As a pro-life wife and mother of four, and still an ambitious professional, Sarah can change women's lives by encouraging them to expand their options as feminism continues to adapt to the real-world wants and needs of traditional women.

Professional women with children have always been able to abandon a job without suffering diminished ego. Men can't do that. Besides, Sarah has a book contract, earns high fees for speeches and attracts larger audiences than almost anyone else (including Barack Obama). When men leaving the arena say "they want to spend more time with the family," we assume it's only euphemism. We're likely to believe a woman.

Feminism hasn't changed any of that. Sarah said she got the unanimous vote of her children to leave the office of governor. That sounds like the birthday party took priority over the Republican Party, proving that there's more than one event to celebrate with balloons.

In her first out-of-state speech this year, to several thousand women at a Right to Life dinner in Evansville, Ind., two months ago, she made a surprising confession. She said she was out of town when she learned from the amniocentesis results that she was going to have a baby with "abnormalities." She confessed to a fleeting thought that she could "just make it go away, and get some normalcy back in life."

She didn't get an abortion, of course. She embraced life. Maybe that's what she's doing again, only this time actually getting some "normalcy" back. Maybe the actual lyrics of Kenny Rogers got it right:

When the drinks finally hit her
She said I'm no quitter
but I finally quit livin' on dreams.
I'm hungry for laughter and here ever after
I'm after whatever the other life brings.