She can bring home the moose, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever let you forget that she’s the No. 2 Republican.OK, so when is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin going to pull off those librarian glasses and expose her Supermom suit, or reveal that she actually has more hands than a Hindu goddess? And is her impressive juggling act an inspiration for other working mothers who are trying to pull off the same feat or a road to exhaustion?”Do I think it’s possible to be a great mother, a great wife and a strong leader? Absolutely,” said Meredith Vaughan, president of Colorado Springs public relations firm Vladimir Jones and mother of two. “I certainly think that she has to be an amazing, dynamic woman, and if she were a father in the same position that wouldn’t even be a question.”I think if you want to succeed you’re going to find a way to make it work.”The successes of Hillary Clinton and now Palin are indeed inspiring to many women.”I just think it’s great. I just think having women in those positions is great for the country,” said Liz Norwood, a founder of 10 til 2, a Denverbased part-time placement service founded to give moms a flexible work schedule. “That’s why day cares were invented. Barack (Obama) has two kids, and he does the balance thing.””The balance thing” is sometimes hard to come by. Nearly 75 percent of mothers go to work, but they also face expectations to be great moms, keep tidy homes and look terrific. While Norwood praises Palin’s choices, her business caters to moms who want to prioritize family over career.”It wouldn’t be something I would take on, for sure,” said single mother and business owner Shannon Dougherty. “I wouldn’t want to have everything I do be judged.”Dougherty is the owner and operator of clothing boutique Couture, at 109 N. Tejon St., and she is raising 20-month-old Aspen, who slept in the back of the store Wednesday afternoon while her mom worked. Dougherty works 45 hours a week in the store and spends more hours every night designing and making clothes after her daughter goes to sleep. She is a single mother by choice, opting for artificial insemination rather than waiting for a mate.”In a way, we ask for it,” Dougherty said of women. “We all wanted to be educated. We all wanted our own careers. And we have that maternal instinct, too.”Palin is the uber-example of a working mother who is vying to have it all. After giving the biggest speech of her life Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain’s vice presidential nominee will now be in the race of her life, working grueling hours in a hot spotlight as the campaign wears on.But wait, that’s not all. Her eldest son is about to leave for war. Her teen daughter is facing an unplanned pregnancy. And the mother of five is raising a 5-month-old infant with Down syndrome. Any of those challenges could consume a mere human, but in the midst of all that Palin took on a pressure cooker job that’s centered about 4,000 miles away from her family’s home in Alaska.Palin’s story has captured the nation’s imagination this week, and the blogosphere is whirring with condemnations of her for taking on so much while her family faces serious challenges and equally vehement defenses of her personal decisions.Beth Roalstad, executive director at the Women’s Resource Agency, which helps low-income women succeed in the workplace, has been talking about Palin a lot with friends and co-workers, and she can see both sides.”I was a little shocked they would select someone who has so many personal demands,” said Roalstad as she raced from work to day care. “There’s lots of women out there saying, ‘Are you serious? You have five children! How can you possibly be the vice president and take care of your family?'”I really respect that she’s trying to do it all. Maybe she can be an example that it can be done. As an aspiring professional, sometimes you reach for the stars, and you don’t want to be limited by your family situation.” But then Roalstad’s ambivalence on the subject creeps up again: “As the mom of two girls who want me there to read them stories every night, I wonder, ‘Should you be putting your career first at this point?'”The public debate is inherently sexist, said Tonja Olive, women’s studies professor at Colorado College.Is Palin’s Democratic counterpart Joe Biden being chastised for his long-ago decision to remain a senator when his wife died in a car crash, leaving him as a single father to two injured boys? Was John Edwards criticized for running for president while his wife battled cancer and they were raising two young children?Besides, Olive argued, Palin’s story – other than the importance of her job – is not so unusual.”I don’t think she’s exceptional in any way,” Olive said. “There are women out there doing twice as much as she is because they don’t have a husband. There are unsung heroines all over the place that we don’t hear about because they’re not running for vice president.”Most women seem to agree on one thing: The Supermom myth must die.”It’s not a good thing. It’s punishing and it’s unrealistic,” Olive said. “And I think it hurts women, it hurts men, and it hurts families.”There are no Supermoms, they say, just people doing the best they can. And the Supermom myth gives some men an excuse not to pull their weight.”You can’t expect excellence out of every part of your life,” Roalstad warned. “Women need to be realistic in their expectations and stop trying to think there is a Supermom ability.”-

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Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin waves near the end of her speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS