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Thursday, July 09, 2009 GREG, DO YOU SERIOUSLY HAVE TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING THIS? Greg Sargent of the Plum Line is utterly baffled: I'm really not sure what to make of this astonishing number from Rasmussen about the 2012 GOP primary: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is the top choice for those Republicans who put national security first.... Palin is the top choice among Republicans whose top concern is national security? I can see how folks would find Palin appealing as a folksy and combative hockey mom type, an outsider and reformer who dukes it out with coastal elites on behalf of ordinary Everymoms all over the vast middle of the country. But as a military leader? ... Oh, Greg, Greg, Greg. Have you never even tried to see the world through wingnut eyes? To wingnuts, real-world experience and depth of knowledge are weaknesses; a superficial, refrigerator-magnet-level grasp of the elemental dichotomies -- good/evil, flag-waver/agent of darkness -- is far more valuable. You don't need to know geopolitics to be a foreign policy giant -- it's better if you don't. What you need to know is old movies, or patriotic tunes, or the Bible, or sports; if you understand a sock on the jaw in a Western movie bar brawl, or country songs about kicking ass, or the Biblical tale of Queen Esther, or pumped-up high school boys slamming one another on the grdiron minutes after emerging from a pre-game prayer circle, then you're ready to lead. Got one of these on your truck?  Then you're probably a Palin fan. Yeah, it's a joke -- but it's still a way to imagine that geopolitics is a game for amateurs and ordinary schlubs (hey, maybe I'll catch bin Laden as I'm heading out to the hardware store on a Saturday!). Greg, you live in Eggheadland. This is "the real America" we're talking about. Things are different there. posted by Steve M. | 11:19 PM | SELLING LIKE SUBSIDIZED HOTCAKES An aside in Time's gushy cover story about Sarah Palin: If ever there has been a time to gamble on a flimsy résumé, ever a time for the ultimate outsider, this might be it. "We have so little trust in the character of the people we elected that most of us wouldn't invite them into our homes for dinner, let alone leave our children alone in their care," writes talk-show host Glenn Beck in his book Glenn Beck's Common Sense, a pox-on-all-their-houses fusillade at Washington. Dashed off in a fever of disillusionment with those in power, Beck's book is selling like vampire lit, with more than 1 million copies in print. I won't deny that Beck gets nice TV ratings, but I just want to point out that his listing at #1 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction list is accompanied by a dagger, which "indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." Now, regular readers know I don't believe every right-wing book is bulk-bought until it's a bestseller. But Beck's is definitely being bulk-bought. (So, by the way, is the latest from Dick Morris, which is #1 on the hardcover nonfiction list.) As for the vampire lit, it doesn't appear that, say, Charlaine Harris needs a right-wing sugar daddy to boost sales. posted by Steve M. | 7:30 PM | THEY'VE GOT THE GUNS BUT WE'VE GOT THE ... OH WAIT, NEVER MIND Mark your calendars, folks, so we can snicker when nothing comes of this:  Oh, that's genius. Not working or spending money? In the midst of the worst recession in half a century? What a brilliant way to stand out in the crowd. It's sort of like staging a hunger strike at an eating disorders clinic. But sometimes a general strike can be a brilliant strategy -- hey, we've staged quite a few moratoriums to end the Iraq War, and look how successful we've been! There are no U.S. troops in Iraq whatsoever now! Or anywhere else in the region! Mission accomplished! Well, I'm not surprised to see this -- I've told you for months that the right is giddily adopting the left's most ineffective strategies, and here we go again. (Yeah, I know the right will claim "going Galt" as Ayn Rand's invention, but she was the original wingnut proponent of me-too-ism, obviously appropriating the notion of the general strike from proletarians, laborers, and other have-nots.) But hey, kids -- entertain yourselves with the notion that a few hundred of you taking paid personal days and not heading out to the strip mall for a six of Old Milwaukee is going to stick it to The Man. I won't stop you. (Via ShortsandPants, where the planned demo is greeted with this question: "What will Krispy Kreme do without their business?") posted by Steve M. | 3:10 PM | FRUM: NO, REALLY, MAYBE WE WON'T BE CRAZY WINGNUTS NEXT TIME! As I said a couple of days ago, a lot of Sarah Palin fans are still laboring under the delusion that she's going to lock the door to her room, crack open a few books, and settle down to a serious course of study, after which she'll be well versed and thoughtful and sober and serious on a wide range of domestic and foreign-policy issues and then, well, White House here she comes. (Latest to succumb to this delusion: Camille Paglia.) David Frum doesn't fall for this -- he believes, politically, that Palin is toast -- but he harbors a different delusion about another GOP A-lister: ... There are two Romneys: the pragmatic, results-oriented candidate who got himself elected Republican governor of Massachusetts -- and the phoney hyper-ideological ex-candidate who addressed the Republican convention in St. Paul in 2008: ...Last week, the Democrats talked about change. But let me ask you -- what do you think Washington is right now, liberal or conservative? Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? It's liberal! Is a government liberal or conservative that puts the interests of the teachers union ahead of the needs of our children? -- It's liberal!... Twenty years of Republican presidencies since 1980? Eighteen years of Republican majorities in the Senate? Twelve years of Republican majorities in the House? Seven of the nine Supreme Court appointments? Never happened! ... The big question for Republicans is: which Romney will show up in 2012? The electable or the unelectable, the serious or the cynical, the commanding or the pandering? ... Hey, it really could be the moderate, reasonable Mitt! Because notice how incredibly successful that approach has been in GOP presidential politics lately! Remember how Republicans rallied around Colin Powell during his 1996 presidential run? Remember the well-received presidential candidacies of Christie Whitman and William Weld? Remember how popular Tom Ridge was as the VP candidate in 2000? Remember how disgusted Republicans were by the religiosity of George W. Bush and the warmongering and McCarthyism of Bush, Cheney, and Rove? Remember how warmly they embraced the socially moderate positions of Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 primaries? Remember how distraught the Republican base was when John McCain attacked Barack Obama's patriotism, and when he brought Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber on board to call Obama a traitor and a commie? Mitt Romney, I'm sure, remembers the recent GOP past. So, yeah, right -- he'll be a thoughtful moderate in 2012. posted by Steve M. | 9:41 AM | THE STAGGERINGLY HUGE, MASSIVE PLUMMET IN OBAMA'S APPROVAL RATING!!!! Omigod -- according to Gallup, it's as if it's dropped off a table!  A really, really tiny table. Why, it's plummeted one entire point since March! (Whoops! Sorry -- this is "big slippage," according to Joe Weisenthal of that slick news business blog Clusterstock. He blogs about numbers all the time! So surely he can explain why one point in three months is a massive number....) One more chart:  Essentially, all the slippage there's been in Obama's popularity is among Republicans. So, um, Mr. President? Outreach to these people? Why even bother? posted by Steve M. | 8:22 AM | Wednesday, July 08, 2009 BUT WHAT IF SHE SHOWS UP ANYWAY? Apparently there are Republicans who aren't clinically delusional: New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's campaign has no interest in help from Sarah Palin after the former vice presidential candidate stepped down as governor of Alaska, in part to help Republican candidates across the country.... Palin is getting a lukewarm response in Virginia, the other high-profile governor's race this year. Republican candidate Bob McDonnell said Tuesday his campaign had conversations with the Palin camp, but stopped short of saying whether he wanted her help.... Dan Riehl fumes that this is "idiocy" from "squish Republicans" -- but apparently "squish Republicans" is a euphemism for "Republicans who can read a poll." Last October, Quinnipiac reported that Palin's favorable-unfavorable numbers in New Jersey were a horrific 33%-50%, while in Virginia there was this from Public Policy Polling: We polled voters in the state after Palin had been on the ticket for a month last fall and 46% of them said her presence on the ticket made them less likely to vote for John McCain, while only 37% said it made them more likely to do so. From the time she was selected to the time we conducted that poll we showed Barack Obama's lead in the state rising from two points to eight. Ouch. (And yes, in both states she polled poorly among independents.) But is that going to be the last word? Think about it: We know Palin resigned to spend more time with us here in the Lower 48 -- especially the parts that have movers, shakers, money, and TV cameras. Virginia is right next to D.C.; New Jersey is right next to New York. Can't you just imagine Palin just happening to be in the Northeast Corridor and and, univited, leading a rally of loyalists (to herself) , ostensibly on a GOP candidate's behalf but really on her own, in the heat of one of these races? I can. Remember how she all but demanded to campaign in Michigan after the McCain campaign wrote off the state, then all but demanded to again the next day? Remember her various moments of "going rogue"? Really, New Jersey and Virginia Republicans, watch it -- you don't want her around, but she may have ideas of her own. posted by Steve M. | 10:35 PM | HANNITY: WHY IS THAT PINKO LIBERAL LECH WALESA SO IGNORANT OF HISTORY HE ACTUALLY LIVED THROUGH? Sean Hannity just posted this at the Fox News site: Obama Should Hit the History Books The president is in Russia and he sat down for an interview with our own Major Garrett. You won't believe his answer to Major's very first question: (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MAJOR GARRETT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: In your speech this morning you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won? The West won it and it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents? PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage and I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. We don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history. (END VIDEO CLIP) Now that's interesting because Lech Walesa, the leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement, said this about the end of the Cold War: "We in Poland took him [Ronald Reagan], so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century." Mr. President, if I were you, you may want to consider hitting the history books before your next foreign trip. Let's ignore for the moment the fact that Hannity and Garrett think the diplomatic thing for Obama to do in Russia was to rub the Russians' faces in the end of rthe Cold War and say, "Nyah-nyah! We won! You lost!" Apparently, according to Hannity, it's ignorant to acknowledge that people other than Americans were responsible for the Cold War's end. Obama, because he also gives credit to the actual Eastern Europeans who were on the front lines, flunks history, according to Professor Hannity. OK, fine -- by that standard, Lech Walesa flunks history, too. Yes, Walesa said what Hannity quotes him as saying -- in this Wall Street Journal op-ed from 2004. But he also said this, in the same op-ed: The 1980s were a curious time--a time of realization that a new age was upon us. Communism was coming to an end. It had used up its means and possibilities. The ground was set for change. But this change needed the cooperation, or unspoken understanding, of different political players. Now, from the perspective of our time, it is obvious that like the pieces of a global chain of events, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about this new age in Europe. We at Solidarity like to claim more than a little credit, too, for bringing about the end of the Cold War. How dare Lech Walesa credit other people than Americans for the outcome of the Cold War! Is he completely ignorant of history? ***** UPDATE: I see that can't even approach the most rancid toxic-waste leak from Fox today. posted by Steve M. | 4:38 PM | JUDY MILLER ON SECOND THOUGHTS Miller on Robert McNamara, at the Fox News site (emphasis added): ... 58,000 American soldiers' lives would ultimately be lost. But still the war would not be won. McNamara spent the next 40 years in atonement, asking in his 1995 belated, best-selling memoir five questions he said he wished he and others had asked from the start: would, for instance, the fall of South Vietnam really trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that pose a grave threat to America national security? By 2003, the five questions had ballooned into "11 lessons" about the use of power.... As Ted Sorensen, the speechwriter and adviser who worked with McNamara in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, reminded the Associated Press, most senior government officials "don't admit error, ever.'' But they can and should ask the kind of policy questions he posed after it had long ceased to matter. His sad fate reminds us of the enormous potential consequences of failing to do so. Gee, Judy, ya think? Interesting that you of all people should bring this up. posted by Steve M. | 1:46 PM | REALLY, REALLY NOT GETTING IT From a Politico article about Sarah Palin's forthcoming book: "If she has an eye on 2012, she probably will write a carefully worded, bland policy book that won't make headlines," said Bernadette Malone, a former editor at Penguin Books. "If she's not running for president in 2012, she can write a much more candid book that's likely to get attention from both the press and the public. She can explain the real reason she resigned the governorship, and she can talk about how badly she was treated by specific people in the media and the John McCain campaign." Oh, dear me -- have we become such a cautious, bet-hedging culture that, even when permitted for months to watch a half-mad, table-upending (but, to a certain following, utterly compelling) attention-seeker, we still expect that person not to grab our lapels for the thousandth time and say LOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATME? Hell, we just buried someone like that. I'm sure Malone, back in 1991, would have said, "Oh, if Michael Jackson wants to get back on the charts, I'm sure he'll play it safe and not release a video that goes from Disneyfied one-worldism to endless crotch grabbing and the smashing of car windows, along with a rap lip-synched by Macauley Culkin. Surely he'll want to play it safe." People who make a huge point of selling you their strangeness don't ever stop doing that if it works. (And don't forget, we expect that from such people.) Of course she's not going to "write a carefully worded, bland policy book" -- even if she could motivate herself to learn enough policy to write a book like that (or at least to absorb the bullet points of what her ghostwriter wrote), she wouldn't do it. It's not her. And it doesn't mean she isn't running for president. She doesn't believe conventional rules apply in her case. Isn't that clear from everything she ever says? Her book is going to be about the following: self-righteousness, showoffy piousness (about God, motherhood, and kids like Trig), score-settling (hi, Katie and Dave, as well as the entire McCain campaign staff), you-go-girl outreach to her female fans (accompanied by attacks on feminists who don't like her), one-of-the-guys talk about sports and the outdoors and Van Halen and Todd, and catchphrase patriotism. The only question will be the proportions. (I'm guessing very, very heavy on the Jesus.) Oh, and, of course, she's going to talk a lot about sheer world-historic horror of being forced to endure the living hell of a Democratic administration. Yes, it will be a campaign book. And is that so strange? Obama's first book outlined his drug use and early racial wariness; it included nasty words (which he read for the audiobook). Um, he's president now. So what constitutes playing it safe? **** UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan doesn't get it, either: The real sell of the book will be the truth about the resignation, if she can keep it hushed up that long. That's just a mind-boggling lack of perspective. Assuming any additional ethics faced by Palin are dull and relatively easy to lawyer away, all she's going to say about the resignation is what she's said since Friday, with better copy editing. That's not what her book is going to be about. It's going to be about a great country being under siege from a large number of horses of the Apocalypse (Obama, Letterman, Katie Couric, "anonymous bloggers") -- and guess who might just be God's avenger? posted by Steve M. | 10:43 AM | SUPER-MEAN-GIRL COMES TO THE SUPERMARKET Do you know your GI Joe demimonde? Phil Nugent thinks Sarah Palin is the Baroness.  For some reason, to me, this makes her seem more likely to achieve political success in America, not less. Successful creators of characters meant to appeal to eight-year-old boys of all ages and genders tend to know what they're doing, i.e., they know how to hit the masses' mental hot buttons. If Palin's a cartoon, is that bad for her career as a pol in America? I don't think so.... posted by Steve M. | 7:37 AM | Tuesday, July 07, 2009 UTTERLY UNSURPRISING HYPOCRISY Fox now:  Which leads to a Fox story that includes this factoid: ... The deaths of seven U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Monday received just 1/20th of the network television news coverage devoted to Jackson, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center, a Virginia-based news analysis organization. The seven deaths garnered less than one minute of coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts combined, including just 13 seconds on CBS, compared to more than 13 minutes of Jackson-related news. That's a 60-to-1 disparity, the analysis found. “This is a prime example of why network television news audiences are disappearing before our eyes," Media Research Center President Brent Bozell said. "There is no justification for determining that the death of a celebrity over a week ago merits 20 times more news coverage than the tragic deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan." NewsBusters has more from Bozell and the MRC. Now let's go back to the spring of 2004: "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace announced Friday that he's planning to respond to ABC "Nightline" host Ted Koppel's decision to air photos and names of GIs Killed in Iraq, calling Koppel's broadcast "a stunt." "I think it is such a stunt," Wallace told WRKO-Boston radio host Howie Carr.... More: Upset with the April 30 recitation of the names of U.S. military personnel killed during the current Iraq war on ABC's "Nightline," "Fox News Sunday" offered its own list Sunday: an accounting of what it called U.S. accomplishments in the war. Fox's Chris Wallace ... first told "Fox News Sunday" viewers on May 2 that "Nightline" erred when it aired "The Fallen," in which Koppel read the names while viewers saw photos of the war dead.... And from Bozell at the time: Brent Bozell, president of Media Research Center, said, "I think it's intellectually dishonest to deny the partisan nature of this broadcast. Of course, it's partisan! What's the purpose? There's only one goal in mind: It's to turn public opinion against the war." MRC and Fox, of course, have no partisan motive whatsoever now, right? posted by Steve M. | 6:15 PM | WHAT PALIN'S DOING ON HER "FISHING VACATION" ABC interview. Fox interview. CNN interview. NBC interview. Time interview. Anchorage Daily News interview. Nothing like this was happening to her when she was stuck doing boring old governor work. She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is there existing? --Warren Beatty on Madonna, in the documentary Truth or Dare posted by Steve M. | 4:01 PM | OH, THAT HOSTILE EAST COAST ELITE PRESS Question asked by Time's Jay Newton-Small in a new interview with Sarah Palin: When you resigned from the AOGCC [Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission], that was a huge catapult for you. Do you think this might catapult you as well? Or do you see it as kind of a selfless move, more for the state than for you? Gosh, Sarah, was what you did brilliant? Or incredibly noble? Because, really, those are the only two possible ways of describing it -- don't you agree? Ladies and gentlemen, your liberal media. ***** I also like this: You sound a lot like someone, campaigning for other candidates, perhaps fundraising for them, who's going to run in 2012. Is that an interest? I honestly [pausing to brush Piper's cheeks, who has come back in the room] don't know.... That's exactly how it appears in the transcript. Refs successfully worked. posted by Steve M. | 1:18 PM | THE MAN CAN'T BUST OUR CANDIDATE Ezra Klein seems puzzled by Bill Kristol's new Washington Post column: ... Kristol begins with a very simple claim: Sarah Palin should not be physically or legally stopped from running for president. "I am convinced, though, that [Palin] should have a chance to compete and make her case." Kristol writes. "In this, I seem to differ from many of my friends in the mainstream media and the Republican establishment." Kristol obviously knows his friends better than I know his friends. But it sounds a bit like he's hanging out with fascists. I've been keeping a pretty close eye on Palin-related commentary and haven't heard anyone say that she "should not have a chance to compete and make her case." ... ..."Palin may not even run," he writes. "But the panic among mainstream media commentators and the GOP establishment suggests real worry that if she does, she might pull off an upset." ... I'd say Kristol is doing two obvious things here. First, as Ezra suggests, he's trying to make Palin more appealing to the rubes by selling them the line that (help help!) Palin's being repressed by insiders. (This message, from a consummate insider, reminds me of the famous 1968 ad for Columbia Records, aimed at the counterculture and headlined "But The Man can't bust our music." Columbia Records was, of course, owned by media giant CBS, so it essentially was The Man.) Beyond that, Kristol's trying to sell the rubes the notion that there's a "good" GOP and an "evil" GOP. See, the GOP isn't toxic per se -- it just needs to get back to its "real" principles. For now, alas, it's under the temporary control of bad guys (who are so evil they would actually like to thwart the candidacy of this potentially incredibly popular candidate, even though -- or perhaps because -- she might be able to win the 2012 election). I'm assuming that Kristol is just peddling this nonsense to help his dream candidate. I certainly hope he doesn't actually believe it. You should never get high on your own supply. posted by Steve M. | 10:27 AM | GONNA GET BACK TO THE LAND AND SET THEIR WINGNUT SOULS FREE You may know that Republican senator John Cornyn was booed at a tea party on July 4 in Austin, Texas, because he voted for the Wall Street bailout. It was a tough crowd -- another guy who got booed was the governor of Texas, Rick Perry: Perry also drew some boos on his support of toll roads to alleviate traffic congestion. What's odd about this is that Perry doesn't just support toll roads. Perry supports the most Republican toll roads imaginable: Texas spent the past six years leading the nation in its pursuit of private toll roads. Now, it looks to be among the first to call a timeout. Lawmakers quit the Capitol on Thursday after refusing Gov. Rick Perry's pleas to extend the state's authority to enter long-term contracts with private toll-road developers beyond this summer. The decision won't kill all private toll roads in Texas -- not yet. But it signals a significant halt to one of Perry's signature initiatives... Perry's policies, first given life by the Legislature in 2003, have meant both billions of dollars in new highways constructed and ever-higher tolls for millions of Texans. ... the Spanish firm Cintra has agreed to spend billions to rebuild LBJ Freeway in Dallas and to construct the North Tarrant Express near Fort Worth. Both projects involve a mix of tax dollars and private funds, and will result in highways with free lanes and tolled managed lanes.... And even when private firms don't get the contracts, it's because government agencies manage to outbid them, taking on comparable amounts of debt (i.e., a lot of debt) in the process -- that is, they become very much like private firms. (The result, by the way, is high tolls and what seem to be complex pricing structures: "Rates that were less than 10 cents a mile just a few years ago are about to be 14.5 cents per mile. Rates on so-called managed lane projects, where drivers are given the choice of driving on optional tolled HOV lanes, could be 50 cents to 75 cents a mile, or even more, during rush hour.") This is classic Reagan/post-Reagan Republicanism. Government is the problem. Private industry is the solution. Unleash capitalism and all our problems will solved. Unfortunately for Perry, it isn't really a magic wand -- hey, you get more stuff and pay less money! it's Walmart government! -- so the teabaggers don't like it. I think this is a sign of why we're seeing polls like the new Gallup survey in which Americans are calling themselves more conservative -- while other polls show that the "Republican brand" continues to be toxic. You have to remember to add the people who think the GOP is too wingnutty to the people who think it isn't wingnutty enough. I'm reminded of something Tom Hilton posted last week about a San Francisco Chronicle story on California's most Republican county. Modoc County. The residents range from cattlemen to hippies, but they really don't like government -- oh, except sometimes: Most folks up here will tell you that no matter who is in office or what the big-city politicians do, the dearest wish of anyone living in Modoc is to be left alone -- except for a little help for core needs like hospitals and schools. Yup -- except for that. But I bet it shouldn't cost anything: ...they say ... swing the budget ax on bloated-big-government-style frills -- for instance, state-paid cars for legislators and misguided environmental regulations, though they don't always agree on which ones are misguided. Uh-huh. Got it. And if you cut off our funding even for [hospitals and schools], they say, we won't like it -- but we'll get by. We're independent.... "Well, we'll just get by the way we did in the Great Depression -- on our own," [Ken] McGarva said, swatting mosquitoes on his porch after another hard day of herding dogies on his 1,000-head ranch. "We'll grow a vegetable garden, we'll use milk cows." If the roads are closed, he said, they always have horses.... This is delusional -- but it's increasingly widespread, and you should think of it as the wingnut version of late-'60s/early-'70s back-to-the-landism (which could also be pretty damn delusional). These folks don't have a coherent plan, but they think they have solid principles: Tax us less! Spend less! Oh, but give us everything we need from government. Just cut waste! The next election cycle is going to be 1972, except in reverse. The out party's presidential candidate is going to have to seem sympathetic to those who wave the freak flag high. That's why Sarah Palin is still very much in the running. And if there's more right-wing violence in the next couple of years, the analogy could be even more precise, and Barack Obama's 2012 numbers could look like Nixon's forty years earlier. posted by Steve M. | 7:35 AM | Monday, July 06, 2009 THE CHAUNCEY GARDINER DELUSION AND THE UNPRECEDENTED SUFFERING DELUSION Yeah, I suppose, as Steve Benen says, it's rather remarkable when Fred Barnes, one of the right-wingers who first became, um, enamored of Sarah Palin a couple of years ago after meeting her on a Weekly Standard cruise to Alaska, concludes that maybe she doesn't have the right stuff after all -- but even he can't quite let go of the dream (emphasis added): Forget about Sarah Palin as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and probably ever. She may have no interest in seeking the GOP nomination. But if she does, her chances of winning the nomination have been minimized by her decision to resign as governor of Alaska. She's knocked out one of three legs of the presidential stool and a second one is wobbly. ... personal magnetism is only one of the legs, or underpinnings, for a successful race for the Republican nomination. The other two are experience in office and enough knowledge of foreign and domestic issues to talk about them persuasively. By stepping down, she's cut her experience short... And, from all appearances, Palin has made little headway on the issue track. ... I first met Palin in 2007 and talked to her over lunch at the governor's mansion in Juneau. I was impressed. She talked quite ably about energy, taxes, and the environment--issues on the table in Alaska. I wrote a highly favorable story about her. I thought she was a brilliant choice as McCain's vice presidential running mate in 2008. By itself, two months on the Republican ticket won't propel her to the presidential nomination. But there is a way: win Alaska's lone House seat in 2012 and oust Democratic senator Nick Begich in 2014. A term in the House and another in the Senate--nothing would do more to groom her for the White House than this and transform her into the best Republican candidate for the presidency in, say, 2020, when she'd be 56. To a certain subset of Republicans, she's still Chauncey Gardiner from Being There, or nearly so -- unlike Gardiner, she may not seem across-the-board brilliant to these folks yet, but to them she has the potential to be unspeakably brilliant, and her path to brilliance is so clear, so feasible, so obvious. Meanwhile, fellow Standard-ite Bill Kristol thinks she's crazy like a fox -- and quotes an e-mailer who perfectly exemplifies the Chauncey Gardiner thinking about Palin: She needs to own two substantive areas: for example, energy and federalism. And she should contrast flat out with Obama. She is Big Daddy; he is soft mama. She should be as specific as possible with real data on the issues she takes on. With cap-and-trade looming, the energy issue especially promising. She needs to get her impressive record down to an accessible litany and keep it in a message framework (reform, responsive, accountable, limited government). She needs to contrast with Obama reckless, feckless, opaque (middle of the night, unread legislation), command and control. ...Don't try to be an expert on foreign policy. But have grasp of large principles. And apply to current events-- Iran, NK.... See? Easy as pie. These people are right: she could do all this ... if she wanted to make the slightest effort. The delusion is that she ever will. But I would argue that whenever she runs for president -- and I do think it will be 2012 -- she won't have do do any of this work (a) because her fans will still think she's going to do it any day now and (b) she will be able to take advantage of Wingnuttia's tremendous group persecution complex, of which she's the perfect embodiment. Again, let me quote Kristol's e-mailer: ...[Palin's] narrative is "I am tough", but if she doesn't articulate the politics of personal destruction just right, she will appear weak. She doesn't want it to slip into 'she's leaving because they are picking on her.' Unfortunately, in the era of Soros, the cost of pubic service is fly swatting frivolous ethics complaints; still, it doesn't compare to being prosecuted after the fact for opinions rendered while in office, a la the "torture" lawyers. Yes, there it is, folks: only Republicans are subject to ethics complaints, and it's all George Soros's fault -- unless they're "prosecuted" (um, who's been subject to that) for "torture"-in-scare-quotes, which is equally unjust. Those are the only ways someone in government can be laid low by investigations. In other words, the 1990s never happened. posted by Steve M. | 11:44 AM | YEAH, NO ONE EVER SAID ANYTHING MEAN ABOUT, UM, THE CLINTONS OR OBAMA OR DUKAKIS OR ... According to Ross Douthat's New York Times column today, if you go to an Ivy League school, no one in the press ever says anything mean about you: Palin's popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal -- that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard. This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It's been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously.... But it's also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her. Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith.... Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You'll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You'll endure gibes about your "slutty" looks and your "white trash concupiscence," while a prominent female academic declares that your "greatest hypocrisy" is the "pretense" that you're a woman.... All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin's gender and her social class. Right. If Palin had been an Ivy Leaguer, there would have been no snickering whatsoever about her femininity -- ask Hillary Clinton, whom the entire nation has always treated with kid gloves, and about whose daughter no one ever made jokes. And no one ever dared to distort Barack Obama's religious history -- because he's male and an Ivy Leaguer. Or say unpleasant things about alleged changes in style of dress ("earth tones") by male Ivy Leaguer Al Gore. And Michael Dukakis was a male Ivy Leaguer, so no one ever mocked his looks in, say, a helmet, or spread scurrilous rumors about his wife (say, on the subject of flag burning) that wound up being spread further by his opponent in the presidential race. Nor would any reporter have dared to imagine her in a public forum raped and murdered -- the Dukakises' class status and his Ivy League background exempted them from that sort of nasty talk. Oh, and no one ever dared to distort John Kerry's war record, because he was posh and male and an Ivy Leaguer, too. Only Palin has to take this kind of guff. Only Palin! posted by Steve M. | 8:22 AM | Sunday, July 05, 2009 NO ONE WOULD MAKE HER INTO A MARTYR, SO SHE DECIDED TO DO THE JOB HERSELF I go away for a few days and, well, holy crap. Thank you, Phil, Kathy and Bulworth, for extensive (and excellent) coverage of Palin (and much else besides). This morning I read Adam Nagourney's take in The New York Times, and he gets part of the way to what I think is going on: For some Republicans, the comparison that came to mind was when Richard M. Nixon announced in 1962 that he was leaving politics for good, after losing the governor's race in California, two years after a failed White House bid. In fact, Nixon used the next six years to quietly refurbish his image, building ties with the conservative wing that was becoming ascendant in the Republican Party, ingratiating himself with Republican senators and candidates for governor by campaigning on their behalf, and becoming better schooled in issues. Er, yeah -- Nixon licked his wounds and plotted a comeback, unencumbered by an actual job in government in which his performance could be assessed. I think that's part of what Palin is planning. But there was more than that going on with Nixon: he became (in his own mind) a victim, a guy brought low by a press that hated him. I wouldn't say he won in 1968 because voters felt he'd been victimized -- but subsequent Republicans (e.g., both Bushes) have sought votes based on the notion that those votes were a way to stick it to the Eastern Jew-communist atheist homosexual pornographers. Palin wanted to be the victim of the evil liberal elite, but all she can say is that she's taken a number of hits -- nothing unusual for an A-list pol. She certainly hasn't been driven from office -- but it would benefit her if she had been. So she drove herself out of office -- and clearly gave the impression that she was the victim of a political murder, not political suicide. As Phil said on Friday: ... in the absence of any serious accomplishments of her own that Palin can point to, the hatred of her enemies is the