The fear and loathing, hate and scorn that Sarah Palin has generated since her meteoric appearance in the political firmament is both fascinating and disturbing; a subject for study by psychologists even more than political scientists or party tacticians. And it can't be chalked up to mere ideology, since some of the most vicious attacks have come from right-leaning pundits like Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker.
I tend to write off the sniping from Noonan and Parker as cattiness and envy; there's a hot new conservative "it" girl in town and they're old news, as charter members of the conservative cougars club. Parker swung from swooning over Palin to dissing her in a matter of weeks, based, in seems, on Palin's poor showing in the Katie Couric interview. She seemed like a fickle teen dumping her latest BFF over some perceived slight. Plus, Parker is savvy enough to know that the quickest way to become a "mainstream" media darling, and get invited to the right parties, is to attack someone else on the right. I never saw Parker on the cable news gab shows until she did her hit piece on Palin. You shouldn't discount the element of self-promotion in her actions.
Sarah Palin was the girl who made cheerleader and got the hunk, while Noonan and Parker headed-up the forensic team and served as president of the School Library Club, determined to prove that they were more than just pretty faces (but secretly hoping they could be as popular as Sarah). And Brooks can only be counted a "conservative" in relative terms -- because he appears on an editorial page, and provides analysis on a PBS news show, that skew so far to the left. He's the sort of conservative liberals are comfortable with, and will tolerate, because he's really not much of a conservative at all.
That's a superficial (and somewhat snide) analysis, I know. Obviously, the national reaction to Palin -- which swings from adoration to contempt, depending on where in American society one stands -- exposes a deeper cultural divide, which Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger takes a laudable stab at explaining, in a piece I've pasted below.
I also think Henninger shows a flash of insight with the following observation: "Presidential candidates such as John McCain and Barack Obama have become untethered from the discipline of party institutions, largely because the parties have lost coherence. So we get celebrity candidates made famous, fundable and electable by dint of their access to the Beltway media. For voters, this election is a national Hail Mary."
But here's Henninger's column in its entirety:
Hatin' Palin
She's not the reason Americans can't stand their politicians.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
The abuse being heaped on Sarah Palin is such a cheap shot.
The complaint against the Alaska governor, at its most basic, is that she doesn't qualify for admission to the national political fraternity. Boy, that's rich. Behold the shabby frat house that says it's above her pay grade. Congress has the lowest approval rating ever registered in the history of polling (12%!). She isn't the reason polls are showing people want the entire Congress fired, with many telling pollsters they themselves could do a better job.
Sarah Palin didn't design a system of presidential primaries whose length and cost ensures that only the most obsessional personalities will run the gauntlet, while a long list of effective governors don't run.
These rules have wasted the electorate's time the past three presidential elections, by filling the debates with such zero-support candidates as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Al Sharpton, Duncan Hunter, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden (8,000 total votes), Wesley Clark and Alan Keyes.
Out of this process has fallen a Democratic nominee who entered the U.S. Senate in 2005 fresh off a stint in the Illinois state legislature, with next to no record of political accomplishment. He may be elected mainly because, in Colin Powell's word, he is thought to be "transformational." One may hope so.
By not bothering to look very deeply at the details beneath either candidate's governing proposals, the media have created a lot of downtime to take free kicks at Gov. Palin. My former colleague, Tunku Varadarajan, has compiled a glossary of Palin invective, and I've added a few: "Republican blow-up doll," "idiot," "Christian Stepford wife," "Jesus freak," "Caribou Barbie," "a dope," "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party," "liar," "a national disgrace" and "her pretense that she is a woman."
If American politics is at low ebb, it is because so many of its observers enjoy working in its fetid backwash.
The primary discomfort with Gov. Palin is the notion that she doesn't have sufficient experience to be president, that Sen. McCain should have picked a Washington hand seasoned in the ways of the world. Such as? Here's an opinion poll question: If as Joe Biden suggests the U.S. is likely to be tested by a foreign enemy next year, who of the following would you rather have dealing with it in the Oval Office: Nancy (of Damascus) Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Joe (the U.S. drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon) Biden, Mike Huckabee, Geraldine Ferraro, Tom DeLay, Jimmy Carter or Sarah Palin?
My pick? Gov. Palin, surely the most grounded, common-sense person on that list of prime-time politicians.
