Don’t Walk Into The Trap
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Here is an item from Jonathan Martin’s blog that drives home how the impulse of many Republicans and conservatives to lean towards backing Obama is usually both superficial and absolutely irrational:
Even for unhappy Republicans, who’ve soured on the party and flirted with Obama it [Palin's speech] was a flash of light in a dismal season for the GOP.
“Sarah Barracudda kicked ass — and my vote is back on the market!” gushed one Obamacan.
Think about this. Here you have a Republican who has soured on the party, presumably because of its poor policies, its lack of competence or some combination of the two, and he is so disillusioned that he felt drawn to a Democratic nominee who probably holds absolutely none of his views, perhaps simply because Obama is not the Republican. One well-delivered speech later given by the Vice Presidential nominee filled with what was largely boilerplate rhetoric, and suddenly the GOP ticket seems like a viable alternative to him again.
With all respect to Gov. Palin, who delivered an effective stemwinder that had a number of amusing lines in it, the conditioned responses that conservatives are having to Palin’s speech is frankly depressing. For all of their complaints and criticisms about McCain’s deviations, conservatives are now falling into line even more pathetically than usual. Seeing this display, I am tempted to think that even Giuliani could have won the nomination, chosen a similar running mate and nothing would have changed.
Practically everything that you, the average conservative, like about Sarah Palin is opposed and negated by what John McCain stands for and has represented for pretty much his entire career, but still conservatives are reacting deliriously to a speech whose ultimate purpose is to co-opt them into backing a presidential candidate whose policies on vital national questions are antithetical to everything they value. Does her small-town ethos impress you and inspire some identification with her? McCain embraces the policies promoting globalization and mass immigration that are gradually transforming your small towns beyond recognition. Does her hostility to Washington elites please you? McCain serves and always has served the interests of those elites, and his immigration legislation was just the most recent and egregious form of this. Like the undead creature it resembles, the GOP establishment will feed off of every bit of the energy, vivacity and authenticity that Palin possesses in its bid to keep conservatives serving their goals. Do not help the creature to feed on its victim.
Filed under: politics
No, Daniel. Respectfully, this time, I feel that you have not got it quite right.
It is hard to imagine a more magnificent gesture Mr. McCain could have made than by his unexpected choice of Sarah Palin as running mate.
McCain serves and always has served the interests of those elites….
Not when he chose Mrs. Palin, he didn’t.
Does her small-town ethos impress you and inspire some identification with her?
In a word, yes.
Howard
Choosing Sarah Palin is exactly that “a magnificent gesture,” a ploy, a flea-flicker play, a symbolic and deeply cynical step by a trigger-happy imperial interventionist, and one that has been avidly responded to with almost Pavlovian precision by desperate “conservatives” hungry for some validation. You can’t blame them, I guess. But does anyone really think that McCain intends to rule as some sort of small-town, limited government Burkean conservative or that Palin would have say in what he really wants to do?
I suppose he could drop dead after inauguration day and we could wind up with Mrs. Deeds as President. I’ll give Howard that – that a Palin presidency is less scary than a McCain Administration (and Obama is not a whole lot better), that is if we allowed “Sarah to be Sarah.”
It’s commendable for Daniel to focus on underlying issues–interventionism, globalization, immigration, and centralization. It’s hard to fault his conclusion that however skilled Sarah Palin may be at agitprop, her nomination doesn’t change the policy equation of a McCain administration.
Daniel, however, downplays atmospherics and symbolism more than he should do. The Presidency has a quasi-royal function that goes beyond the concerns of the wonkisphere. I, too, fear McCain’s stances on things like foreign policy and immigration, but like the uncouth Westerners shocking the Yankee élite at Jackson’s inauguration, the entry of this clever ex-fishwife into the Naval Observatory and the Senate chair will be an historic moment, with repercussions that no one can predict.
“Practically everything that you, the average conservative, like about Sarah Palin is opposed and negated by what John McCain stands for and has represented for pretty much his entire career, but still conservatives are reacting deliriously to a speech whose ultimate purpose is to co-opt them into backing a presidential candidate whose policies on vital national questions are antithetical to everything they value.”
Of course. But we’re not having a policy election, as you noted earlier in the year, we’re having a biography election, with two candidates so defined by their biographies, and now, a VP candidate defined by her biography. There wasn’t the remotest possibility that it was going to be anything else.
“superficial and absolutely irrational” could almost be the tag line for mass democracy as such, but as Howard said above, the atmospherics of this choice, this speech, this person is as flawless a political move as I have ever seen. I think I have to move myself from predicting that Obama will win to thinking that I don’t have a clue. I will say (as Rod Dreher did yesterday) that if the McCain camp is smart they’ll park Palin in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and Michigan, if they want to swing for the fences) for the next two months. She will own those states, especially Ohio.