essential component in any argument about why she deserves to be the party's figurehead. (And she's asking for more attacks with this abrupt resignation -- which will further reinforce her and her supporters' image of her as a victim.) Elsewhere in the Times, there was this quote from her Facebook page (Josh Marshall has the whole message): ...And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. Wow -- that's practically a poem. She's not just the martyred victim of her evil enemies' double standard, the best-known beneficiary of the double standard she suffers under is (implicitly but obviously) the guy whose job she wants: Barack Obama. He got to quit his job and become president! Why can't she? It's not fair! (Of course, no one ever said there was anything verboten about a sitting governor seeking higher office and then quitting if elected -- or a sitting senator like the one Obama beat in the general election, or the sitting senators and governor and congressman Barack Obama beat in the primaries. But Palin is incapable of respecting political opponents, or, really, anyone who crosses her, and she's insecure enough to feel that anyone who gets something she wanted must have had a break she deserved and didn't get.) Back to Nagourney: Her move may play well with her strongest supporters, but her political instincts and stability were once again being questioned in other circles of the party, which had already been wary of her after the election last year. That is hardly a development Ms. Palin could welcome as her party looks for a candidate who can endure what could be a very tough race in 2012. "Somebody has to explain to Republicans how this woman is going to expand her support base," said John Weaver, a former adviser to Mr. McCain. "Yes, she is the darling of a certain element of our party," Mr. Weaver said. “But it remains to be seen -- in fact, it remains rather doubtful she can grow beyond that." The irony is that the better Obama does, the better her chances of getting the nomination. If he succeeds, there won't be anything left of the GOP by 2012 except "a certain element," the element that loves her. If Obama struggles, more independents and young people are going to give the GOP a second look -- and that's not good for a candidate whose appeal is to the crazy base. So she needs for Barack Obama to do well. I don't think she knows that. And I don't think she knows she won't be elected president in 2012, no matter what. posted by Steve M. | 10:41 PM | In the course of a post at Media Matters that includes an impressive list of some of the most outrageous things that Pat Buchanan has said recently on the air, Jamison Foster has wondered, what does this unrepentant old racist blowhard have to say to get thrown off the air? In response, Adam Serwer at the Root advises Foster to be careful about what he wishes for: But what makes Buchanan most interesting is that he’s no blind partisan—he’s his own brand of traditional paleoconservative. Most of the time, he tells it pretty straight. Buchanan hasn’t been shy about praising Obama or criticizing the GOP when he believes it’s warranted. When Republicans like Bill Kristol and John McCain were clamoring for Obama to antagonize Iran’s leadership in the wake of protests throughout June, Buchanan supported President Obama’s strategy of undercutting Iranian hard-liners by taking America out of the equation, saying he thought Obama was behaving “like a president of the United States.” There’s also Buchanan’s tendency to be startlingly frank about what he’s thinking and what he believes. Later in the same segment, Buchanan shrugged, “I put democracy far down the line. I think a devoutly Christian, conservative, traditionalist country—even if it’s a monarchy—is fine with me.” Scary, but really kind of refreshing at the same time. And, though Buchanan has long been, as the president is fond of saying about petty dictators, “on the wrong side of history,” that doesn’t mean one can ignore his cultural heft. Buchanan is also arguably one of the most important living American political figures—he served in the Reagan, Ford and Nixon administrations, and it was his mind that helped develop the racially divisive Southern strategy that would become a successful Republican blueprint for years to come. So is there anything Buchanan could say to get himself kicked off the air? Probably not. As long as his prejudices are expressed in relatively polite fashion—without the use of an obvious racial epithet, for example—he can skate by. And really, that’s why MSNBC should keep Pat Buchanan. Not despite his regressive views—but because of them. Social pressure has expelled the expression of ideas like Buchanan’s from polite company, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people who agree with the things he says. He remains on the network because, sadly, there’s still a market, an audience for his views that nod knowingly whenever his pensive scowl appears on the screen. And Buchanan says what a lot of these slick, groomed Republican press flacks are really thinking. Many of these conservatives won’t cop to believing, as he does, that America is “committing suicide” through the abortion of white babies and an influx of “Asian, African, and Latin American children;” there’s a silent minority that agree with many of his views. (A good example of this projection is the bromantic camaraderie between Buchanan and Hardball host Chris Matthews over the Ricci case—Matthews invites Buchanan to talk affirmative action precisely because he can express the kind of white resentment that Matthews himself might get in trouble for admitting.) In recent years, the GOP has made attempts—some sincere, some not—to reach out to communities of color. These have failed, largely because a substantial amount of the GOP’s shrinking base sees the nation the way Buchanan does, as being destroyed by outsiders who aren’t real Americans. This remains true even as American demographic trends promise certain doom for the party as it currently exists. As long as that’s the case—and as unpleasant as it may be—progressives should hope those reactionaries have a voice. To the extent that Pat Buchanan is hurting someone, it isn’t liberals, Democrats or even people of color. It’s the conservative cause. If anyone should really want Buchanan to be fired from MSNBC, it’s the leadership of the Republican Party. I think this is about right. The greatest trick the Republican Party ever ginned up, in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, was crafting a language that enabled its candidates to talk directly to racist white voters, stroking their resentments and their prejudices, in a way that passed for reasonable among those who didn't want the headache of calling them on it. When David Duke tried to cross over into mainstream politics in the late 1980s, he spoke that language and sounded just like Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush; he was cast as beyond the pale not for anything he said but because there were old photos of him wearing a sheet, so there was no way the media could tell themselves that he was just talking that way for the votes; everyone knew he meant it. Buchanan really means it, too. As his various memoirs attest, he believes in tribal thinking, in which one group is always pitted against another and loyalty is paramount, and he belongs to various tribes which include white men, Catholics, and the working class. He saw the Cicil Right Movement as a scheme to rob working-class white guys of automatic first consideration at hiring time; his flirtations with something akin to Holocaust denial seem to have their basis in his thinking that there's a battle on over whether Jews deserve credit for having suffered more under Hitler than non-Jews suffered under Stalin. When he says that he prefers the "old bigotry" to the way we behave now because it was there was less "hypocrisy", he's saying that he doesn't even believe that society at large, or most of the people in it, can be non-racist, not really; people are just pretending so they can fit into a society whose priorities are all screwed up, just as Howard Stern thinks that, if people weren't repressed or pretentious, nobody would pretend to ever think about anything but big boobs and ca-ca jokes. The real question may not be, what could Buchanan say that would make him an unwelcome presence on cable news, but how has he gotten away with what he's said so far? After all, one little "Macaca" routine was enough to get George Allen's political career nipped in the bud, and rightly so. I think that the secret to the free pass that Buchanan seems to carry in his pocket is probably just the mainstream media overlords see him as one of them--not really a politician, even if he does like to run for president from time to time when he has nothing else doing, and not one of those show-boating talk radio guys, like Don Imus or Michael Savage, who are in the outrageousness business, but a guy who's spent the bulk of his career as a TV talking head and is one of them by heart. When Buchanan was running for president in 1992, the rules threatened to change, and the media cautiously dipped a toe into the possibility that it would start holding him accountable for what