It’s hard to assess whether the Richter scale registered higher in Washington or New York after the financial earthquake on Monday, September 29.

The House of Representatives’ narrow 228-205 rejection of a rescue package for the financial markets sent the Dow Jones industrial average down 777 points. The tremors in Washington were even stronger.

Enough House Democrats and Republicans in competitive re-election bids rejected their party’s leadership—and for Republicans it also meant dissing the White House—to deliver a potential body blow to the economy. The kind of bipartisan cooperation surrounding the bailout measure rarely fails.

Proponents said the grave problems facing financial institutions would impact Americans’ daily lives. Americans would no longer be able to get auto, car or business loans, for instance. Their retirement savings would be at risk.

That argument didn’t work. What members of Congress—especially those in vulnerable seats—heard from constituents was anger. It was the raw, amorphous frustration that often lights up the phones in Capitol Hill offices.

The primary focus of Main Street’s ire was wealthy Wall Street CEOs who richly benefit even when their firms crash. Americans struggling through the sluggish economy just don’t accept that outcome. 

“People have an image that this money is going to support executives on Wall Street, and what we’re really trying to do is to fix a systemic problem in our economy,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto in a September 29 briefing.

Initially, Fratto’s boss didn’t even want to put executive compensation into the bailout package. The first proposal from the administration was three pages.

Congress quickly rejected the idea of authorizing with no strings attached up to $700 billion in tax dollars for the purchase of bad mortgage-based assets. After more than a week of negotiations, the bipartisan legislation grew to 110 pages.

It now includes congressional and judicial oversight, relief for homeowners and assurances that the government would be able to profit from the sale of assets that regained their value.

One of the most politically persuasive additions to the measure was limits on executive compensation for firms participating in the bailout.

“The party is over,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said at a September 28 Capitol Hill press conference. “The era of golden parachutes for highflying Wall Street operators is over.”

Congressional leaders vow that they will try again to pass a rescue package. Rest assured that it will contain executive pay restrictions.

The business community is wary. They argue that boards of directors should make the decision on remuneration based on industry factors and market signals. They say that pay parameters would add a regulatory burden and make U.S. companies less attractive for the best global executives.

If that talent is so valuable, then Wall Street needs to do a better job of demonstrating how it helps Main Street. It has to link high 401(k) returns to brilliant decisions made by leaders of financial companies.

Once again, this is a situation where the cloistered corporate mentality has to loosen up—communicate with everyday Americans about why the CEO is so important.

If companies don’t make this case, then the executive pay reform in the bailout bill is just the beginning. Next year, expect Congress to take another bite out of exorbitant corporate paychecks.

This week’s meltdown on Wall Street took some air out of the Sarah Palin surge. But the Alaska governor’s addition to the Republican presidential ticket is turning the heads—if not capturing the hearts—of many women voters.

As a way to counter the Palin offensive, Democrats are sending Lilly Ledbetter to the political barricades.

A bill that bears the name of the former Goodyear supervisor, who was the center of a landmark pay discrimination case, would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court ruling and allow the statute of limitations to be reset with each paycheck affected by discrimination.

The court held that such cases have to be filed within 180 days of the original discriminatory act, making it much harder for women to sue because it might take years to discover the discriminatory treatment.

The business lobby opposes the bill, saying that it would force companies to defend stale claims. Most Republicans, including presidential nominee John McCain, oppose the bill. They say it is designed to foster litigation and help an important Democratic constituency—trial lawyers.

Democrats believe that they can make political gains with women by putting the bill in the legislative spotlight. The measure, which has been approved by the House, may come up in the Senate before the end of the congressional session. It fell three votes short of overcoming a filibuster in April.

If it goes down to defeat again, blame will be placed squarely on McCain.

“McCain has a chance to right his ways with working women,” says Ellie Smeal, chair of the Feminist Majority political action committee. That statement was as much a threat as an invitation.

McCain was out campaigning in April when the Senate took its first vote. But in subsequent appearances, he indicated that he would have supported the filibuster.

He cited concerns about litigation. He also said that the pay gap between men and women could be caused by factors other than discrimination, such as education, training and experience.

Smeal takes umbrage at that argument.

“We tend to have more education and training than our male counterparts,” she says.

Smeal spoke at a September 16 event at the National Press Club in which several women’s groups endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. The roster included the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and the Business and Professional Women Political Action Committee.

It was an exercise in stating the obvious. There was never any question that these left-leaning organizations would oppose a Republican ticket, especially one that included someone as conservative as Palin.

Ledbetter endorsed Obama at a Richmond, Virginia, event on September 17. She will appear at a September 23 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on equal pay.

But what was interesting is that the women’s groups felt compelled to make such a strong statement. It is indicative of how important women will be in deciding the election, especially the so-called Wal-Mart moms.

That demographic includes suburban females who may not have a college education and who might have voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her Democratic primary bid.

Their support is up for grabs, and they may see a lot of themselves in the working-mom Palin.

The question that will be answered between now and November 4 is whether Wal-Mart moms support the policy prescriptions advocated by NOW and the other women’s organizations or by McCain and Palin.

As someone who has worked in Washington for 16 years, it’s hard for me to imagine this place in the way that the presidential candidates envision it.

Both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama talk about a bipartisan or even “post-partisan” atmosphere if they win the White House.

We’ll see. I arrived in Washington just as the “permanent campaign” became a staple of capital culture. President Clinton’s “War Room” wasn’t disbanded after he won the 1992 election. It swung into action whenever he tussled with Congress.

President Bush and his top political aide, Karl Rove, brought their “us against them” attitude from the campaign trail to the White House, making many interactions with Capitol Hill a showdown rather than a negotiation.

But this kind of fighting is turning off voters, according to Greg Casey, president and CEO of the Business Industry Political Action Committee. His organization helps companies become more involved in politics—and policy—by communicating with their workers.

Voter disgust with partisan gridlock has created an opening for businesses, according to Casey. In the cover package of Workforce Management’s September 8 edition, he explains that people have lost faith in political parties and are turning to their employers for guidance when it comes to issues and elections.

Voters themselves are moving to the middle of the political spectrum, Casey says. In that post-partisan geography, business involvement can make a difference.

One way to avoid alienating employees is to not overtly take sides in campaigns. Yes, business interests have typically supported Republicans. But that’s not necessarily going to be the case in an evolving political climate where the middle holds sway.

For instance, Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2006 thanks to the success of candidates who ran to the right of the party’s Capitol Hill leadership. Many of those folks won corporate backing.

For Casey, the important thing is to elect members of Congress who will keep taxes low on profit and capital gains, push for health care and energy reform and advocate trade liberalization. As long as they back policies supporting “capital formation,” party labels don’t matter.

“The key is to refocus government affairs on policy outcomes and not just access to policymakers,” Casey says. “An election happens every two years. Policy is an ongoing operation.”

Both elections and policymaking will occur in the middle, according to Casey.

“Neither political party is currently positioned to be the majority party given the nature of their caucuses right now,” he says. “We in the business community have an opportunity to shape the public discourse on the No. 1 issue of the day, which is prosperity,” and formulate an agenda that appeals to the “new emerging middle.”

The election will be decided by independents who disdain partisanship and want politicians to get things done in Washington. Perhaps corporate interests will influence that important voting bloc.

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.