On Wednesday of this past week, Rush Limbaugh interviewed Sarah Palin. The transcript and the audio are both available. While there is no earth-shaking news from that interview, Mrs. Palin seems to put to rest the idea that she would lead her supporters into the political desert of a third-party movement. Better to influence the direction of the suddenly resuscitated Republican Party. Leave third-partyism to Ron Paul’s followers.
On a slightly different note, one wonders whether popular media perceptions of Sarah Palin might be different, had the McCain campaign had her do a series of interviews in friendlier venues before throwing her to Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. Had she gone on the air with Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, and any number of other interviewers less vested in furthering the cause of their party nominee, Barack Obama, Palin could have got her sea legs for national campaign interviews that are qualitatively different from interviews during a campaign for mayor or governor. Once she had gained some sense of her skills in answering those types of questions, she could have adjusted her style of trying to cram answers as if she were taking an exam. That was the eventual atmosphere of her Gibson/Kouric experiences. Even though the two “journalists” had no better understanding of the questions they were told to ask than did Palin, she came off worse because she tried to represent herself as knowing those answers. Asking the player to play a style to which she is not suited or accustomed was simply bad coaching by the McCain team.
On the other hand, one doubts that there is anything Palin could have done to avoid the media’s stereotyping. After all, Mr. Obama’s inexperience and lack of preparation that was no less painfully obvious then than it is now, yet these deficencies were not held against him. Indeed, to mention such matters was another reason for the Democrats and the media to brand the critic a “racist.”
When the elite punditry and the talking heads of the “mainstream” media commentabout Sarah Palin, their contempt for her is palpable. They subject her to the most grotesque speculations about herself and her family, down to questioning her motherhood of her youngest son (see, e.g., Andrew Sullivan) and his very right to live. She and her family are the targets of crude “jokes” that range from her participation in beauty contests decades ago to false assertions about slutty behavior by her young daughters (see, e.g., David Letterman). Her private and public past is put under a microscope of critical review. Every new public comment and appearance is scrutinized for the slightest misstep, and when one finally appears, is ridiculed massively and mercilessly and then given great significance as evidence of her unfitness for, well, pretty much everything.
And yet, those same media “guardians” protecting the public against the political temptations from the siren Palin time and again announce her political demise. They laugh her off as someone who cannot possibly, without a doubt, ever be a viable national political candidate. They dismiss her alternately as a simpleton and as an evil force of hate-mongering. Her supporters are ridiculed as a narrow and intolerant fringe.
These media elites, mainly left-wing, but with a sizable cohort of conservative toffs added to the mix, do not see the paradox of their condescending certitude about the ex-governor’s lack of a political future set off against their slavish addiction to reporting everything Palin. Or, perhaps, they just cannot help themselves. Drawn to her like moths to a flame, yet trapped by their ideological and cultural boundaries, they respond in a way that comes across to the observer as, alternately, professional schizophrenia and hapless ignorance.
With those habits, it comes as no surprise that the release of Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue, has triggered a new spasm of media attention. After all, when her mere Facebook postings drive the health care discussion for weeks on end and trigger White House responses (see, e.g., “death panels”), a Palin book is a figurative ICBM exploding in the midst of the political and chattering classes. No wonder, then, that the Associated Press assigned eleven “fact-checkers” to scour Palin’s book. That is the same AP that is firing a lot of their reporters due to lack of funds. This phalanx of truth-seekers managed to uncover what? Six “errors,” the prime example of which is this shocker:
PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking “only” for reasonably priced rooms and not “often” going for the “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.
THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000.
So, as Mark Steyn points out, Palin said that she “not often” stayed at luxury hotels, while the AP says she usually did not stay at luxury hotels and uncovered one instance where she did. The AP report, if anything, makes Palin sound as if she overstated her stay at luxury hotels. The rest of the six ”errors” found by the AP’s journalistic Clousseaus add up to a collection of their own mischaracterizations, tendentious assertions, and self-contradictions. I do agree with one of the AP’s conclusions, namely, that Palin’s book is a step towards a future presidential candidacy. In view of the current political landscape, I would hope and expect that future to be in 2016, not in 2012.
That same media knee-jerk anti-Palinism is also why MSNBC, stuck with perpetual low ratings despite (or, perhaps, because of) their decision to become the Obama network, assigns one of their starsto check whether Palin supporters at a book signing know about Palin’s political positions. Never mind that the reporterette, Norah O’Donnell, mischaracterizes Palin’s position. Palin in fact was opposed to the TARP and other bailouts, as even the AP concedes, until John McCain in October, 2008, swung behind them. At that point, Palin, as the V-P candidate, supported McCain’s position. The Palin supporter actually has Palin’s position pegged more accurately than does O’Donnell. Moreover, O’Donnell is then caught in some fibs about her own role.
One would expect that these assiduous efforts to fact-check the book by a supposed political has-been, at most a zombie that appears periodically to raise havoc among the populace and terrorize the elites, would be replicated regarding the writings and statements of actual politicians. The President, let’s say. Or, the leaders of the Democratic Party that run Congress, such as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry. Or, in the past, actual Democratic candidates for President, such as John Edwards. Or, prominent Democrats who are also point men on other hot-button political issues. Al Gore, say. But one would expect wrongly. The only fact checking done by “mainstream” media of the President’s effusions was by CNN. Of course, they “fact-checked” a Saturday Night Live comedic skit that lampooned the President. The goal there was to defend Mr. Obama and demonstrate to the world the error of SNL’s ways. It was one more piece in a pattern of indirect intimidation of those who utter anything even slightly critical of The One that has become all too familiar with this administration and its courtesans.
In contrast with the thoroughness and frenzy with which the media and its associates in the Democratic Party vetted Sarah Palin—and continues to do so—no such investigations occurred by them regarding Mr. Obama’s writings. Indeed, while Palin’s academic records, like Bush’s, were dissected and laughed at, there has been a curious lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s performance. No release of the academic transcripts, no records of any “thesis/seminar papers,” no swift and public investigation into the Harvard Law Review’s selection process. Yet this about a man who has been praised as the greatest intellect in the White House, ever.
Nor will there be similar fact-checking about Al Gore’s new photo-shopped book. Or any of the President’s speeches, like the whoppers he told about the health care bill that caused Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst.
In the end, that’s fine. Even while they minimize her importance as a force in American politics, the media will say that they react to her because her book is a best seller. Or because the administration is reacting to her statements. Or because so many Americans pay attention to her. On Facebook. The administration pronounces its determination to ignore her, even as they respond to her to the point of having the Congressional leadership change what is, by their own claim, the most important piece of social legislation in decades. They have let it become obvious that she is inside their OODA loop.
The media, along with the administration, are just admitting by their actions what they seek to deny by their words. Sarah Palin, using Facebook and a book tour, is dominating the American political scene to a degree exceeded only by the President himself aided by his corps of minders, press liaisons, and most of the media functionaries. How it must gall MSNBC and CNN not only to be dwarfed by FOX news, but by a Facebook account.
Palin may or may not run in 2012. I have said many times that, barring an even greater collapse of the Democratic Party Left, I hope that she waits until 2016. Either way, she may not win the election, or even the nomination. She may be the latest incarnation of Barry Goldwater. Or she may not even get that far and be nothing more than the head of an insurgency that exhausts itself after two or three campaigns. That would have been Ronald Reagan, had he not succeeded in 1980.
She is not Ronald Reagan. Not the fallible human, and certainly not the myth. But she is following the Reagan (and Nixon) playbook perfectly after a failed national campaign. She is also saying the words. I would hope that she would end up also learning to sing the tune in a better Reaganesque pitch. But that is another topic.
Sarah Palin adds her voice to the skepticism over the Baucus bill and explains its fiscal unsustainability. She criticizes the bill’s anti-free market approach and the administration’s lack of transparency. She also sketches out some pro-free market, pro-consumer reforms.
Predictably, Palin’s political opponents have responded disparagingly. I find it amazing that Palin, a mere private citizen, has so much influence. Her forthcoming book is heavily pre-subscribed. Her opponents are hoping to make some money off her by rushing out a copy-cat parody on the same day. But, no, she has no future in American politics according to the punditocracy.
Palin’s Facebook strategy itself has drawn attention. As Chris Cillizza ofThe Washington Post describes, with nearly a million Facebook followers, this allows Palin to get her message out without the partisan screening to which her message is likely to be subjected if she tried to deliver it through the old-line media. I would add that this approach, combined with a number of blogs that report on her doings, allows her to reach her followers by capitalizing on the “democratic” aspects of new media, unencumbered by the elitist meddling of the fading media aristocracy.
Note the snark at the end of the Cillizza piece, quoting a Republican media hack, that Facebook is easier for Palin because correct grammar does not matter. As if the mangling of the English language that occurs regularly among the legacy media’s columnists goes unnoticed, say, the confusion between “comprise” and “compose.” It is just that attitude among elitist “gatekeepers” that makes Palin’s approach so popular with the middle class. BTW, Obama, too, the greatest orator ever, if his press acolytes are to be believed, used such social networking sites to reach his followers. Perhaps he did it despite such sites’ indifference to proper language use. Oh, yes, I forgot, Obama’s grammar, when not telepromptered, is nothing to trumpet.
Another useful fact to keep in mind. As this blog points out, Palin’s Facebook followers number the same as the entire print circulation of Mr. Cillizza’s Washington Post.
I have previously written about what seems to me a plausible course of action for Sarah Palin. While no one but the governor knows what she is going to do (and she may not be entirely certain), I suspect that we have not heard the last of her, politically-speaking. There is too much interest in her, including (or especially) among those who do not wish her well. Even they cannot keep their minds off her. They, too, are avid students of Palintology.
I don’t think she should expect to be the Republican nominee. But consider running anyway, in the 1976 version of Ronald Reagan. In the meantime, do speaking engagements, in the General Electric years version of Ronald Reagan before he ran for office. Help Republican candidates in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, as well as the 2012 election if she doesn’t seek (or get) the presidential nomination. That would be the version of Ronald Reagan before and after he entered politics. Write her book, not an autobiography as much as her take on public policy, the role of government, and the importance of freedom and personal autonomy and responsibility. The book and the speeches can build a war chest for future political participation. They would also allow her to brush up on issues beyond her immediate experience as governor of Alaska.
When I wrote my posts about Palin’s resignation a couple of weeks ago, I raised the possibility of a third party effort based on a more ideological conservatism. Most likely such a movement would have elements of economic populism, though one would hope that would be damped by an overall libertarian-influenced opposition to regulation and taxes. There would be a clear influence of social conservatism, though one would hope that an overall attitude of anti-government libertarianism would soften its edges. Clearly it would be anti-elitist, much to the chagrin of the likes of Peggy Noonan and the rest of the Republican country club and finger sandwich set. Indeed, that segment of the Republican Party has been relentless in attacking Palin as an unserious lightweight who is not, and never will be, ready for public office. To their slight credit, they have not resorted to the kinds of sleazy personal attacks on her and her family to which the Democrat elitists, including bloggers and other media types, are prone. The press is eager to jump on their bandwagon and see Meghan McCain as a more suitable Republican spokespiece. She, in turn, even more than her father, delights in denigrating the views of the Republican base.
With that all out there, it would not be surprising and would be quite understandable for Palin to create her own political destiny. However, as Rush Limbaugh correctly warns, third parties don’t win. They can influence debates and the direction of the major modern parties, but they don’t win, absent some cataclysmic political upheaval. Even Obamaism does not represent that. It would be better for Palin to resist a third party move and seek to impress her policies on the Republican Party. Be Ronald Reagan (or even Barry Goldwater), not Pat Buchanan.