he said, but then it backed off. As Michael Kinsley, who co-hosted a CNN show with Buchanan for a good while wrote at the time, the sentences Buchanan said sure looked bad, but he knew the man from all those hours at work, and the man always seemed nice and friendly, so how could he judge him to be anti-Semitic? This is the downside of our demonization of bigotry, the common assumption that racism is so bad that it can't be a real part of someone who has other likable qualities. (You see this in the comments at the Media Matters piece, from people who write that they'd changed their minds about ol' Pat because they'd heard he hated Bush and his stupid war, but then they heard him talk some shit about Obama or whatever and realized that Buchanan hadn't changed at all and that if he hated Bush, it must have been for the wrong reasons. Really, folks, it's possible for someone to have disgusting racial views and be right about other things. God knows it's possible for a racist to hate George W. Bush, even for the right reasons. Racists hate bubonic plague, too.) The fact is that, because of his work history, Buchanan could show up at MSNBC with a swastika carved into his forehead and erect a burning cross on the set during a live broadcast, and as long as he's a good guy to get a drink with later, the rest of the media will make excuses for him. And there'll be one person on the cable news roster who, even as he rails against the inadequacies and blunders of the Republican Party, can serve as its honest face better than he knows or they wish. posted by Phil Nugent | 1:50 PM | I hate to keep bringing up Sarah Palin, but this passage from Phillip Rucker's big piece on the David Caruso of American politics deserves to be set in stone before some sane editor erases it from the online edition of the Washington Post: Not one to fit comfortably into convention -- and not comfortable being a victim, either No, no one who has followed Palin's career, who saw her speech Friday, and who since then has authorized the issuing of threats against those who would speculate on the reasons for her departure, could ever dream of accusing this woman of being "comfortable" with the role of "victim"; it would be like saying that Charles Barkley isn't a delicate wallflower, or suggesting that maybe the Unabomber could have used some grooming tips. The lobbyists who are no longer going to be able to purchase such deep insights as the Post's editors and reporters could provide really dodged a bullet. posted by Phil Nugent | 1:15 PM | Sanford Spiritual Advisor Says Gov. Was Caught Off Guard by "the Power of Darkness" Uh huh. The devil made him do it. In an interview with The Associated Press this weekend at his Columbia office, just blocks from the State House, [friend and spiritual advisor Warren "Cubby"] Culbertson said he believed his friend when he said that this was his only marital transgression. He thinks Sanford was simply caught off guard by "the power of darkness."That's just sad, but this next part strikes me as creepy -- and a great way to shift the blame. "God hates lawlessness and is tireless in His desire to dissuade man from his fascination with lawlessness," reads a paper titled "Cubby's Talks." "Our hearts are lions' dens of devouring lusts. Lawlessness torments righteous souls every day."Really? Every day? Seems to me that only happens if you define almost every thought or impulse as "sinful" and yourself as too weak and childish to take any responsibility for your own actions. Maybe it's lack of self-esteem on my part, but I've never imagined that the devil was devoting all his time trying to knock me off the straight and narrow. Then again, I don't consider myself particularly righteous, so maybe he just can't be bothered. During his 18-minute mea culpa, the governor made numerous references to "God's law" and the sin of self. They were straight out of "Cubby's Talks" and the CDs the Culbertsons used in their "boot camp."Seems to me Sanford is doing his best to choose his consequences. He has, thus far, refused to resign from office despite abandoning his post for five days without telling anyone how to reach him or handing over temporary authority to the Lieutenant Governor. He's hanging on to the gravy train of his wife's family money and expecting her to hang with him, despite announcing to the world that he's "crossed the line" with other women and that his mistress is his "soul mate". Honestly, I'm with Josh Marshall -- if Maria Belen Chapur really is Sanford's soul mate, he should save his family a lot more grief, get a quiet divorce, and go be with her. But if he really, really wants to stick it out and try to salvage his marriage, he needs to STFU. via Pam posted by Kathy | 11:38 AM | Matthew Dallek, the author of The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics, has an article in the new issue of The American Scholar aimed at "reconciling the myth of Ronald Reagan with the reality." Last year, Barack Obama got in trouble with some people for saying that Reagan "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” but saying that someone "changed the trajectory" is pretty much a value-neutral statement; by the end of last fall, we could certainly say that unsupervised deregulation of the banking, credit, and housing industries had changed the trajectory of the United States economy. Reagan's presidency was definitely a success, in that he was elected and re-elected in landslides, served his full terms, and emerged with his skin intact. And he moved the line in American politics, leaving the point where "acceptably" conservative attitudes and those that conventional wisdom would judge as hopelessly loony much father to the right than it had been before his election. It still used to be worth arguing over whether his effect on the country had done more good than harm, or vice versa. It might still be worth arguing that, except that first we have to determine what his effect on the country had been, and thanks to what Dallek, borrowing from Will Bunch (the author of Tear Down This Myth), calls "a 'myth machine' [that] has diligently worked to polish Reagan’s historical reputation and cement his status as one of America’s presidential giants," it's less clear what that was now that it was when his presidency ended. The myth machine has worked overtime to not just burnish Reagan's posthumous image but to denounce any consideration of his less attractive qualities as slander bordering on an act of treason. Last year, New York Times columnist David Brooks, with Reagan biographer Lou Cannon watching his back, faked an attack of the vapors over the suggestion that there had been any kind of coded appeal to white racist voters when Reagan, kicking off the post-convention phase of his presidential campaign in 1980, appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers, and invoked the favorite phrase of the segregationists, "states' rights." Actually, it was so generally accepted at the time that this was an example of Reagan's keeping the GOP's "Southern strategy" alive that to say that recent historians have "suggested" that it was a way of reaching out to bigots is kind of like saying that some have unfairly "suggested" that Reagan once appeared in a movie called Cattle Queen of Montana. The stokers of the myth machine have turned any attempt to honestly discuss Reagan and race into a taboo area by acting as if any charge that Reagan might have been racially insensitive, or that his invocation of an earlier, better-behaved, pre-'60s America might have great appeal to those who were uncomfortable with a colorblind society, amounted to saying that Reagan himself was a racist in the extreme sense of meaning that he had actual malicious feelings towards blacks. But to say that Reagan was less than vigorously enlightened on racial matters amounts to saying that, throughout his presidential term, there was some mass delusion crippling the black community, which never warmed up to him. Reagan is still the man whose favorite image of corruption and greed was the "welfare queen" with the Cadillac, the man who, right up to the minute he signed the legislation making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday was refusing to dismiss the possibility that King was an agent of the Soviet Union, the man who supported apartheid in South Africa and who, in his published diaries, clearly regarded Archbishop Desmond Tutu as uppity. The two big concrete poles for those trying to erect a monument to Reagan have turned out to be his stewardship of the economy and his "winning" the Cold War. In order to use Reagan to prop up the idea that its economic theories can be made to work, the right has embraced the fantasy that the great bringer of the deficits made big government smaller--it grew bigger on his watch, partly as a result of his reluctance to say no to anybody on his staff who asked him for anything--and cut taxes relentlessly. (He cut them, then raised or reinstated them when the cuts didn't have the desired effect.) Even so, the results were more mixed than is always remembered; Reagan, the believer in the traditional family unit who was going to bring back the June Cleaver culture, was lucky in that he arrived just as the two-income household