The established political pros let the selection process come to this. Presidential candidates such as John McCain and Barack Obama have become untethered from the discipline of party institutions, largely because the parties have lost coherence. So we get celebrity candidates made famous, fundable and electable by dint of their access to the Beltway media. For voters, this election is a national Hail Mary.
For nearly two years, all the major candidates have rotated through our lives as solitary personalities attended by careerist campaign professionals. Barack, Hillary, Rudy, Mitt, Mike, McCain. When the moment arrived to pick a running mate, input from the parties was minimal. That famous party boss, Caroline Kennedy, advised Barack Obama. They picked a three-decade denizen of the Senate. John McCain's obligation was himself and his endless slog to this big chance.
The quick surge of party-wide excitement and campaign contributions after his selection of Sarah Palin made clear that the McCain candidacy was moribund and headed for a low-turnout debacle. If he had picked any of the plain-vanilla men on his veep short list -- Pawlenty, Sanford, Romney or Lieberman -- they'd have won approval from the media's college of cardinals, and killed his campaign.
The stoning of Sarah Palin has exposed enough cultural fissures in American politics to occupy strategists full-time until 2012. We now see there is a left-to-right elite centered in New York, Washington, Hollywood and Silicon Valley who hand down judgments of the nation's mortals from their perch atop the Bell Curve.
It seems only yesterday that the most critical skill in presidential politics was being able to connect to people in places like Bronko's bar or Saddleback Church. When Gov. Palin showed she excelled at that, the goal posts suddenly moved and the new game was being able to talk the talk in London, Paris, Tehran or Moscow. She looks about a half-step behind Sen. Obama on that learning curve.
Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."
Uh-oh. Sounds like the cancer could be in remission.
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Boston Palintologists Discover American Dinosaurs
Sarah Palin was a defender of property rights, and an opponent of zoning, during her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, much to the obvious disdain of Boston Globe reporter Sasha Issenberg, who turns this into another anti-Palin indictment in a story appearing Sunday. The piece is as revealing about the smug Eastern elitism of the author, and Globe editors, as it is about the governor.
The story has an anti-Palin, anti-property rights slant from beginning to end, but here's a key excerpt:
"Palin's property-rights agenda exploited a deep anger toward the expansion of local government, an attitude that had defined politics in the Matanuska Valley since its settlement 80 years earlier as a way station for gold miners heading north.
She used opposition to land-use restrictions to tap that vein of frontier libertarianism and a conspicuous display of her social views to connect with the new middle-class families who had suburbanized the valley in the 1980s. In doing so, Palin created a microcosm of the modern conservative coalition in Wasilla, exploiting a period of radical growth and progress while feeding off the resentment it created.
"That probably was the reason she was elected mayor," said David Chappel, who joined Palin as the only two of six council members to vote against the city plan and later became her deputy mayor.
As a vice presidential candidate, Palin has suggested that a similar attitude toward growth would prevail nationally if she were elected. "We will get out of the way of private-sector progress," Palin said last week at a Colorado rally. "It's the small business, the mom-and-pops, that are the cornerstone of America."
The municipality Palin repeatedly heralded as a classic "small town" in her convention speech has no discernible center and a Main Street in name only. To its critics, Wasilla has become a famously bad example of suburban growth even by the standards of Alaska, a place where city planners have long noted a dangerous combination of too much land and too few rules about how to build on it."
To a Bostonian, Wasilla's relatively free, open and unregimented ways seem as alien and incomprehensible as the planet Mars, judging from the following description, which oozes disapproval:
" . . Wasilla had few natural barriers to growth, and government did not add any hurdles. With no zoning or building code, a resident able to finance a house on his or her property could build without oversight. Despite the fact that the city sits in an earthquake zone with extreme weather conditions, Wasilla enforced no standards on building materials, methods, or dimensions - and no construction documents needed to be filed at city hall.
In return, government was truly hands-off: Most residents lived on gravel roads and off their own septic tanks. They paid no sales tax. State troopers were the only police presence. There was no trash collection and the only firefighters were volunteers.
In the mid-1980s, a borough manager who proposed a zoning plan was chased out of office after being burned in effigy. "The reaction was so vehement, and so widespread, that politicians were loath to propose any land-use planning that had any teeth to it," said Richard Deuser, a former Wasilla city attorney.