Speaking of Peggy Noonan’s condescension towards Palin, this take-down of the dowager speech writer by a HotAir blogger is wonderful in its sarcasm and its exposure of Noonan’s elitism. Noonan’s earlier gushing over Obama serves as a foil for the writer. And he accurately portrays the attitudes of what he calls the “weak-tea wing” of the Republican Party, a wing that used to be referred to in the dark pre-Gingrich days as the “me,too wing”: “Noonan is symptomatic of a defeated, collaborative wing of the GOP that wants nothing more than to be thought well of by the Left, which they believe has decisively won the political and cultural battles of the twentieth century. Their idea of a ‘conservative’ is someone who can eke out a small discount on the price tag of mammoth liberal programs.” Noonan’s criticism of Palin for being too focused on herself is met with this retort: “Of course, it’s risible for a breathless supporter of the Lightworker, Barack Obama, to criticize anyone else for self-referential speech. Obama couldn’t deliver a movie review of ‘Transformers 2′ without referring to himself thirty-five times.” A wonderful rant that describes the depth of anti-elite hostility the Republican elite’s frightened vitriol against Palin has roused among the (educated) base. The fight definitely seems to be on. It’s back to the future and going on 1976 (the Ford/Rockefeller/Bush wing against the Reagan insurgency), or at least 1964 (the Scranton/Rockefeller wing against the Goldwater insurgency).
Ann Coulter addresses an issue that has puzzled me and others over the past couple of weeks. If Sarah Palin’s resignation is so devastating to her career, why are liberals in the media not ignoring her? Why is there all this specualtion and analysis (inevitably concluding that she is finished), if indeed she is finished? I don’t fuss over and analyze matters for weeks on end that I consider of no consequence to me. The answer, of course, is that her resignation takes those liberals out of their comfort zone. They greatly fear that she has a plan to return to the public stage unencumbered by the constraints of political office and will become stronger than before.
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal provides his interpretation of Sarah Palin’s resignation. He says, and I agree, that her words should be taken at face value, difficult as that concept may be to understand for the political class and the ”nattering nabobs of negativism,” to borrow a line from a former vice-president, Spiro Agnew. He also concludes that she will not run in 2012, which I am coming around to believing, as well, though I still think she should make a run, as Reagan did in 1976, to get the national campaign machinery in place and to get herself out there.
Palin herself underscored the sincerity of her July 3rd announcement with a confirming follow-up message on July 4th.
After the 2008 election, friends asked me what I thought Palin would do. Since I am not in her inner circle, I had no answer, but opined that she should not run in 2012. Rather, I thought that the very high likelihood of Obama’s re-election made a 2012 run too risky for someone who had such potential to win the Presidency. And in 2016, she would still be a decade younger than Hillary was when she ran last year. If I were in her position, I’d take care of business in Alaska, and run for re-election in 2010. Then, in 2014, I either would run against the Democrat incumbent Senator, gain some foreign policy experience, and launch my presidential campaign (along the lines of another novice Senator who began running for President soon upon his election). Or, I would skip the Senate and prepare my presidential campaign immediately. Meanwhile, in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 election cycles, I would help Republican candidates through speeches and fund-raising to hoard political IOUs.
So I was caught off-guard as much as the rest of the country by her speech (a copy of which is here) that she was resigning the governorship. I have since read many speculations about why that might be. Most focus in various ways on family issues (the difficulty of raising her baby; another pregnancy), legal problems (rumors of indictments; financial irregularities), money problems (legal fees defending against ethics violations; upcoming book tour), and political calculations (being free of the burdens of office while giving speeches around the country, supporting candidates and earning political points). Obviously, no one but she and some close advisers know why she did this, which is why there is such rampant speculation and rumor-mongering among the Left’s PMS (Palin Madness Syndrome) sufferers.
