Palin is No Nixon
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
At the end of a review of two new books on Sarah Palin, reason editor Nick Gillespie makes the following claim:
If Richard Nixon could come back from a famously non-mediagenic presidential run, a humiliating gubernatorial defeat and the most god-awful retirement speech in history, there’s no reason that Sarah Palin can’t. Or at least won’t try.
I agree that Palin will probably try, but she will fail where Nixon succeeded for three reasons, one of them historical and two personal. The overriding historical reason is that 1968 was a year of chaos that eclipses everything we have seen in America since. I realize it’s hard for many people to imagine that things could be more chaotic than they have been in the last eight years with the 9/11 attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, swine flu, blah blah blah. But in 1968, a major civil rights leader and leading contender for the presidency were both killed, thousands of Americans were dying in Vietnam, and many major American cities were regularly on fire. Nixon was essentially running against an incumbent with almost as little charisma as him in Hubert Humphrey and still barely won. Unless 2012 looks even more dire than 1968, Obama will almost assuredly be reelected.
As for the personal reasons, Palin is not as smart as Nixon, but neither is she as egomaniacal and paranoid. I’m reasonably certain that Nixon was one of our smartest president, which never really made him better, just craftier. I’m not among the people who thinks Palin is outright stupid, but she does not seem to be particularly bright either. The primaries are a grueling process, and to outmaneuver several opponents with widely similar political beliefs and vastly more political experience, she will need to acquit herself far better than she did against Katie Couric. I just don’t see that happening.
Finally, I doubt she has the sort of insane drive for power that gripped Richard Nixon. I don’t doubt Palin enjoyed the romantic thought of being a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, but Richard Nixon needed that power like a man in the desert searching for an oasis. The easiest parallel in Western Civilization to Richard Nixon is MacBeth: consumed by an insatiable desire for revenge against those he felt had wronged him and a sincere conviction that he was undoubtedly the best man for the job, Nixon let nothing stand between him and ultimate power, including the law, and it destroyed him. Palin simply does not possess that kind of singular focus and determination.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The three flaws in “PostRight’s Nixon/Palin Analysis:
1. Fortunetelling: the assumption that 2010, 2011, and 2012 cannot degenerate into a degree of national “chaos” equal to that of 1998 is
nothing more than conjecture that ignores a critical variable: the lower tolerance americans have for war–10 American troops killed in wars today
are as newsworthy as 100 dead during the Vietnam war.
2. Jumping to conclusions: the fact that a presidential candidate and civil rights leader was killed in 1968 does not preclude equally horrific national tragedies of violence from occurring in the next three years.
3. Jumping to Conclusions II: There is no reason to suspect that the sheen will remain on Obama’s halo for the next three years making the run for the White House a race contested on charisma. It may very well
be there is an exponential degradation of his popular appeal predicated on scandal, national or international events he mishandles, or any of the
numerous challenges presidents fail to meet.
4. False Equivalency: Palin needs to be as smart as Nixon to defeat Obama.
Not really. She merely needs get more votes. If intelligence put people in the oval office, Adlai Stevenson would have had the job during his lifetime. Obama, thus far, has not given any suggestion he is particularly politically savvy at the executive level nor has he, coming to the end of his first year, done anything to suggest that he is “growing” into the job. It may very well be that he peaked during his campaign.
5. False Correlation I. Palin need be as ambitious and corrupt as Nixon to win the White House.
Nixon won the 1968 election by laying low after his disgraceful, rambling concession speech subsequent to losing the California Governorship to Jerry Brown. He rehabilitated his public image by making himself available to whoever needed him in the party until it was realized he still had some heat on his fastball. He did not win the 1968 election unlawfully or by being Machiavellian.
Palin is not going to beat Obama, but John is right, it is far, far too early to claim that Obama is surely going to be re-elected. A major possibility is a second wave of financial crisis (particularly with commercial property). If official U3 unemployment is 12-13% (so unofficial U6 at Depression level 25-ish), Obama won’t win. Perhaps he was even set up for failure.
The sad part will be that this would likely only result in an increase of redneckdom resentment at blacks and the election of some God-awful, Club for Growth hack in 2012. Huckabee could beat Obama possibly even in a good year, but the atheist banksters wouldn’t approve of his nomination.