Whether Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin prevail over the Democratic ticket—Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden—Palin’s legacy to this presidential campaign may be the fundamental workforce issue she raises this fall: Can a working mother occupy the second-highest office in the country?

It’s one of many HR issues she’s bringing to the fore. One of the most popular adjectives that Palin supporters use to describe her is “authentic.” She embodies a biography to which many working women can relate.

She rose from the PTA in Wasilla, Alaska, to the top of state government. She managed a family of five while holding down tough jobs along the way.

Palin is hardly a hero to all women. Fervent backers of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are rejecting this conservative usurper who threatens to break the glass ceiling that they believe is Clinton’s divine right to shatter.

What’s interesting, though, is that questions about Palin’s ability to balance work and family have arisen across the political spectrum. Ironically, the strongest support for her on this issue has come from the family-values folks in the right wing. Conventional wisdom says that they might favor women staying at home.

The whirlwind of topsy-turvy gender politics gusted when former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani—the macho former federal prosecutor who sent mob bosses to jail—gave the most stirring defense of Palin.

“How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president,” he said in his convention speech Wednesday, September 3. “When do they ever ask a man that question?”

That’s true. And the societal norm of separating home and work life isn’t about to change, according to Paul Rupert, president of Rupert & Co., a flexibility-consulting firm in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Workplace demands are pretty much the same today as they were when Palin was born in the mid-1960s.

“You go to work and you leave your family behind,” he says. “Those attitudes flow from the top of the organizations.”

Women have migrated into the workforce out of economic necessity. “This is the greatest transfer of family time in our history from the home to the office,” Rupert says. “Direct parental care has become a casualty of that change.”

Flexible work arrangements such as telecommuting, compressed workweeks and part-time work “always register in the top three or four of any survey of employee desires,” Rupert says.

But those kinds of adjustments remain out of the question at the top of the corporate food chain. If you’re in the C-suite, you’re supposed to give everything you have to the company.

A female senior HR executive at a pharmaceutical company told Rupert that she broke the glass ceiling only because she had a stay-at-home husband and a chauffeur.

Now Palin is proposing to take her family—infant son, pregnant teenage daughter and everyone in between—with her into the ultimate C-suite, the West Wing of the White House.

The working-mom debate will rage throughout the fall.

“Can you create a position that truly allows people to integrate parenting and their work?” Rupert asks. “This issue is a vital one to engage—to debate, discuss and ultimately resolve. She’s in a unique position to lay down a marker.”

Even in an exciting and unpredictable election year, Sen. John McCain’s choice for running mate was a stunning pivot in his campaign—one that could make HR issues more prominent in the race.

McCain, who will formally become the GOP presidential nominee later this week, had been gaining ground on Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama by emphasizing what he called his superior experience and readiness for office.

Although they are assumed to be drawbacks, McCain’s age, 72, and more than 20 years in the Senate are a potential comfort to people uneasy with the young Obama, 47, who remains largely undefined after nearly four years in the Senate and several in the Illinois state Legislature.

But McCain must have decided that the experience tack would provide ephemeral benefits. Instead, he concluded that the election will be decided on “change.”

So, he plucked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin out of relative obscurity and thrust her into the national spotlight. McCain says that Palin’s record of reforming the Alaskan government and the state’s GOP would give him an ideal vice president and partner to shake up Washington.

McCain hopes Palin energizes his “change” brand and makes it harder for Obama to cast McCain as a continuation of the Bush administration. Palin, 44, is now the fresh face and untested wild card in the race, not Obama.

One way she could change the campaign for Workforce Management readers is being a touchstone for HR topics. First, there is the issue of readiness to be president.

Just as corporate boards parse the background of potential CEOs, voters will have to decide whether Palin is prepared to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Republicans argue that Palin’s 20 months as Alaska governor give her more executive seasoning than Obama. In addition, she has hands-on experience dealing with energy policy—one of the top campaign issues—thanks to her service on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Democrats decry her lack of foreign policy background, even though Obama’s introduction to the subject has consisted of his brief Senate career—about half of which he has spent running for president.

But in fairness to Obama and Palin, a thin résumé in world affairs is a canard. Washington has a deep bench of foreign policy experts. Neither will be on their own trying to figure out policy toward Russia.

Plenty of brilliant minds currently working at Washington think tanks or in the State Department would jump at the chance to join Palin’s VP staff or Obama’s national security team. Palin and Obama won’t lack for foreign policy tutors, especially if you count all the members of Congress who will weigh in. It will be up to them to use their best judgment on the advice they get.

Foreign policy was not on McCain’s mind when he selected Palin. In part, he was making a pitch for disaffected supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and for unaligned suburban women.

It’s unclear whether Palin will inspire those women to vote for McCain. But she almost certainly will cause Obama to focus even more on women’s issues than he was going to anyway.

In an effort to strengthen his ties to the Clinton Nation, look for Obama to emphasize legislation providing for equal pay, paid sick days and paid time off. He will assert that McCain and Palin are detrimental to working women.

Although Palin is even more conservative than McCain, her biography throws a curve into the HR debate. She will probably oppose legislation that Obama touts. But she also brings a perspective that Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, lack.

Palin is a walking women’s focus group to whom almost any HR professional can relate. She is a working mother who not only returned to the office shortly after giving birth, but she will be doing her job remotely much of the time—running Alaska via BlackBerry and cell phone while she campaigns in the lower 48.

Palin’s is a two-income family dealing with a health care challenge (her infant son has Down syndrome) and a wayward teen (her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant). She had to break several glass ceilings in her rapid climb to the top of Alaskan politics. But she also is defined by a traditional workplace affiliation—her husband is in a union and she once belonged to one.

Obama calls himself a Rorschach test. Everyone sees in him what they want to see. Palin is more a reflection of everyday working women. They can see in her some part of themselves.

It’s likely that HR issues will be refracted through the Palin prism this fall.

If you were playing a drinking game while watching the Democratic National Convention this week and had to take a swig of alcohol every time a speaker uttered the word “change,” you would get plastered each night. Your hangover would last until well into the Republican National Convention next week.

Democrats are promising the most change in health care. In her rousing speech on Tuesday, August 26, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, assuaged supporters disappointed that she didn’t win the presidential nomination by promising them that Sen. Barack Obama, the soon-to-be Democratic standard-bearer, would usher in universal health care if he is elected president.

One expert in Washington cautions against such optimism. Paul Hewitt, executive director of Americans for Generational Equity, a group that promotes entitlement reform, says Obama would likely get hamstrung by Democratic majorities in Congress.

They will prevent him from making the compromises necessary to enact legislation that will undoubtedly require a lot of complex negotiations. In the same way that it took a conservative president—Richard Nixon—to open relations with China in the early 1970s, it could take a conservative president today—John McCain—to make headway on an intractable domestic issue.

“Our best hope for health reform is McCain,” Hewitt says. “A Democratic Congress is going to tie Obama’s hands. If you’re going to broker the deal, you are going to get a lot of your partisans mad.”

McCain has the advantage in that sense. The conservative Republican base is perpetually upset with him because he has made a career of compromising with Democrats on major legislation. If he wins the presidency, he’s less beholden to conservatives than ever.

McCain could cobble together a majority in favor of health care reform by combining at least one-third of the GOP congressional caucus with enough Democrats to get over the top, Hewitt says.

I took advantage of the quiet in Washington this week to meet Paul for lunch. He is a novel thinker and straight shooter, a combination that is sometimes difficult to find in Washington.

Full disclosure: Paul is a former colleague of mine. He headed the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies when I was the think tank’s director of communications.

Entitlement reform will define the next president’s term, Hewitt says. The favorable demographic trends—e.g., more U.S. workers than retirees—that allowed political parties to squabble mindlessly over health care and Social Security for the last 25 years have dissipated. Copping out by cutting taxes while increasing entitlement spending was possible in the past.

