long and sullied history: economic disaster on the brink of depression; two unnecessary and immoral wars that are going badly for the U.S. (as they should be); the country’s international reputation in tatters due to its wars and torturing of political prisoners; 47,000,000 citizens without health care. And the list could go on.

Mr. Obama’s achievement is significant, but one must not lose sight of an important footnote. His main opponent for the Democratic nomination was none other than the formidable former First Lady and New York Senator (now Secretary of State) Hillary Rodham Clinton. Never before has a woman come so close to her party’s nomination and, with an opponent who was nearly a clone of the immensely unpopular President George Bush, she surely would have been elected, becoming the first female U.S. president, had Mr. Obama not chosen to run.

On the Republican side, it was business as usual right up to the convention. A gaggle of rich white men battled each other for the nomination, with the nominee finally being the elderly Arizona Senator John McCain, who financed many of his early campaigns through the largess of his second wife’s ample purse. He then attempted to maintain his image as a maverick (whichever public relations firm came up with that one is certainly creative, if not too bright) and selected as his running mate one Sarah Palin.

The selection was astonishing; Mrs. Palin, it turns out, was two years into her first term as governor of Alaska. She had apparently used the mayor’s office of Wasilla, Alaska (population 6,000) where she served a few terms, as the springboard to the governor’s office. Her appearance at the convention galvanized the delegates, as they heard her predict how she would bring into the Republican fold 18,000,000 voters who had chosen Mrs. Clinton during the primary season.

It wasn’t long, however, before the hapless Mrs. Palin began alienating all but the most rabid of the rabid right wing. Her misstatements, lack of experience, poor answers to questions (if she bothered to answer them at all) soon sent even Republican moderates running to cast their votes for Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s gamble did not pay off.

One must wonder what it was he was thinking when he selected a gun-toting, barely literate, one-term governor of a sparsely populated state to stand in as his possible successor should he be elected president and not survive his term. Did he, as Mrs. Palin said in her acceptance speech, really believe that Hillary voters would vote Republican because there was a woman on the ticket?

There are certain basic precepts that apparently Mr. McCain did not understand, and it is unlikely that he has learned them since his electoral defeat.

1) Senator Clinton was popular not because she was a woman, so just any woman on the ticket would not do. Mrs. Clinton, as a senator and presidential candidate, supported many of the liberal causes consistent with the wishes of at least 18,000,000 voters: an end to the war in Iraq; universal health care; respect for the Geneva Conventions, etc. In addition, she brought with her the experience of having been a most unique First Lady (for better or for worse; that is a topic for another discussion), having travelled the world and met all the world’s major leaders, and had served in the U.S. senate for eight years, representing a state with a population exceeding 11,000,000.

2) Mrs. Palin, who supports and apparently even participates in such cruel and barbaric a practice as hunting wolves by chasing them in airplanes to the point of exhaustion, and then shooting them, did not endear herself to the causes many women espouse. Her opposition to abortion, gay rights, and her unqualified support for the war in Iraq, along with her assertion that God wanted a pipeline built across Alaska, turned many voters away from her. Having obtained her first passport in 2007, she could hardly match Mrs. Clinton’s international expertise.

3) Further, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Palin apparently felt that only women voted for Senator Clinton, and their allegiance would easily be transferred to any other woman. They neglected to consider that many men favored Mrs. Clinton’s policies.

Once the conventions were over, and the Obama-Biden ticket faced off against the McCain-Palin ticket, more stark differences became evident, and Mr. McCain’s lack of understanding became clearer. Mrs. Palin relied on the ignorance of some potential voters to fan the flames of racial prejudice, asking repeatedly if the voters indeed knew enough about Mr. Obama. It was hinted darkly from the right that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim (why this raised so much concern among the right wing remains a mystery), and therefore had some hidden agenda for the U.S., despite the fact that Mr. Obama has always been a Christian. Yet the fear card, played so well by President Bush, was tried with less success by the GOP this time around. At campaign stops when Mr. Obama’s name was mentioned by Mr. McCain and was met with shouts of ‘Kill him’, even Mr. McCain’s feeble efforts to calm the crowd brought only jeers to the Republican candidate himself.

It did not take long for one to tire of hearing about ‘Joe the Plumber,’ or ‘Elsie the Waitress,’ and all the other non-surnamed people Mrs. Palin seemed to know. She and Mr. McCain attempted to play, and did so with only limited success, to their limited core of conservatives. But even here they lost many, as when conservative author and journalist Christopher Buckley endorsed Mr. Obama. Joe, Elsie and the rest may have voted Republican, but their votes were insufficient to deliver the election.

The politics of fear and division, so long practiced to perfection by the GOP, did not work this time around; one hopes, without really expecting it, that those days are over. It was only four years ago that Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from his service in Vietnam, was defeated due to his opponent’s accusations questioning his patriotism. In 2008, Mr. Obama’s patriotism was questioned because he did not wear an American flag lapel pin. That such a ridiculous accusation caused barely a ripple anywhere outside of the most conservative enclaves in the U.S. seems to show some progress.

The lesson the decimated Republican Party is now struggling to learn is how to broaden its appeal in the wake of two consecutive elections in which its members were trounced. The lessons appear obvious to some, but in the interest of assisting a party which lacks a host, much less very many guests, here are some suggestions:

1) Stop moralizing. The Republican Party cannot dictate the actions of all U.S. citizens, simply because of its own belief in its own righteousness. Accept the fact, one that the Democrats have somewhat clumsily embraced, that the U.S. is indeed a pluralistic society. For example, there is room in that party for those who support and oppose a women’s right to choose. In the GOP, unless one is an ardent opponent of abortion, one need not apply for membership.

2) On the international scene, act by consensus and not decree. Again, an end to pious and hypocritical moralizing will go a long way to bringing people into the fold. Supporting the immoral invasion of Iraq, and then criticizing the Russian invasion of Georgia, only shows a partisan inconsistency. Stop doing it.

3) Remember that not only the wealthy vote. It is difficult for many people, at least those who have not become too fearful because of being continually told that some terrorist attack is imminent (orange alerts, etc.), to vote for a candidate who is not aware that people like them exist. For example, most voters, unlike Mr. McCain, know how many houses they own. Also most voters, again unlike Mr. McCain, have not procured their financial security by marrying an heiress. The GOP should remember that the privileged status of so many of its leaders is not available to the average voter.

These are hard lessons for a party that is run by rich white males, and into which females (usually but not always white) are only invited to positions of prominence when doing so is thought to enhance the stature of the white males in charge. One can say what one will about Mrs. Clinton and the spineless, self-aggrandizing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; they are still women in powerful positions who may or may not be liked by Democratic men, but who maintain their powerful positions nonetheless.

Perhaps the election of Mr. Obama and the nearly successful campaign of Mrs. Clinton signal a change in U.S. society. Perhaps, finally, there will be less attention paid to the race or gender of a candidate, and more to his or her experience and positions. Voters studied Mrs. Palin’s experience and positions, and ran from her like rats from a sinking ship. They reviewed Mrs. Clinton’s record, and voted for her in large numbers, although not large enough to defeat Mr. Obama. His gifted rhetoric and reasonable positions on so many of the concerns of the average voter paid a far larger role in his election than did his race.

One looks forward with optimism, tempered with a large dose of skepticism, to the next four years. Indeed, the next ninety days should foreshadow what those years will bring. Mr. Obama is in a unique position to continue to make history, as he attempts to bring order to the chaos that Mr. Bush fostered, and tries to unite a divided country whose very divisions enabled the corrupt Mr. Bush to run roughshod over the Constitution, Geneva Conventions and the basic rights the U.S. is supposed to represent. His task is daunting; his promise great. Time will tell if he is able to live up to that promise.

Robert Fantina is author of Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776 - 2006.