Monday, September 01, 2008
Sarah Palin in the British press
There are some amusing items about Sarah Palin in tomorrow's British newspapers. I always enjoy reading British analyses of American elections, because they do not hew to the same tedious narrative as the American press.
The Times is hilarious in acquainting itself with Alaska:
At the age of 10, Sarah Palin got her very own bunny rabbit. Which means to say that she crouched down in the grass outside her family home, aimed her shotgun and blew its furry little head off. That's how things work in Alaska. You kill stuff. You freeze it. You turn it into stew. Even as a pre-pubescent, the future Governor of Alaska - and now, perhaps, the future Vice-President of the United States - was able to fully exercise her Second-Amendment right to keep and bear arms. There's no doubt about it: even by the standards of the Deep South or the Wild West, America's 49th state is an intense place. It's absurdly big, for a start. Bigger than Britain, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark combined. Yet it has the population of Bristol. The capital, Juneau, isn't even accessible by land - which tells you everything you need to know about how much Alaskans enjoy other people's company. They'd rather be alone in the mountains, fully armed.
Be sure to read the whole thing, including this bit...
The Republicans of Alaska must have wondered what on earth hit them (before Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla, she coached the incumbent in an aerobics class). McCain is now keen to point out that Obama - who tends to tow the Democratic line - has never shown any willingness to make such uncomfortable decisions on his own turf.
He has a point.
...and this:
Later, another listener says he's worried about the investigation of Palin for allegedly trying to get her former brother-in-law fired. The host calls him a despicable human being and throws him off the air. It's what you'd expect of a right-wing radio host, but there's also something protective about the way he does it. For a moment I wonder if John McCain might be a genius.
The leftier Independent reminds us that the Vice Presidency has not always been the big deal that the Democrats suddenly want it to be:
"What is it, exactly, that the Vice President does every day? I'm used to working real hard." With these words, uttered with an upwards inflexion of disbelief, Sarah Palin responded to CNBC's political interviewer a few weeks back, when he asked her if she would like to be John McCain's running mate.
They are now being played and replayed endlessly back by Democrats seeking to dismiss the Governor of Alaska as a bozo ex-beauty queen without a shred of the experience required to be "a heartbeat away from the presidency".
In fact, Palin's now-derided response to that prescient CNBC man is not as ditzy as it has been made to seem. The first American Vice President, John Adams, described the post as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived". The man who was Vice President of the United States from 1933 to 1941, summed up the job as "not worth a pitcher of warm piss". His name was John Nance Garner IV, a fact of which you will almost certainly need to be reminded – thus making his point.
To Vice President Hubert Humphrey has sometimes been attributed the remark that "once the election is over, the Vice President's usefulness is over. He's like the second stage of the space rocket. He's damn important getting into orbit, but then...".
Sarah Palin is certainly adding plenty of fuel to the somewhat depleted McCain rocket, and not just because she is a woman – the same sex, or so we have been reliably informed, as Hillary Clinton.
There you go, John Adams himself: "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived."
Of course, the succession rules were a bit different then, but still.
Same article:
Democratic Party spokesmen profess to being scandalised by the Alaska Governor's inexperience for the office of Vice President – a somewhat counterproductive tactic, I would have thought, given the nugatory experience of government attributable to their own presidential nominee.
Besides – and despite all the bluster about McCain's "irresponsibility" – no presidential candidate has ever chosen a running mate on the grounds of being the most-qualified and obvious successor in the event of a nasty accident. Which politician would ever want to do that?
Indeed. Just this evening, Larry "talking poitns" King pressed some ninth echelon McCain surrogate to declare that Sarah Palin was the "most qualified" person to be vice president. How asinine. Did anybody demand that John Kerry say that of John Edwards? The sudden interest in Palin's relative qualification, rather than her absolute qualification, has everything to do with the press trying to shore up Barack Obama's main weakness.
From the rightish Telegraph, "The Party is Just Starting for John McCain":
A few weeks ago Obama had a monopoly on excitement. Somewhere in July, his campaign began to lose it. But although McCain had a kind of gritty charm, he could not really arouse the crowds as Obama had done. He had respect but not elation on his side.
Then he picked Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate. On all sorts of grounds it was a shrewd pick.
As a woman who has given birth to a Down's Syndrome child, she nails down the pro-life vote. As the wife of a union member and oil-rig worker, she appeals to the blue-collar Reagan Democrats. As a woman with a successful career and a successful family, she has the admiration of the independents, including some feminists such as Camille Paglia.
It was also a highly risky choice - the typical choice, you might say, of a Navy flyboy going after a pretty girl who can talk back at him. It's given a hostile media, suddenly nervous that Obama could lose, a paradoxical line of attack: you can't afford the inexperience of a small state governor.
And, sure, she could fall flat on her face in full view of the country. That's the risk McCain is taking.
But Palin seems to be one of those extraordinary, ordinary people that America throws up at irregular intervals. She combines conservative views with highly unconventional drive and ability. Her appointment has injected real excitement into the Republican campaign.
It would be foolish for the Republicans to relax, however. Obama is still ahead in the polls, if only by a few points, and this election campaign has already had more twists and turns than the Amalfi Drive. There will certainly be more twists and turns to come.