was becoming the accepted norm. Still, people were lying a little about this part of his legacy even while he was in office. What's happened to the story of Reagan and the Soviets is much weirder and more nefarious. After talking shit about the Russians for his whole first term and refusing to even meet with any of its leaders, Reagan looked into the eyes of the new Russian Premier, Gorbachev, and immediately started talking about a plan for mutual disarmament based on shared trust. At the time, this so horrified his old supporters that most of them washed their hands of him. Apparently the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, a development that was indeed helped along by their realization that crazy Ronnie wasn't looking to blow up the world after all and they could focus on their own problems, has done nothing to help his old friends come around, because today, the myth makers are trying to sell the notion that it was the tough talk, and not Reagan's abandonment of it, that somehow magically drove Communism into the sea. For the myth makers, the peak of human history was Reagan's funeral, a televised pageant that recalled nothing so much as, well, the shindigs that the Soviets used to throw for their own dead leaders in the old days, with lots of solemn talk in the same key and the suggestion that the first person to stop clapping will be hauled off to be shot. It seems to have led to a strain of triumphalist thought on the right that it might be possible to not only elevate Reagan to Mount Rushmore but that he might actually displace the last president to achieve full heroic legend status, FDR, and dump the creator of the New Deal down the trash chute. That's why the only ticket for a writer looking to storm the right-wing publishing houses these days that's hotter than a new book celebrating Reagan is one trying to tear down Roosevelt, and why others are campaigning to have Reagan's image replace Roosevelt's on the dime. Fun's fun, but the Reagan myth can do real damage to Republicans who are dim enough to actually believe it: poor George W. Bush, who was so eager to be seen as the true heir to Reagan (as opposed to the heir of, well, you know), did all the things that Reagan was supposed to do--never compromise, never negotiate, constantly call people out ("Bring it on!"), resist the use of government to interfere in people's lives, even if they were broiling to death on their roofs. He was more Reagan than Reagan, and for his reward, he now gets to listen--or would, if he were into listening--to his disgruntled fellow Republicans rail against him for having betrayed Reaganism, which he must have done, or else it all would have worked. The fact is that what Reagan promised, and what Bush actually did--talk tough about being a scary, belligerent nation that had no use for the Geneva conventions and that demanded of its people that they be strong and independent and stand on their own two feet--has never been fashionable in this country, at least not at any point retrievable by modern memory. For years, under FDR, it was fashionable to talk about how government could make people's lives better, and now, under Obama, that may be coming back. What replaced it, under Reagan, was talking about being mean and tough and seeing government as the enemy, while at the same time acting grandfatherly and avuncular and making sure that the government was as bloated as ever, so that everybody still got their goodies-- or, at least, everybody who might vote you, which didn't include minorities and those who made up the new culture of homelessness. In the end, George W. Bush couldn't inspire the same kind of mass love that Reagan did. He just wasn't hypocritical enough. posted by Phil Nugent | 9:50 AM | Saturday, July 04, 2009 Maverick!!!!!! I hate to pile on here, but I had the weirdest sense of cognitive dissonance this morning. I had watched--or attempted to watch--the video replay from Palin's resignation speech last night. But I couldn't bear it. The first minute of the seven minute clip was so full of loopy jumbled syntex, I just clicked it off. It made Governor Sanford's "soul-mate" interview look down right Shakespearian. I almost felt embarassed for her. But to hear our media elite tell it, shucks, this was just Sarah being Sarah, just Sarah being her usual "enigma" self. Doing things "her way". Maverick!!!!! The two front page articles on it in this morning's Washington Post made Sarah, her decision, and her presser, seem almost rational. Update: OK, it now appears that Dan Balz, the Post writer who earlier this morning penned the somewhat laudatory "Sarah just does things her way" piece, may have taken the time to actually watch Palin's speech or read it, or had someone slap him upside the head because he's decided to give some additional analysis, this time suggesting that, yeah, maybe Sarah's a goof who can't or isn't interested in governing: "I thought about, well, how much fun some governors have as lame ducks," she said. "They maybe travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions. So many politicians do that. And then I thought, that's what wrong . . . . They hit the road, they draw a paycheck, they kind of milk it, and I'm not going to put Alaskans through that." That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the responsibilities of governing. Every president becomes a lame duck in their second term. The same for governors, since many are term-limited. Do they "milk it," as Palin put it, or do most continue working hard to the end to finish off their terms with real accomplishments? Still, Balz would have us believe Sarah is a Serious candidate for higher office that we should take Very Seriously. After throwing in a friendly little quip from arch-conservative-who's-never-held-elected-office Gary Bauer, Balz adds this: She could use her new free time to deepen her knowledge of foreign policy. Rather than seeing international travel as a way to milk the system as a lame duck, she could profitably spend time familiarizing herself with national security and diplomatic challenges. Geewhiz. Can I haz better media, pleaze? posted by Bulworth | 6:07 PM | Friday, July 03, 2009 I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, assuming she isn't trying to get out in front of a big scandal, Sarah Palin's surprise resignation (which surprised everyone else in the country while I was happily out at the movies) shores up what I wrote this morning, during what turned out to be the last pre-announcement hours of her tenure, about Palin being devoid of real political beliefs and goals and fueled by resentment and a lust for celebrity. The idea that she's stepping down to prepare for a presidential run is just too stupid for words: if she'd served her full term, she would have been freed up a little more than a year from now, and she'd have been in a position to spend every minute between now and then using her office as a forum and as a means for showing how well she could get things done. That's the kind of problem that real politicians yearn for, but for someone like Palin, who was in the habit of using her office to give jobs to her friends, scam free stuff, and terrorize anyone she was cheesed at, it must have looked too much like work. Throw in the way that national press scrutiny must have been cramping her style in the cronying-scamming-terrorizing departments, and it must have begun to seem as if every minute she had to spend on the job was nothing more to her than time that she could be cleaning up on the lecture circuit or appearing on TV. When she declared that staying in office and doing her job while others said mean things about her would be "the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out," what she seemed to really mean was that it was the path of a loser. Losers do shit work and shrug off insults; that's never been the movie that she's starring in inside her head. In the speech itself, which was designed to make Mark Sanford look like one of the master orators of our time and a rock of emotional stability, she assured listeners that if she finished our her term she wouldn't get a damn thing done and took credit for not putting the people of Alaska through that, then awarded herself points for toughness for closing up shop, while inviting her fans to feel sorry for her for everything she's gone through from all the haters. The fact that some of them are taking her up on that just proves once again that, sometimes, the goofiest crushes are the hardest ones to just shake off. (Imagine if she were from Argentina.) When the smoke has cleared, the most important thing to remember will be the fact that John McCain, who claimed to care so much about this country and its fate, tried to put this fruitcake within a heartbeat of the presidency. Jesus Christ on a crutch. posted by Phil Nugent | 11:22 PM | Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska (Can't believe I'm first over here with the news, but here it is.) Zuh? The linked article speculates the resignation will give her more time to focus on the 2012 presidential race. Oh please, God, no! Here's video of her announcement. If y'all can make any sense of what she's saying, you're doing better than I. Geez, all I hear is, "Blah, blah, blah, mean media, blah, blah, sports analogy, blah, blah, real winners quit, blah, blah..." Her explanation is typical rambling Sarahspeak, taking lots of words to say nothing much of substance: "Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional Lame Duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual, something I campaigned against and will always oppose," Palin said in a statement released by her office. Um, really? That just stinks of BS. Maybe she wants to be free to campaign incessantly for the next three-plus years, or maybe something's about to blow up in her face. It's interesting that she dropped this little news nugget on the Friday of a holiday weekend in the middle of the summer. We'll see. ETA Talking Points Memo is following the story. The latest update (as of 3:50 PM CDT): Andrea Mitchell says sources close to Gov. Palin say she is now "out of politics for good." I'll believe it when I see it. Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair wrote a pretty scathing profile of Palin for the August 2009 issue. I didn't appreciate the sexist framing -- woman as monster ("It Came from Wasilla"), woman ruled by emotions and likely even mentally ill (unsupported references to narcissistic personality disorder and postpartum depression) -- but the trashing she got from former McCain campaign staffers couldn't have helped her with mainstream Republicans. OTOH, it likely gave her a huge boost in Wingnutland. Jesse Taylor at Pandagon noted a few days ago that Redstate demanded all of those staffers prove they didn't talk to VF or face the wrath of, um, some blog. (I'm not quite sure how one proves a negative, but that's wingnut logic for you.) Late addition: MSNBC just spoke with Alaska radio host Shannyn Moore, who says rumors of a criminal investigation have been swirling for six weeks. Could that be the other shoe? posted by Kathy | 7:22 PM | Steve has already discussed some of the nastier reactions to the Washington Post cash-for-access scandal, but he didn't touch on what strikes me as the most shocking aspect of this mess. According to the Politico story that Steve linked to, "The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its 'health care reporting and editorial staff.'" We've all had cause to be worried about the Post in recent years; once the home to such journalists as Bob Woodward, the investigative reporter who helped unearth and Watergate story and keep it alive, in recent years it's become more likely to be providing a safe haven for people like Bob Woodward, the bloated load who served as the Bush administration's publicist (until the tide of conventional opinion turned, whereupon he churned out a series of books dismantling the account of the inner workings of the Bush White House promulgated by that lickspittle idiot, Bob Woodward.) Still, to have a lobbyist--God help us, a health care lobbyist, a toiler in the fields that gave us Harry and Louise--find fault with your ethics--that's rich. Thank God that we have whistle blowers like this working to try to keep our journalistic institutions honest. posted by Phil Nugent | 11:34 AM | I agree with Steve that the much-vaunted Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin doesn't really have enough new information to qualify as the hot expose it's supposed to be. (On the other hand, this kind of late mopping-up operation might be necessary in a culture with a attention span and a collective memory as short as ours.) But the reaction to it among Republican pooh-bahs has been fascinating. The cult of Palin itself is close enough to being unprecedented to deserve our best eye-rolling scrutiny. Since when do political parties latch onto the previously unknown lower half of a disastrously failed presidential campaign as their symbol and savior? How many people, in the wake of their respective fiascoes, clamored for their party to be remade in the image of William E. Miller, or Sargent Shriver, or Geraldine Ferraro, or Jack Kemp? Dan Quayle, who got to stick around the national stage for four years, inspired no deep, lasting following despite the best efforts of David Broder himself to assure us that anyone who rose to such heights must, by definition, have the potential to be a dandy leader. Joe Lieberman's ascension to would-be vice-president marked the turning point in the browning of his reputation. One difference between Palin and all these people, with the possible exception of Quayle, is that they all had beliefs and causes. Some of them were utter hacks, but they didn't get into politics just to admire how their teeth shone in their own commercials, and they weren't blank slates onto which you could project any qualities that struck your fancy. Palin was presented to us as a tabula rasa, and she's keeping it that way. That's why she inspires love among a broader stretch of the Republican party than the war hero John McCain ever could; McCain had actual beliefs, which confused and alarmed the party members who detected some that they disagreed with, and even though he demonstrated a winning ability to throw them overboard for the sake of a six-pack of votes, the damage was done. Palin charmed the old maverick by playing a role--that of the ballsy frontier babe who talked common sensical and took on the special interests with a kid on each arm--that she knew he'd find appealing, even though it had next to no basis in reality. Then, even as McCain began to see through her act and detach himself from her, she won over the party base with her mean-MILF wiles and with the "attacks" on her from the liberal media conspiracy. Katie Couric actually sandbagged her by asking her unanswerable tough questions, such as what magazines could she name? The conservative media love to harp on how much everyone outside the holy circle, which includes self-described "liberals" but McCain loyalists too, "hates" Palin; in the absence of any serious accomplishments of her own that Palin can point to, the hatred of her enemies is the essential component in any argument about why she deserves to be the party's figurehead. I think that Steve is a little imprecise when he argues that people hate Palin not for the petty reasons that Republican spinners claim but, rather, for her "politics." Aside from the fact that the word "hate" is a kind of strong--I think it's more appropriate to regard Palin the way I think most people regard Heidi and Spencer Pratt, with a mixture of bedazzlement and horror--I'm not sure that Palin has anything that can really be called "politics." She seems to have gotten into the business because she hadn't had her fill of the world's attention and she was getting a little long in the tooth for beauty contests. George W. Bush was presented as a nice, average guy who'd do what he was told by the experts with whom he would surround himself, but it turned out that he had some serious ideological convictions. Palin is, in Josh Marshall's carefully measured words, a "moron" who'll say whatever she needs to say to hear her name cheered. Eventually, after she's spent enough time in the public eye, she'll get married to certain positions, only because she'll have parroted them too many times in public to continue to shape shift freely; that's what eventually happened to Newt Gingrich, who first entered Congress as a self-styled "environmentalist" before deciding that the fastest route to national fame was by attacking big-name Democrats. But for all the talk about how she's Jan Brady with a hunting license and so a natural fit for conservative icon, the real reason that Palin naturally gravitates towards Republican audiences is that angry resentment oozes from her every pore. Like Bush, she has too much natural loathing of anyone who criticizes or questions her or even knows something she doesn't to ever give them the satisfaction of learning anything. That's why it reflects badly--creepily--on the Republican party that so many of its movers and shakers not only want to boost and protect Palin, but think they're doing their party a favor by doing so. To simplify things a bit, she's what George W. Bush, the guy they're trying to forget, would have been like if he hadn't even known as much about governing as a rock would have picked up by osmosis if the powers that be had carried it around in their pockets for forty years. I'm not sure how much damage Palin could conceivably do on the national stage, or how much of it would end up spreading outside the Republican party to the larger world, but if people who aren't conservative loonies and opportunists want to speed up her departure from national politics to a hosting job at QVC, they might try ignoring her. If Republicans were deprived of their sense that "the left" despises this silly person, they might realize that they can't think of another reason why they care about her. posted by Phil Nugent | 10:31 AM | OFF FOR THE WEEKEND I'm heading out on the road, to go burn flags and hold secret meetings with fellow socialist-fascist-jihadist-ACORNist revolutionaries -- or to go swim in a lake and grill salmon, I can't remember which. (My wife has the e-mail.) Some smart folks will be here while I'm gone. See you Sunday night or Monday. posted by Steve M. | 8:27 AM | |
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