Competence
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After reading some of the things Palinites have been writing this week, I am tempted to say that they are “objectively” pro-Obama inasmuch as they are doing their very best to make Obama’s re-election secure. It’s tempting, but it wouldn’t be entirely fair. What is a bit sad is simply how out of it Palinites are. R.S. McCain imagines that Palin is extremely popular. This is true only among a shrinking number of Republicans. Douglas thinks that Palin is powerful because she has become a favorite pinata of the left. In fact, she has very little power outside the conservative cocoon where she receives so much praise and deference. As her favorability ratings show, the intense and concentrated opposition to her has helped turn most of the public against her; Palin has managed to do the rest all by herself. That is evidence of her political weakness. She certainly generates a remarkable degree of irrational loathing, but then she also generates irrational and excessive admiration that makes her supporters believe absurd things about her and her political potential.
What McCain misses in his article is that liberal journalists actually take great delight in the Palin phenomenon. Yes, of course, they don’t want to see her in power, but I think they do want to see her prosper and thrive as the face of the Republican Party. An American right led by or identified with Palin is one that they can very easily ridicule and discredit, and at the same time they can be confident that a Palinized GOP poses no threat to anything they value. Palin is not going to bring the party out of the minority, and were she to lead the party it would more or less guarantee continued Democratic ascendancy for many years to come. Her content-free pseudo-populism ensures that the legitimate political concerns of her constituency remain irrelevant to real policy debates. Media outlets also thrive on controversy and conflict, both real and manufactured, and Palin continues to give them plenty of opportunities for both.
One of the lessons we were supposed to have learned from the off-year elections, and one that I think is correct, is that the public craves competent leadership and that it penalizes any party that fails to deliver it. 2006 and 2008 were repudiations of the GOP because of the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, but more broadly these elections were the public’s demands that the government be ably and competently administered. If McCain ever had a chance of winning, his erratic and confused response to the financial crisis destroyed it, and between his selection of Palin and his insane response to the war in Georgia he drove away many others who simply could not trust someone with such poor judgment with such great power. The elections earlier this month were much the same in that they were protests against Democratic failure to govern well. The Palinites propose to rally behind someone who has no particularly impressive record of accomplishments, who abandoned the highest executive office she has held before completing one term, and who seems to have no great expertise behind her. In other words, Palinites are telling the public that they have no interest in providing competent leadership, and they expect the public to respond favorably to this. Following one of the worst Presidencies in postwar history, one that was marked by incompetence and ideological demagoguery, the Palinites believe that the country is desperately seeking to relive that experience under an even less-experienced, less well-informed, more malleable Western governor.
Update: Rod has written a review of Palin’s book. As he says in a post at his blog, “There is nothing to her.”
Filed under: politics
A mere month ago I would have been quite sure that Palin could not have made a serious primary run. Now it seems clear that she can. The response to her by the so-called grassroots has been astonishing and dismaying. They should run Chauncey Gardner.
I still suspect that Palin herself is more interested in money and celebrity than she is in occupying higher office. But the phenomenon is interesting.
Nice piece. I hope you’re right that she has no chance.
One thing, though:
“If McCain ever had a chance of winning, his erratic and confused response to the financial crisis destroyed it, and between his selection of Palin and his insane response to the war in Georgia he drove away many others who simply could not trust someone with such poor judgment with such great power.”
Dan, I love you, but putting McCain’s response to the war in Georgia on the short list of reasons McCain lost is a little amusing. It may have turned you off and maybe 50 other wonkish foreign policy oriented paleocons who would otherwise have considered voting for him … but that’s about it.
i’m no chauncey gardner, but in regard to what’s happening viv-a-vis the palin phenomenon, ‘i like to watch!’
mr larison nails one thing in sentence one, paragraph two; i fail to see any degree of fear whatsoever of this palin run–it’s clearly more in the way of delight over her continued influence concerning the direction many on the right wish their party to adopt.
until soberer minds on the right excise this demon, little can be expected from that side of the aisle anent an effective national voice. PDS seems stronger than any real or imagined BDS or ODS. there’s no there there.