Yet that, too, may subtly help McCain. So far, the Obama campaign has consisted of a brilliantly conceived strategy to which the candidate stuck undeviatingly through successes, reverses, and - just recently - the doldrums.
McCain is the candidate who has adapted quickly and ingeniously to rapid changes on the political battlefield. He has shown an ability to exploit his own reverses. He surprises opponents. No one can sensibly predict who will win. But we can say that McCain won't lose. Obama will have to find some way of defeating him.
That last paragraph is particularly instructive. McCain has had to adjust again and again to reach this point, always keeping his adversaries off guard. The Democrats want you to believe that this is reckless, partly because their young and inspirational candidate is now playing it safe. But maybe McCain is "adaptive and ingenious".
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Sep 02, 12:47:00 AM:
I've had the long weekend to think this over and I've decided this: John McCain is either amazingly brilliant or John McCain is unbelievably reckless. The media is gearing up for a full-on shark feeding frenzy, especially now with the 17 year old daughter's pregnancy (by her 18 year old soon to be husband). I think that we are going to find out just how advanced a country we really are. And not by whether or not we put an African-American in the White House. Hillary Clinton, whom I generally dislike on principle, may have had a point. When it comes to a woman running for high office, the rules are different.
By 
Anthony, at
Tue Sep 02, 01:13:00 AM:
But Palin seems to be one of those extraordinary, ordinary people that America throws up at irregular intervals. She combines conservative views with highly unconventional drive and ability.
This line reminds me that the European press, even the small portions of it that are friendly to the US, really don't understand America or American conservatism. (They could do with reading Micklethwait & Woolridge's "Right Nation.")
Or maybe that it's that they understand Eastern conservatism, since it's the part of the country closer to Europe. Palin fits like a glove with conservatism as it evolved in the Western US: highly individualistic, even atomistic -- born of the frontier and those who migrated there. She's right in line with Goldwater and Reagan.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Sep 02, 02:06:00 AM:
Good point, Anthony. I always liked the Western version more than the Southern or Northeastern versions.
Everyone needs to read/reread one or two novels by Louis L'Amour. It doesn't matter which ones. They are all pretty much the same.
By , at
Tue Sep 02, 02:15:00 AM:
DEC - I would recommend "Shane" I can't remember how many times I read that growing up. It still sums up the western US for me.
andrewdb (san diego)
By , at
Tue Sep 02, 03:24:00 AM:
Wow: Sarah Palin is about to become a grandma - but she's still a bad ass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn7UzxXv8p4
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Sep 02, 06:37:00 AM:
Anthony (Los Angeles) -- Right Nation is a great book. I think it may be the best book on American politics that I have ever read.
For the rest of you, the authors are a couple of Brits who are (or were) The Economist's correspodants in the United States. Really, really thoughtful discussion of American exceptionalism.
By , at
Tue Sep 02, 02:14:00 PM:
You so rightfully highlight the "safe" campaign Obama has lately been waging. Growing up in Cleveland Ohio, watching the Browns play the Broncos down to the end of important, even crucial, games time and again, there is one thing we learned (eventually): don't play two minute defense. Ever. It is a miserable way to lose. If Obama keeps up the "safe" stuff, McCain might yet have a chance. It may be that Obama isn't so much playing it safe as losing lately, as you also suggest, but either way he's been on the defensive.
When Palin was chosen the consensus was that the wisdom or folly of picking her would be borne out over the next two months of campaigning. Either that elapse of time would turn McCain into a President or it would turn him into a latter day Dukakis, in part because the pressure of the national exposure turned Palin into Eagleton. It would be on Sarah to determine which it would be, based on whether or not she showed herself to be a natural campaigner or an easily dispensed-with yokel (with the NYT/Wapo columnists not even waiting for two minutes to go by before making clear their sniffy judgments).
Who knew the McCain campaign staff would be the first to goof, by not including the daughter's pregnancy in the family background at the announcement. Instead they let it get leaked after the fact, and now McCain is down five points and being forced to defend his vetting process instead of triumphantly capitalizing on an otherwise very good week. I like the choice, but McCain needs to turn the discussion away from teen pregnancy and toward energy policy and congressional flatulence, errr fatuousness, and ineffectiveness, before too long.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Sep 02, 02:38:00 PM:
Bristol Palin does not = -5 points, as you seem to imply. That's silly. That would mean that 1 out of every 20 people in the nation are so horrified by the 'revelation' that they spontaneously decided to support Obama, drop support for McCain, or some combination thereof.
Burying the news in a holiday weekend which also was supposed to be full of hurricane news and RNC coverage was probably a calculated act. In fact, the MSM has been getting flack for talking about the poor girl at all instead of other, more important news stories.
And even if they trumpet it from on high, most people don't give a shit. The fact that there even IS a discussion on teen pregnancy makes the other side look childish and stupid. I haven't seen this kind of attention paid to a girl's swelling belly since *I* was in High School, and it's certainly unbecoming (not to mention unimportant) for inclusion in a freakin' Presidential race.
Holy shit, Palin's daughter is pregnant. But bring up Obama's cocaine use? No no, that's bad form. Even though the very same leftists alternately screamed and snickered about Bush's 8 years ago.
This whole phenomenon is a thinly disguised partisan attack reaction that has nothing to do with the promise of good government.