Related to our conversation above:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/09/03/positive-polarization/
Granted, Palin’s assimilation into a McCain administration will be unpleasant to watch.
But is there any other pathway by which a Palin-like figure can be brought to the national stage at this point in time? Her admirers are drunk on hope at the moment because her surprise elevation came at a time when they thought they were quite powerless.
Excellent, excellent post, Daniel. I think you’ve succinctly summarized the bottom line on all this Palin stuff.
I don’t know that there is any other way that a Palin-like figure can get on the national stage. Given that I think conservatives ought to going back to their homes, whether in Alaska or elsewhere, and should not be leaving them to go to Washington, I don’t know that it is a good thing to have Palin-like figures on the national political stage where they will be able to do little and where they will be distracted and pulled away from the sort of stable family-building work that matters the most. This is made more important in her case because she is a mother and has several young children, but my concern would be similar if it were a man being pulled away from his home to serve in the belly of the beast. I can think of few more fitting symbols of the disordered priorities of conservatives today than recruiting the mother of young children to serve as a political standard-bearer in an administration that will represent the worst of the GOP and then enthusiastically cheering her rise to assuage our feeling of impotence. The best thing for her and her family now, while it may seem bizarre and quietist to many of you, would be if the ticket loses and she can go back home. Frankly, I like Gov. Palin too much to want her to be subjected to Washington. How much less do I wish to see her being trapped in the bowels of a McCain administration.
“Practically everything that you, the average conservative, like about Sarah Palin is opposed and negated by what John McCain stands for and has represented for pretty much his entire career …”
It’s way too late to play that card. If you voted for George Bush it’s hard to complain about McCain now. If you thought Bush would bring us a “more modest” foreign policy and were surprised by the result, it’s hard to see how you could be any more disappointed or deceived by McCain, and those who support Bush in spite of his immigration policy can’t complain much about McCain’s.
Options that looked open ten or twenty years ago don’t appear to be available now, at least as far as conservatism is concerned, so voters pick between the available alternatives. Of course, one ought to do this with one’s eyes open and with no illusions about the candidates — and without illusions about other options which in reality aren’t open to us or which wouldn’t really improve things.
Part of having one’s eye’s open is recognizing that one isn’t giving a blank check to McCain (or Obama). That a vote for him doesn’t mean down-the-line support of every position he’s taken.
Well, okay, but since I have never voted for Bush I think I can “play that card.” I agree that anyone who has turned against Bush in the last eight years but then votes for McCain because of Palin deserves whatever McCain gives him. If the complaints against Bush were ever serious, voting for McCain is inconceivable, and it should still be so even when Palin is on the ticket. If you vote for a candidate, you are giving him exactly a blank check, since that is how the candidate will interpret your support. Voting for one or the other of them is a small act of empowerment. Whatever your reasons or reservations when you vote, you will be partly responsible for the policies that your candidate enacts.
[...] 1. One commenter remarked on Sarah Palin’s introduction of her husband Todd as a steelworker, which is something that Megan McArdle for one has speculated could tap into what is apparently a broader lack of enthusiasm for Obama among the union base. It seems to me that this is probably right, and I agree with the commenter that it is a good thing: not because the GOP ought to be beholden to the unions, but because it is entirely possible to get unionized workers to turn against the unions’ excesses without giving up on unionization altogether, and because many blue-collar workers will tend to identify more strongly with the GOP’s (perhaps only feigned) cultural conservatism than with the secularism of the Democrats. It may of course be, as Daniel Larison argues, that the GOP’s policies are in fact at odds with such workers’ cultural and economic interests, but that doesn’t change the fact that there could be a set of policies that helped to change this. Trumpeting Todd Palin’s union membership is of course only a token nod in this direction, but I do think it’s the sort of thing that we can expect the GOP to do far more of. [...]
“Well, okay, but since I have never voted for Bush I think I can ‘play that card.’”
Fair enough.
“I agree that anyone who has turned against Bush in the last eight years but then votes for McCain because of Palin deserves whatever McCain gives him.”
I was thinking that if someone swallowed Bush they can’t gag at McCain and claim to be consistent, but I guess your version works as well.
“If you vote for a candidate, you are giving him exactly a blank check, since that is how the candidate will interpret your support. Voting for one or the other of them is a small act of empowerment. Whatever your reasons or reservations when you vote, you will be partly responsible for the policies that your candidate enacts.”
You’re right. A vote for McCain or any other candidate will be taken as a blank check. If you want to withhold your vote from one or both parties to show you disapproval, fine. I may do the same.
But I wouldn’t assume that there is some alternative ideology out there that gets right what the major party candidates get wrong, or some movement that can change policy without making a bigger mess of things.
My concern was with distinguishing the real “trap” of conning oneself into supporting parties and candidates whose policies one disagrees with from the reality that not everything is possible in politics, but I do see that emotions cloud people’s minds and convince them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t.