Will the GOP nominate Romney, the guy who sent your job to India? Pawlenty, who would prove Durocher’s Maxim? Huck?
Nate Silver seems to think they could nominate Palin.
Prayer and fasting, folks, and lots of it.
This is a good piece. However, let’s recognize that the GOP is not the answer. It is a party of big government as much as the Democrat party. It just supports a big government with different objectives (at least in some cases). Perhaps those of us who believe in small government, a non-interventionist foreign policy, etc., should be rooting for Palin to get the presidential nomination as nothing will hasten the demise of the Republican party as a national political force as quickly as that will. Romney, Pawlenty, et al., will just prolong the charade, which is why they’ll get the support of the vested interests, e.g., big corporations, labor, the “education” lobby, etc., as the two-party system, as now constituted, works quite nicely for them.
Slightly OT, why does Larison still cite to crypto-racist Robert Stacy McCain? Is RSM so integral to conservative discourse? If so, that’s a lot bigger problem than Sarah Palin.
What McCain misses in his article is that liberal journalists actually take great delight in the Palin phenomenon.
On the nose. Not only does it give them a punching bag, but it lets them off the hook when it comes to reporting the shortcomings of their own man.
America’s elite and Palin-haters worldwide should not be so quick to dismiss or disregard the future of Sarah Palin. No other national political figure so completely fills Middle America’s vacuum of frustration and hate for the Left and Right as Sarah Palin.
Middle America has been abandoned by the Left and Right, who have saddled it with a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, an unnecessary and costly war, a soaring deficit, and an overall neglect of the pocketbook issues that impact Middle America every day. Where are job creation, quality public education, affordable healthcare, and fiscal responsibility, to name a few?
Middle America is mad as hell at the Left and Right and they just might be willing to roll the dice on someone like Palin, who lacks an Ivy League education, is a working class hockey-mom with a disabled child, and who has blue-collar roots like many of the folks in Middle America. The status quo on the Left and Right have produced nothing material for Middle America, which may toss conventional wisdom into the toilet and throw the lever for Palin, figuring it has nothing to lose, and it may be right.
The Ivy League educated on the Left and Right have delivered little to nothing for Middle America, perhaps precisely because they are out of touch with the issues that someone like Palin understands personally.
However, to say that Palin is a salmon swimming upstream is an understatement. The results of a CBS News survey released Monday indicate that 66 percent of respondents do not want her to run for the White House in 2012. Seventy percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research poll said she is not qualified to be president.
More difficult for Palin is the fact that the trend is not her friend—public opinion is moving in the wrong direction right now.
In the CBS survey, 43 percent of GOP respondents said Palin would have the ability to be an effective president. Only 11 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents agreed.
However, there is an opportunity for Palin among independents, where Palin’s rating is 41 percent favorable, and 48 percent unfavorable, according to Gallup.
These numbers are not great, but there is plenty of time if she can move the needle by appealing to Middle America and independents, which is where elections are won or lost.
Clearly, Palin has put the monkey on her back, especially with her resignation from Alaska’s governorship in July, a self-inflicted wound that will be difficult to explain away. However, don’t put it past Palin to put lipstick on this pig and paint herself as a victim of politically motivated and baseless ethics charges that prevented her from successfully serving the people of Alaska, forcing her to do the noble thing and take the bullet by resigning.
We can say what we want about Palin, but no Republican in recent history has created such frenzied excitement across the country as she has. Just take a look at the fervor she stirs as she wheels across Middle America on her book tour.
Perhaps this is a misreading of the tea leaves, but one could argue that she creates a wee bit more excitement than Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, the two Republican front-runners for president in 2012. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman just may be queen.
A. Muser
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com/
I don’t disagree with you that Middle America “has been abandoned by the Left and Right, who have saddled it with a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, an unnecessary and costly war, a soaring deficit, and an overall neglect of the pocketbook issues that impact Middle America every day.” You’re absolutely right about this. So how is Palin the answer? She endorsed the bailout, she supports the unnecessary and costly war (and therefore accepts a soaring deficit when it comes to paying for said war), and to my knowledge has little or nothing to say about those pocketbook issues. I know the frustration is out there, and I share that frustration, but Palin is not going to do anything to lessen it.