When Wal-Mart expressed interest in building a store in the Wasilla area, the company faced few restrictions. Residents, who had a smattering of small, locally owned stores but were used to driving into Anchorage for other purchases, appeared to be uninterested in dictating the terms of the development."
My god! How can people live like this? No planning? No restrictions on what they can build? No sales tax? No uprising against the big box store? No "smart growth," or "sustainability"? It boggles the mind.
These Alaskans really are a barbaric subspecies; a missing link to America's lawless past, who haven't evolved much beyond a frontier state of mind and existence. And now they have a chance to put one of their own, named Palin, a heart beat away from the oval office. If that happens, all America will come to look and operate like Wasilla, Alaska. It will be the greatest setback for Western Civilization since Alaric sacked Rome.
Or so say the Brahmans at The Boston Globe.
The story has an anti-Palin, anti-property rights slant from beginning to end, but here's a key excerpt:
"Palin's property-rights agenda exploited a deep anger toward the expansion of local government, an attitude that had defined politics in the Matanuska Valley since its settlement 80 years earlier as a way station for gold miners heading north.
She used opposition to land-use restrictions to tap that vein of frontier libertarianism and a conspicuous display of her social views to connect with the new middle-class families who had suburbanized the valley in the 1980s. In doing so, Palin created a microcosm of the modern conservative coalition in Wasilla, exploiting a period of radical growth and progress while feeding off the resentment it created.
"That probably was the reason she was elected mayor," said David Chappel, who joined Palin as the only two of six council members to vote against the city plan and later became her deputy mayor.
As a vice presidential candidate, Palin has suggested that a similar attitude toward growth would prevail nationally if she were elected. "We will get out of the way of private-sector progress," Palin said last week at a Colorado rally. "It's the small business, the mom-and-pops, that are the cornerstone of America."
The municipality Palin repeatedly heralded as a classic "small town" in her convention speech has no discernible center and a Main Street in name only. To its critics, Wasilla has become a famously bad example of suburban growth even by the standards of Alaska, a place where city planners have long noted a dangerous combination of too much land and too few rules about how to build on it."
To a Bostonian, Wasilla's relatively free, open and unregimented ways seem as alien and incomprehensible as the planet Mars, judging from the following description, which oozes disapproval:
" . . Wasilla had few natural barriers to growth, and government did not add any hurdles. With no zoning or building code, a resident able to finance a house on his or her property could build without oversight. Despite the fact that the city sits in an earthquake zone with extreme weather conditions, Wasilla enforced no standards on building materials, methods, or dimensions - and no construction documents needed to be filed at city hall.
In return, government was truly hands-off: Most residents lived on gravel roads and off their own septic tanks. They paid no sales tax. State troopers were the only police presence. There was no trash collection and the only firefighters were volunteers.
In the mid-1980s, a borough manager who proposed a zoning plan was chased out of office after being burned in effigy. "The reaction was so vehement, and so widespread, that politicians were loath to propose any land-use planning that had any teeth to it," said Richard Deuser, a former Wasilla city attorney.
When Wal-Mart expressed interest in building a store in the Wasilla area, the company faced few restrictions. Residents, who had a smattering of small, locally owned stores but were used to driving into Anchorage for other purchases, appeared to be uninterested in dictating the terms of the development."
My god! How can people live like this? No planning? No restrictions on what they can build? No sales tax? No uprising against the big box store? No "smart growth," or "sustainability"? It boggles the mind.
These Alaskans really are a barbaric subspecies; a missing link to America's lawless past, who haven't evolved much beyond a frontier state of mind and existence. And now they have a chance to put one of their own, named Palin, a heart beat away from the oval office. If that happens, all America will come to look and operate like Wasilla, Alaska. It will be the greatest setback for Western Civilization since Alaric sacked Rome.
Or so say the Brahmans at The Boston Globe.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
AP's Wasilla-gate Story Makes Mountains of Molehills
Intrepid reporters from the Associated Press have been turning over every rock and rowboat in Alaska, digging for dirt on Sarah Palin, and they've come home with several huge scoops. It turns out she was a college-hopper, attending six different schools in three different states before finally getting a degree, according to the results of one investigation. And now comes a second bombshell, suggesting that Palin may have acted unethically as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, by getting special zoning dispensations and receiving a free facial, free flowers and a free salmon. She also may have had a conflict of interest in voting on matters pertaining to snowmobiles, since her husband, Todd, races them.
Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out.
Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out.
But read the story. The situations described therein seem less symptomatic of small town corruption than emblematic of small town informality -- something that may seem alien to AP reporters from the big city, but won't be to most Americans. The rigidity and regimentation of big city life in the lower 48 isn't the norm in such places. Rules are meant to bend with real-world circumstances. Familiarity and proximity instead serve as checks on bad behavior or abuses of power. Neighborly gestures, including the giving of gifts, aren't automatically construed as bribes or inducements. And, yes, someone in a position of power may get some minor perks as a result -- though this happens to elected officials at every level of government, and doesn't necessarily breed corruption.
A reasonable person -- which a Pulitzer-hunting reporter isn't -- will not read dark motives or machinations into the "revelations" presented in the story. Zoning variances are granted all the time -- as they should be, since most zoning laws are ridiculous and unjust. And a mayor is as entitled to get one as anyone else. As well, politicians from the federal level on down routinely vote on tax measures that potentially benefit them or their family members: Is the AP suggesting that all such votes are tainted by self-interest, or that all those who are taxed must recuse themselves from such votes? That, too, is silly.
The AP obviously is expending a lot of effort and money scouring Alaska for material damaging to Palin. But the results of this "investigation" seem a poor return on the investment, and it seems as though the news service is straining to produce stories by turning molehills into mountains. Some media scrutiny and scrubbing is to be expected for anyone on the presidential ticket. But is the news service an equal opportunity investigator? Have teams of AP reporters been dispatched to Chicago, to probe Barack Obama's past in Chicago machine politics? I doubt it. Has a reporting team been dispatched to Delaware, to see if Joe Biden ever got comped a crab cake? I'm guessing not.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
McCain Makes a Play for the College-Hopper Vote
In their search for dirt on Sarah Palin, the intrepid reporters of the AP have landed a Pulitzer-worthy scoop. She reportedly attended six different colleges, in three different states, in six years -- a fact that wasn't disclosed on her official governor's office biography!
When will politicians learn? It's not the college-hopping that kills you; it's the cover-up.
Palin's grades are shielded by pesky privacy laws, but one can imagine, given her obvious lack of stability in those years, that she was no Rhodes Scholar. And can't you just wait for the vice presidential debate zingers Joe Biden's brains are scribbling on cue cards, to be dropped on her, like an anvil, at just the right moment? "I guess it's not surprising that you've changed your position on earmarks, Governor," he'll quip, "given your repeated flip-flops on a choice of college." Or how about this one? "Do Americans really want someone with her finger on the nuclear button," Biden will ask, looking gravely into the camera, his hair plugs glistening with flop sweat, "who can't even make up her mind about what college to attend?"
It will bring the house down. She'll be crushed. Lloyd Benson (if he's still alive) will cable his congratulations, for the second greatest cut down in modern debating history.
But wait: Maybe this reaffirms the diabolical brilliance of McCain's choice. There must be millions of Americans who changed schools (I did) and feel guilty about it (I certainly do). Some of them more than once. They'll relate to Palin as a kindred spirit. They'll know that she feels their pain, and knows their secret shame. Putting another college-hopper in the White House is a chance for respect, and for redemption, and they'll line up en mass behind the McCain-Palin ticket?
Whether the college-hopper vote can overcome the community organizer vote, only time will tell. But this college-hopper's vote is going to the McCain-Palin ticket.
When will politicians learn? It's not the college-hopping that kills you; it's the cover-up.
Palin's grades are shielded by pesky privacy laws, but one can imagine, given her obvious lack of stability in those years, that she was no Rhodes Scholar. And can't you just wait for the vice presidential debate zingers Joe Biden's brains are scribbling on cue cards, to be dropped on her, like an anvil, at just the right moment? "I guess it's not surprising that you've changed your position on earmarks, Governor," he'll quip, "given your repeated flip-flops on a choice of college." Or how about this one? "Do Americans really want someone with her finger on the nuclear button," Biden will ask, looking gravely into the camera, his hair plugs glistening with flop sweat, "who can't even make up her mind about what college to attend?"
It will bring the house down. She'll be crushed. Lloyd Benson (if he's still alive) will cable his congratulations, for the second greatest cut down in modern debating history.