Over time we will find out the reasons. If indictments are filed, we will soon know. However, I believe that the rumors towards that end on the left side of the blogosphere are some of those spontaneously-generating hypotheses whose very bizarreness eventually leads to their demise. The FBI has denied unequivocally any ongoing investigation or planned indictment. So far, she has been exonerated of all of these frivolous ethics complaints (particularly those by one Alaska blogger with connections to Democrat operatives and an apparent Palin fetish that smacks of psychological stalking). She has been vetted by the media so many ways from Sunday that something more than her inquiry about her unstable and brutal ex-brother-in-law would have been found by now (especially since they talked extensively with that same blogger). Indeed, had the media, instead of openly cheering for him, vetted their candidate for President, Mr. Obama, as aggressively, they might have uncovered some of his many unsavory connections that had to be publicized by bloggers even as the media tried to downplay them. Finally, everyone knows that the normal approach by a politician in trouble is to stonewall and then to fight the charges and exhaust every appeal. Only once those are all lost, will such a person resign or use the bargain of an offer to resign to reduce the penalty. If there is a legal difficulty here, Palin is an extremely unusual politician in seeking to protect Alaskans from the distractions of her legal troubles before any have manifested themselves.
The family problems are a plausible theory, especially with the baby. But I don’t know that being the Alaska governor would have been that difficult to coordinate with child care. I’m also not convinced that she feared that as long as she was governor, her children would continue to be targets of the David Lettermans, Andrew Sullivans, and other amoral and class-less liberal media-types and entertainers. Had she limited herself to being the governor and withdrawn from the limelight, that plague likely would have run its course in due time.
The economic difficulties argument also is plausible. Having run up $500,000 in legal fees to defend herself from these dismissed ethics complaints, and facing a likelihood of continuing harassment, she might have decided that she had had enough. But with a lucrative book deal coming out, that likely isn’t the real problem. Moreover, if she feared more ethics complaints arising from her leaving the state and giving speeches in the Lower 48, that could readily be avoided by withdrawing from the spotlight for the time being.
That leaves the political angle. While this is a highly unorthodox way to promote one’s political career, there is a certain method to it. First, I must admit that her resignation strikes me at this point as a mistake if she is just running for the 2012 or, especially, 2016 nomination. She could have stuck out her term until next year, announce next spring that she would not be running for re-election, and begun to campaign on behalf of other Republicans, with a full two years to get her national campaign in gear. There would be no criticism of her “quitting,” and she could have dampened current attacks by assuming a lower profile for nine months or so. If she gets into the race, her resignation is going to be an unwelcome distraction that her opponents, Republican or Democrat, are going to throw around with abandon as evidence of lack of backbone, commitment, or stability. Most likely, all of the above.
That said, Palin’s defenders see this differently, and they have a point. Palin’s resignation message is loaded with direct, as well as guarded, references to her continuing in politics. She may be taking a break for a year to work on her book and to be with her family before gearing up for an intense campaign for Republican candidates that would take her (physically and temporally) far away. Meanwhile, she can make periodic speeches and appearances in the Lower 48 without having to concern herself with bogus ethics claims or government business. She has been freed to be herself.
Moreoever, she has done this before when she resigned from a state board to pursue the governorship after reassuming her position as a private citizen for a while. While her resignation carries future risk, that risk is outweighed by the freedom (informally) to organize her campaign with less scrutiny. She figures that, by the time she runs, she will be able to explain this by showing her commitment to politics through her active support of other conservative candidates. The alternative view is that, if she stays away especially until 2016, she can point to family obligations that will be less demanding in seven years.
From reading the speech and from her personality as revealed during the campaign, I think these defenders are onto something. Palin obviously likes politics. I am less convinced that she is wedded to the Republican Party’s establishment. The elitist David Brooks types and the various grand poo-bahs are snorting with disdain at her resignation, an act that confirms for them their own evaluation of the natural order of politics and Republicanism and of Palin’s lack of fit within that order. I would suggest that Palin cares not one whit about that. She sees the Republican Old Guard as at best a force of suspicious neutrality. She wants to be the outsider. Coming from Alaska has various drawbacks for the would-be national politician, such as the small electoral clout and the literally great distance from the Lower 48. But if one wants to run as a D.C. Beltway outsider, Alaska has unmatched actual and symbolic value.
Alaska also means energy, specifically oil and gas. And domestic energy will increasingly take center stage, especially as the current administration continues to wreck the energy markets with dysfunctional regulatory regimes, and as foreign oil and gas markets increase their volatility with soaring demand from China, India, Brazil, and other developing economies. Palin knows energy. She symbolizes energy in a way no other politician or public figure in the U.S. (Gore doesn’t count, as I am talking about production of usable sources of energy.)
Nor does it matter to her whether or not she becomes President. I think she would see that as a good thing for herself and the country (what politician doesn’t), but I am not sure she would consider her life a loss if she never gained the Oval Office. I am reminded here of the contrast with Al Gore, who, after his 2000 defeat, withdrew from public life, grew a beard, gained massive weight, and tried various disparate jobs. He also admitted that his life had been geared to winning the Presidency, and he was at a personal crisis point when he lost. One certainly would not have expected W, had he lost, to go off the deep end as Gore did with his intemperate attacks on the winner.
Palin, too, though different in personality than W, sees her mission differently. It is to organize supporters on issues and to carry forward on those issues, attracting a political following of others as the opportunities present themselves. Issues first, voters later. This is the reverse of most party politicians. They calculate the votes needed to win and trim their positions accordingly. She is more Reagan than Nixon. She represents the views of a significant portion of conservatives who view the country as perched on the edge of a cliff. The current administration is viewed by these people as ashamed of the U.S. at best (remember Michelle Obama’s pre-election remarks implying her previous lack of pride) and as hostile to the U.S. at worst (Obama’s long and close association with unrepentant terrorist and continuing Chavez-admirer Bill Ayers).
In addition, such conservatives view the domestic and international policies of the administration as disasters. In foreign relations, they see Obama projecting weakness which will invite our enemies’ contempt at best (Iran, North Korea as the most concrete examples) or attacks against us or our allies at worst (a resurgent Russia, al Qaeda). Domestically, they see out-of-control spending, the alternatives of massive deficits/inflation or tax increases, rising unemployment, government-issue inferior health care, racial demagoguery (Sotomayor, Eric Holder’s remarks on American “cowardice” in not addressing race), moral decay (abortion, same-sex marriage that Obama will support overtly or covertly before long), and run-amok environmentalism. In short, they see an attempted remake of the U.S. and the traditional American Dream of liberty and individualism under severe attack from an administration perceived, once more, ideologically leftist at best and anti-American at worst.
As she demonstrated brilliantly during the campaign, Sarah Palin taps into that crowd and its discontents. As the United States sinks, or appears to sink, further into the quagmire of Obamaism, she will attract more voters to that message. That attachment is to Sarah Palin, or the movement (Tea Parties, for example) she represents, not to the Republican Party. The Party needs her a lot more than she needs the party. The state of disarray of the party’s leadership and its lack of a strong consistent message (other than, correctly, declaring Obama’s policies to be harmful) turn off those voters. I think that such a message will emerge over the next year and certainly by 2012, but it hasn’t yet. And as long as it doesn’t, Sarah Palin can work on presenting hers, even if at a rather general level of programmatic substance. She is still a long way from having to present a detailed policy message. For now, registering discontent and proposing general prescriptions will carry her.
That brings up the future of Palin as a Republican. While I would expect her for now to remain one, it would be foolish to write off a third-party movement. Again, Palin is more concerned about the issues and the message and her leadership of a movement than she is about party honors or even political office. Her politician’s ego can be satisfied well enough if she runs a strong movement outside. If the political fault lines persist, and if the Republican Party continues, sooner or later a move will be made to bring her into the fold. Or, she will just take over. The Old Bulls may paw and snort at her for now. The party elites may heap derision on her for now. They may seek to marginalize her. But if that fails, and likely it will, they will have to make their peace with her. And it will likely be on her terms. The Democrats may be the short-term beneficiaries of that fight. But as political power’s inevitable corruption (already visible clearly to the unaided eye) consumes the Democrats, and as the folly of their policies begins to hurt, the voters will turn on them, especially once the American people have finally had enough of their infatuation with Obama.