As one of the “Ivy League educated” who opposed both the war and the bailout, I don’t buy for a minute that Palin understands these issues, personally or otherwise.
America’s elite and Palin-haters worldwide should not be so quick to dismiss or disregard the future of Sarah Palin. No other national political figure so completely fills Middle America’s vacuum of frustration and hate for the Left and Right as Sarah Palin.
Well, the good conservatives of Middle America have a way of embracing seeming solutions to their predicaments that are selfcongratulatory, stupid, and selfdefeating. In Palin they’re once again confusing the therapeutic resort with a serious solution.
Look, Palin thought Africa was a country!!!!
Larison’s response to AmericanMuser says it all. How does Palin fix any of the real problems articulated? Once you get past the relatively good looks (at least in my opinion) and the so-called folksy charm (not so much in my opinion) she’s basically an establishment “conservative” Republican who, if elected, will essentially govern the same way, appoint the same people, be beholden to the same special interests, etc., as Messrs. Pawlenty and/or Romney.
My advice: try and contain the “frenzied excitement” as she “wheels across Middle America.” In fact, her wheels may have more to do with the “fervor” and excitement that she’s inspiring than her politics.
Being new to this debate, being the only person who has never heard of Palin, I would just like to ask why so much over so little? Thank the big G. that we did not get McCain and this what’s-her-name and the conservative movement would be over forever.
Of course Democrats secretly love all the attention she’s getting……..she gets more Springeresque by the day and just as they love to hang Limbaugh around the GOP’s neck so the love to hang Palin……..it’s the classic Brer gambit…….Please don’t run Sarah…..WE’RE ssssooooooo terrified of her……hilarious really……their current fixation with Palin and Japanese greeting etiquette tells you where the Republican party is these days……and it’s not in the Party of government box
Pardon me, but as a card-carrying Democrat and journalist, I don’t “secretly love” Sarah Palin getting this much attention, and I don’t want her to run for the presidency, much less win her party’s nomination. Consider the possibility, please, that maybe Democrats and journalists really want what’s best for the country. I know, I know — crazy concept. As everybody knows, only conservatives love their country. But hear out this wacko hypothesis: Democrats (OK, at least our rank and file) actually want the GOP to offer responsible candidates. Really, we do! That way, if our candidate loses, we still get someone in the presidency who isn’t a total ninny. I hope you guys are playing the game the same way. Or aren’t you?
American Muser’s comment and Daniel’s response raises an important point. Smart politicians on both sides should look at the Palin phenomenon and think of ways to tap this energy into a meaningful movement. I would love to see a credible (as in intelligent, competent, intellectually consistent) Republican populist run against Obama. Palin does the forces of populism a disservice.
Larison: “What McCain misses in his article is that liberal journalists actually take great delight in the Palin phenomenon. Yes, of course, they don’t want to see her in power, but I think they do want to see her prosper and thrive as the face of the Republican Party. An American right led by or identified with Palin is one that they can very easily ridicule and discredit, and at the same time they can be confident that a Palinized GOP poses no threat to anything they value. Palin is not going to bring the party out of the minority, and were she to lead the party it would more or less guarantee continued Democratic ascendancy for many years to come. Her content-free pseudo-populism ensures that the legitimate political concerns of her constituency remain irrelevant to real policy debates. Media outlets also thrive on controversy and conflict, both real and manufactured, and Palin continues to give them plenty of opportunities for both. ”
There might be something to the idea of discrediting those legitimate politicaly concerns, but the rest of the GOP does a fine job of ignoring those whenever it comes to actually doing something productive. They don’t *need* Palin for that.
Probably most of the media coverage simply comes from the fact that Palin is a colorful and loud character, who will generate press sales. It’s her fault that she’s generating press as a clown.