With baby boomers potentially retiring in droves, hard choices now face President Obama or President McCain. Currently, health care spending accounts for 17 percent of U.S. economic output. The health care bite is set to grow to 30 percent of GDP by 2030.

Bringing down those numbers, Hewitt says, can’t be done by a policy that is being embraced by Obama—raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

“In order to solve the problem, we’re going to have to create new wealth,” Hewitt says. “The only way you can create new wealth is by not beggaring the people who make it. You cannot means-test your way or progressively tax your way to a solution. You’re going to have to go after the households getting benefits or their kids.”

He also recommends raising the eligibility age for entitlements. He also backs reducing the amount of money paid to doctors and eliminating their incentive to run more tests to increase revenue.

If raising taxes becomes central to health care reform, Hewitt says that could eventually undermine support for Obama from one of his strongest constituencies—young people in college or who have recently graduated.

Earlier this summer, Hewitt hosted a Capitol Hill summit on entitlement reform featuring about 100 young leaders.

“When you present them with the facts, they make some pretty tough calls,” Hewitt says. “Obama is going to be confronted by a group, if they focus on [entitlement reform], that is going to set themselves in opposition to a core Democratic strategy for the last 30 years, which is pandering to senior citizens.”

The supremely confident, aggressive and impatient Generation Y could blanch at the soaring costs of caring for geriatric baby boomers. “They’re going to resist having the benefits of their college education taxed away,” Hewitt says.

Either Obama or McCain is going to inherit a tough job.

One of the most disheartening aspects of politics today is the way that many officeholders (or aspirants for office) in both parties have demonized immigration—and by extension globalization.

There’s a strong bipartisan trend toward “securing the borders first.” The problem is that the conversation is not getting too far beyond that notion.

Yes, the United States is a nation based on the rule of law. We have to uphold our statutes, especially as they apply to citizenship. But rhetoric on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail makes it sound as if immigrants enervate our country rather than strengthen it.

During the past two weeks, the Olympics have shown why we should take deep pride in our country’s history of welcoming people from all over the world and making them part of the American fabric.

Like many of you, I have been captivated by the performances of Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin in women’s gymnastics. But the indelible Olympic moment for me was not one of Johnson’s powerful moves on the balance beam or her winsome good sportsmanship as she interacted with her opponents.

What stood out was the interview she conducted with Bob Costas on NBC after she captured the gold medal in the balance beam competition. She mentioned that she had to fight off an upset stomach and headache before the beam event, which was her last chance to grab the gold. She was exhausted from pushing herself to the limit up to that point.

Johnson credited her coach, Liang Chow, for helping her through the ordeal and inspiring her to give a championship effort. Liang was sitting next to Johnson on the couch in the TV studio. But at the moment, he was literally right at home. He grew up in Beijing.

Liang and Johnson met in West Des Moines, Iowa, when Johnson walked into his gymnastics club as a 6-year-old. Liang nurtured her talent and has helped Johnson become one of the best gymnasts in the world.

But one of the few places in the world where such an encounter could occur is in the United States. We are the country that uniquely welcomes people to come here and excel in their chosen field.

The U.S. gymnastics workforce has benefited greatly from our country’s open arms. Seated at the end of the couch during Johnson’s interview was Bela Karolyi, the former U.S. coach who guided Mary Lou Retton to her outstanding Olympic achievements in 1984.

Before coming to America and taking Retton to the top of the Olympic world, Karolyi coached the first “rock star” of women’s gymnastics—Nadia Comaneci, a gold medalist in 1976. Karolyi and Comaneci are both Romanian.

Karolyi defected to the United States in 1981. Now his wife, Martha, is the coordinator of USA Gymnastics. There was something deeply moving about Karolyi, in his thick Eastern European accent, extolling the virtues of U.S. gymnastics during the NBC interview.