So, what about 2012? Is she in or out? Who knows? She may, like Nixon, skip a cycle, reinvent herself, and go for 2016. But, again, I don’t see her as Nixon. I don’t think she sees herself as Nixon. Though she has not said so, it is more likely that she sees herself as Reagan, a fellow programmatic conservative who was derided by East Coast elites as unqualified, stupid, and reactionary, and who knew how to connect with ordinary people, though he was a thorn in the side of the party establishment. Many of her supporters certainly see her that way.
If she is Reagan circa 1973, with the Republican Party low in the opinion polls (far lower than today), a Democratic Congress about to win 2/3 majorities in both chambers, and with basically lame-duck governor status, she runs in 2012. Even if, as is likely, she will not get the nomination, it will provide her with her own platform, unencumbered by the likes of Steve Schmidt and the rest of the McCain staff. Her support among the base will be important in the primaries. Being savaged by the media, the Beltway crowd, and Republican professionals will not hurt her, any more than Reagan eventually was hurt by his 1976 loss to Gerald Ford.
A primary loss will hardly be devastating. I rather suspect it would be a good thing for an eventual victory, if she even cares about that. If she supports the party nominee, at least nominally, and he loses (a likely scenario), she sets herself up for a strong run in 2016, as Reagan did in 1980. Indeed, with Obama out in 2016, odds swing much more favorably for a non-Democrat to win. If history is a guide, voters after eight years identify with the non-incumbent. This is not just fatigue with certain policies, though that adds to the discontent. I mean by non-incumbent anyone who lacks the most pronounced apparent characteristics of the incumbent. In 2000, W with his down-to-earth approach and straight-laced humility was the perceived opposite of Clinton, which is why the Democrats’ smear tactic on the final pre-election weekend over the old DUI had such a strongly negative effect on W’s poll numbers.
In 1960, people voted for the anti-Ike. In 1980 for the anti-Carter. In 2008 for the anti-W. And Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama, as I think her supporters and her detractors would agree.
Those liberals and conservative elitists who deride her so resoundingly have about them the air of whistling past the graveyard. If she is such a non-threat to them, and if they are so convinced that she is finished, why not let her go quietly into the night, rather than being so vociferously insistent about her demise? I don’t recall a similar hoopla and speculation when Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee ended their presidential campaigns. For many of her supporters, she is a reminder of an old campaign slogan by the supporters of reform governor and then President Grover Cleveland (popularly called the “People’s President” at the time), “We love him for the enemies he has made.”
What many today see as a mistake, may well turn out to be a brilliant political move, as others have claimed. So I am withholding final judgment and sincerely hope that the latter are right.
As those who have followed my musings on Sarah Palin, I have been a (generally) enthusiastic supporter of her political moves. Before John McCain picked her to be his running mate, I wrote that she was my first choice (with Bobby Jindal second), though I doubted that McCain would want to pick her. To my delight, he did, the best move he made in the whole campaign and one that, for a brief moment, made fortune smile upon him in the polls.
Unlike some of her more smitten supporters, I understood that she, no more than any politician and probably any human at all, was without flaws. Some of her fans view her with almost the degree of rapture and attribution of infallibility the media and many Americans reserve for The One. But she offered the best and most authentic voice for that broad swath of Middle America to which Richard Nixon once referred as the “Silent Majority.”
Certainly she was not the voice of those who saw themselves primarily as members of various identity groups thrown together into a confederation of victimized racial, ethnic, or sex-denominated tribes. Nor was she the voice of elitist snobbery that, while centered in the academy, the professions, the entertainment industry, and the media, nevertheless knows no clear socio-economic bounds. Nor was she the voice of the inexperienced-in-life, who might take time off from their trust-funded education and their Wii-games to work for a political Pied Piper who dazzled them with “cool.” Nor was she the voice of those for whom real religion and a true Messiah did not slake the thirst for a connection with something greater than themselves, and who sought refuge instead in the secular preachings of someone who promised that with him, the oceans would finally begin to recede. For all of those, there was Barack Obama.