But wait: Maybe this reaffirms the diabolical brilliance of McCain's choice. There must be millions of Americans who changed schools (I did) and feel guilty about it (I certainly do). Some of them more than once. They'll relate to Palin as a kindred spirit. They'll know that she feels their pain, and knows their secret shame. Putting another college-hopper in the White House is a chance for respect, and for redemption, and they'll line up en mass behind the McCain-Palin ticket?
Whether the college-hopper vote can overcome the community organizer vote, only time will tell. But this college-hopper's vote is going to the McCain-Palin ticket.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Reprogramming Sarah Palin
The biggest danger for Sarah Palin isn't that she'll be dismantled by Democrats, or by the so-called mainstream media. A greater fear of mine is that she'll be reprogrammed, and ruined, by her Republican handlers.
The Washington Post reports today that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is among the people coaching Palin in preparation for her critically important debate with Senator Joe Blowhard. But I think Palin could risk looking foolish, and having a Dan Quayle moment, if she tries selling herself as the second coming of Henry Kissinger.
This shouldn't be Jeopardy prep, and she'll be wasting her time, and likely become a deer in the headlights on debate night, if she spends her days memorizing the name of the president of Azerbaijan, in a vain attempt to woo the Washington and media establishments.
There's no shame in Palin acknowledging that foreign policy expertise is not normally required of governors -- and in pointing to the long list of contemporary governors-turned-presidents who had none when they went to the White House. There's no shame in her noting that any president or vice president has access to the best advisers imaginable, inside and outside the executive branch. There's no shame, and she might even win points with potential voters for candor, in admitting that there will be some learning on the job, while stressing that she'll have an excellent mentor in Senator John McCain.
And that sort of humility might help draw a sharper contrast with the egomaniacs on the Democrat ticket.
A better use of Palin's time would be tutoring her on Joe Biden's abysmal misjudgments on foreign policy over the years. She might start by studying this critique of Biden's Cold War-era foreign policy positions in The Wall Street Journal.
A chimp could function reasonably well as president, in my opinion, and many have. Being an autodidact, as Jimmy Carter fashioned himself, may actually be a hindrance. What matters more than a mastery of minutia is intelligence, common sense, good instincts and composure under pressure -- qualities that this woman already has shown in spades.
She may look the part in her Marian the Librarian glasses, but Republican attempts to reprogram Palin, and turn her into some policy wonk pinhead, may dull her natural political instincts and rob her of the authenticity that makes her so appealing.
But it would be just the sort of mistake "the stupid party" would make.
The Washington Post reports today that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is among the people coaching Palin in preparation for her critically important debate with Senator Joe Blowhard. But I think Palin could risk looking foolish, and having a Dan Quayle moment, if she tries selling herself as the second coming of Henry Kissinger.
This shouldn't be Jeopardy prep, and she'll be wasting her time, and likely become a deer in the headlights on debate night, if she spends her days memorizing the name of the president of Azerbaijan, in a vain attempt to woo the Washington and media establishments.
There's no shame in Palin acknowledging that foreign policy expertise is not normally required of governors -- and in pointing to the long list of contemporary governors-turned-presidents who had none when they went to the White House. There's no shame in her noting that any president or vice president has access to the best advisers imaginable, inside and outside the executive branch. There's no shame, and she might even win points with potential voters for candor, in admitting that there will be some learning on the job, while stressing that she'll have an excellent mentor in Senator John McCain.
And that sort of humility might help draw a sharper contrast with the egomaniacs on the Democrat ticket.
A better use of Palin's time would be tutoring her on Joe Biden's abysmal misjudgments on foreign policy over the years. She might start by studying this critique of Biden's Cold War-era foreign policy positions in The Wall Street Journal.
A chimp could function reasonably well as president, in my opinion, and many have. Being an autodidact, as Jimmy Carter fashioned himself, may actually be a hindrance. What matters more than a mastery of minutia is intelligence, common sense, good instincts and composure under pressure -- qualities that this woman already has shown in spades.
She may look the part in her Marian the Librarian glasses, but Republican attempts to reprogram Palin, and turn her into some policy wonk pinhead, may dull her natural political instincts and rob her of the authenticity that makes her so appealing.
But it would be just the sort of mistake "the stupid party" would make.
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