It was a striking tableau—the humble Midwestern girl with the radiant smile, her low-key Chinese coach, and the boisterous Karolyi, who sounded like a Cold War throwback but was voicing strongly pro-American sentiments.

Later in the week, we were treated to another form of globalization, this time more subtle from the U.S. standpoint. In men’s track and field, several runners from foreign countries were attending college in the United States. After the Olympics, they would return to campus to run for their schools.

Even though they won gold, silver and bronze for their home countries, they have strong American ties thanks to studying here. Wherever they go next, they will take a little bit of the United States with them.

This is how the United States maintains its competitiveness. It adopts the best practices of the rest of the world and learns what others have to teach us. We also export the best of ourselves to the rest of the world, strengthening our influence.

In the end, we are stronger because of our global engagement. When it comes to the Olympics—and to business—it often means we defeat the rest of the world.

One of the most disheartening aspects of politics today is the way that many officeholders (or aspirants for office) in both parties have demonized immigration—and by extension globalization.

There’s a strong bipartisan trend toward “securing the borders first.” The problem is that the conversation is not getting too far beyond that notion.

Yes, the United States is a nation based on the rule of law. We have to uphold our statutes, especially as they apply to citizenship. But rhetoric on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail makes it sound as if immigrants enervate our country rather than strengthen it.

During the past two weeks, the Olympics have shown why we should take deep pride in our country’s history of welcoming people from all over the world and making them part of the American fabric.

Like many of you, I have been captivated by the performances of Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin in women’s gymnastics. But the indelible Olympic moment for me was not one of Johnson’s powerful moves on the balance beam or her winsome good sportsmanship as she interacted with her opponents.

What stood out was the interview she conducted with Bob Costas on NBC after she captured the gold medal in the balance beam competition. She mentioned that she had to fight off an upset stomach and headache before the beam event, which was her last chance to grab the gold. She was exhausted from pushing herself to the limit up to that point.

Johnson credited her coach, Liang Chow, for helping her through the ordeal and inspiring her to give a championship effort. Liang was sitting next to Johnson on the couch in the TV studio. But at the moment, he was literally right at home. He grew up in Beijing.

Liang and Johnson met in West Des Moines, Iowa, when Johnson walked into his gymnastics club as a 6-year-old. Liang nurtured her talent and has helped Johnson become one of the best gymnasts in the world.

But one of the few places in the world where such an encounter could occur is in the United States. We are the country that uniquely welcomes people to come here and excel in their chosen field.

The U.S. gymnastics workforce has benefited greatly from our country’s open arms. Seated at the end of the couch during Johnson’s interview was Bela Karolyi, the former U.S. coach who guided Mary Lou Retton to her outstanding Olympic achievements in 1984.

Before coming to America and taking Retton to the top of the Olympic world, Karolyi coached the first “rock star” of women’s gymnastics—Nadia Comaneci, a gold medalist in 1976. Karolyi and Comaneci are both Romanian.

Karolyi defected to the United States in 1981. Now his wife, Martha, is the coordinator of USA Gymnastics. There was something deeply moving about Karolyi, in his thick Eastern European accent, extolling the virtues of U.S. gymnastics during the NBC interview.

It was a striking tableau—the humble Midwestern girl with the radiant smile, her low-key Chinese coach, and the boisterous Karolyi, who sounded like a Cold War throwback but was voicing strongly pro-American sentiments.

Later in the week, we were treated to another form of globalization, this time more subtle from the U.S. standpoint. In men’s track and field, several runners from foreign countries were attending college in the United States. After the Olympics, they would return to campus to run for their schools.

Even though they won gold, silver and bronze for their home countries, they have strong American ties thanks to studying here. Wherever they go next, they will take a little bit of the United States with them.

This is how the United States maintains its competitiveness. It adopts the best practices of the rest of the world and learns what others have to teach us. We also export the best of ourselves to the rest of the world, strengthening our influence.

In the end, we are stronger because of our global engagement. When it comes to the Olympics—and to business—it often means we defeat the rest of the world.