She struck a deep chord, however, with those humbler folk who work, produce, take care of their families, and cherish without guile or embarrassment the connection to the older traditions, religious and secular, that define our shared culture. Mr. McCain’s flacks, such as the execrable Steve Schmidt, mishandled her press appearances and smothered her personality in a way that proved as satisfying a product as dressing a fashion supermodel in a burqa.
Towards the end of the campaign, as the cause became increasingly desperate, she cast off the bonds of the elitist insiders, and struck out on her own. “Let Sarah be Sarah” was the demand from her supporters, and she drew enthusiastic and large crowds in a way that the top of the ticket was unable to do. There is no doubt that this was one of those rare, if not unique, campaigns where many people voted for the ticket because of the vice-presidential nominee.
Meanwhile, she and her family were vetted for the most picayune and hypothetical transgressions and infractions (all eventually shot down) by a now-frenzied press who had been asleep at the switch or had tried to delay or deflect stories about Obama’s long associations with corrupt politicians (Blagojevich), shady business operators (Rezko), racist hate-spewing pastors (Wright, to name one), and former (and still unrepentant) terrorists and Chavez-worshippers (Ayers and Dohrn).
Worse, she and her family were subjected to the vilest slurs, accusations, and slanders in living memory. An indulgent press treated rumors hatched in the scabrous minds of certain leftie bloggers as demonstrated facts of which she and her family stood convicted until she could prove the contrary. Not the wildest of these was the allegation that Palin’s daughter Bristol was the mother of the baby Trig, not Palin herself. The corporate media picked up on this, and soon, led by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic on his blog, demands were made that the Palins produce complete medical and hospital records on a matter of utter irrelevance to Palin’s health. Mere physical impossibility resulting from Bristol’s own almost contemporaneous pregnancy was not enough to dispel this idiotic rumor in the eyes of the press. This from the same media that made no demands that Obama release his medical records and that, when he released a single summary page, uttered no protest. Certainly no investigation into physiological remnants of his self-admitted prolific drug use in earlier years was demanded.
Since then, Palin has remained in the public’s eye, drawing cheering crowds and collecting political chits. The opposition perceives the danger she presents. They resent her resilience and her giving a voice to those the elites expect to be followers. The attacks on her have resumed. Those range from numerous expensive and time-consuming “ethics violations” filed against her for making speeches outside Alaska, wearing a visible label on her clothing, and similar eye roll-producing minutiae. All 15 of them have been dismissed. But since they are being filed by the same bloggers and “citizens,” with ties to the Democratic Party organization, one can expect them to continue. While those complaints cost nothing, to investigate them costs the state, and to defend herself costs Palin, so far to the tune of $500,000.
The personal vendetta has been ramped up, as well. David Letterman’s sex jokes (not joke—there were two separate ones) about Palin’s minor-aged daughter Willow were one example, though Dave tried to excuse them by saying he thought he was talking about Palin’s 18-year old daughter, Bristol. Well, all right then, Dave. No similar Letterman jokes about Obama’s minor-aged daughters have been noted, nor about Biden’s adult children. Nor about Clinton’s. Nor Edwards’s. Then came further disgusting attacks on baby Trig, courtesy of the Huffington Post and other liberal bloggers that eventually entered the news cycle. Interesting how the liberals who loudly proclaim their own compassion in contrast to the bigotry and hatred they ascribe to conservatives attack a helpless baby for his handicap, something that this presumably (in the definition of liberals) insensitive and bigoted hate-mongering right winger would find beyond the pale. What has become clear is that these attacks reflect the state of panic the elites (mainly, but not exclusively, the liberal portion) feel at the star quality of Sarah Palin. Again, I have certain reservations about some of her speeches, themes, and approaches. She is, after all, a politician, and one should never invest too much of oneself in a person with whom one has not reached an advanced state of emotional intimacy and personal convergence. But the scope and intensity of the attacks on her are directly proportional to the fear she instills in her (mostly) liberal enemies and in the Democratic Party apparatchiks. One doesn’t, after all, see such vitriol directed at Mitt Romney—yet.
In my next post, I will have some thoughts about her resignation as governor.
