R. A. Mansour has a long post up today called “Who Is Sarah Palin?” It’s a fine piece of work drawing on all the major widely-available sources—the biographies by Kaylene Johnson and Lorenzo Benet, John Ziegler’s interview, Sally Jenkins’ Washington Post profile, and others—and drawing, I think, some fine conclusions. It’s an excellent biographical sketch, and I commend it to your reading. Even if you’re already a strong supporter of Gov. Palin, it will likely add to your understanding of her; if all you know of her is what the MSM told you during the campaign, then I strongly encourage you to take the time to find out more about who she really is, as opposed to what it was politically advantageous for the Democratic Party PR machine to say about her.
Category Archives: Sarah Palin
The importance of theories in conflict
Yesterday I quoted G. K. Chesterton, from one of his short stories, on the importance of the theories we hold about life, the universe, and everything; Chesterton, speaking there through the character Gabriel Gale, declares (correctly) that “most men are what their theories make them.” The economist and columnist Thomas Sowell understands this well, as you can see in this interview (video below) he gave Peter Robinson last fall for Robinson’s program “Uncommon Knowledge.” As Sinistar of C4P sums it up,
In the interview . . . Sowell talks about his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions and the 2008 Presidential Election. . . .Sowell states that “visions . . . are the implicit assumptions by which people operate” and that with regards to politics, these visions can be divided into two camps—a constrained view and unconstrained view. To put things another way, these visions are your “gut feeling” or views on how the world works, and they will color your views of how you approach many political and social issues.The unconstrained vision suggests that human nature is changeable and that society’s and the world’s problems can be solved if rational plans are enacted. The constrained vision, on the other hand, banks on the concept that human nature is static and flawed, and that there are limitations to what can be done.
Of particular interest to those of us who are supporters of Sarah Palin,
[Dr. Sowell] briefly mentions the smears against Gov. Palin and how it relates to the concepts discussed in “A Conflict of Visions”. . . . It is a very enlightening interview, and I encourage people to watch the whole thing. However, if you just want to hear Sowell briefly talk about the smears against Gov. Palin and how these conflicting visions relate, you can fast forward to the 30 minute mark. (I suggest starting 28 minutes in for the lead-in to the discussion.)
The Peter Principle in the White House
As was the case more than once during the campaign, SNL’s doing a better job of dealing with the news (in its own inimitable way) than the people whose job it is to cover it; this sketch captures the deer-in-the-headlights cluelessness of the Treasury Secretary so well, it’s almost painful to watch. For all his résumé, it’s clear that Timothy Geithner is out of his depth in doing the job he’s been given; he has risen to the level of his incompetence.Unfortunately, it isn’t just Secretary Geithner. We were repeatedly told during the campaign that Barack Obama was going to improve America’s reputation around the world—but that doesn’t appear to include our allies, since we’re not even two months in to his administration and he’s already managed to infuriate the Brits. Though delivered in the “stiff upper lip” tone that Americans associate with our closest ally, the outrage in the British media at the way President Obama responded to their prime minister’s visit is clear. I’m sure they particularly appreciated this curt dismissal of their concerns from an official in the State Department: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”True enough, I suppose, except of course for the fact that unlike those other 190 countries, the UK has been a staunch and consistent ally of our government . . . Now, as the whole David Brooks episode clearly demonstrated, this White House is remarkably thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and complaint, and so when the firestorm erupted, they defended the President—if you want to call this a defense (emphasis mine):
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama’s inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk. . . .The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero-sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.”
In other words, as Power Line’s John Hinderaker summed it up, “Don’t blame us, we’re incompetent!” Except that there’s one other factor referenced in the Telegraph article:
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.
It seems clear that indifference—to foreign policy in general and Great Britain in particular—also played a part in this: Barack Obama and his administration simply didn’t care enough about Gordon Brown’s visit or our alliance with his country to try to be competent about it, or even to try to hide their lackadaisical attitude about it.That said, the portrait painted here of an overwhelmed president who’s unable to keep up with the demands of his job in any sort of effective fashion is deeply worrying, and particularly when combined with his own expressed opinion that he’s “very good” at the job. This is a member of the Self-Esteem Generation, all right. It’s no wonder he inflated his résumé (follow the links from that post), took credit as a Senator for work he didn’t do, and gilded the lily in his autobiography to make his first job look much better, and his decision to leave it much more meaningful and meritorious, than it really was; he’s the product of an educational system that’s been more concerned in recent decades with making sure students feel good about themselves than about giving them the education they need to live lives that merit a healthy self-respect. It’s all of a piece with him taking a job at a law firm, slacking on billable hours, and spending much of his time working on his autobiography (which he didn’t even manage to finish, at least while he was there).Up until last November, none of this has been much of a problem for Barack Obama; he’s had the brains, the grace, and the charm to keep wangling his way along and retelling his story to suit himself without anybody minding enough to cause him any problems. After all, nothing was really riding on him. The law firm wasn’t depending on him; the Illinois State Senate got its bills passed whether he did any work or just voted “present” (though the man who ran the shop was happy enough to boost him by putting his name on bills anyway); the US Senate kept running along whether the junior Senator from the state of Illinois was in his seat or not. Being President of the United States, however, is different; and now, this is a problem. This is the first actual job he’s had since his days as a community organizer (which were, by his own admission, unsuccessful) in which his job performance actually matters—and it’s one of the biggest jobs in the world, and his performance is all-important. Now, it matters immensely whether he gets things done, and whether they’re the right things; and unfortunately (for us), he has never cultivated the habit of digging deep and digging in to get things done, he has never cultivated the endurance necessary to true accomplishment—in Nietzche’s words, he’s never practiced “a long obedience in the same direction”—and so he doesn’t have the habits and skills and life patterns necessary to do that job effectively.This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, since it was all there in his résumé, for anyone who cared to look; but too many people didn’t. The McCain campaign tried to make the point, but they couldn’t get beyond talking about “experience,” as if it was simply a matter of time served, when it was really a matter of character. This allowed the Obama campaign to counter it emotionally, by making “experience” mean “old, tired, and four more years of Bush”; it allowed them to counter it mathematically by adding Sen. Biden to the ticket, when in fact Sen. Biden’s career in the Senate basically consisted of nothing much more than Sen. Obama’s time in the Senate, spread out over many more years; and perhaps most fatally, it allowed them to portray Sarah Palin, when she was named as John McCain’s running mate, as equally “inexperienced.” Thus what should have been a powerful comparison for the McCain campaign—that Gov. Palin had accomplished far more of substance at a similar age than Sen. Obama—ended up being used against them. People looked at the numbers and missed the real point:
Two things would leap out from Sarah Palin’s résumé—a pattern of overachievement and a pattern of actually getting things done. Two things would also leap out from Barack Obama’s résumé—an undeniable wealth of talent and an equally undeniable dearth of accomplishments. . . .In truth, Sarah Palin is the kind of employee virtually every enterprise seeks—the kind who gets things done. And Barack Obama is the kind of employee a company hires only when it’s in the mood for taking a risk and willing to wager that the candidate’s past performance isn’t predictive of his future efforts.
So far, that risk isn’t looking too good.
Another addition to the blogroll
As someone who started posting on Sarah Palin a couple months before her nomination helped the MSM see that the deepest desire of their collective heart was to slander libel her to within an inch of their lives, I’ve been pleased to see the rise of various grassroots networks dedicated to her support. I tend to be a late adopter on such things (it took a long time for friends to talk me into joining Facebook), but I’ve jumped in and joined one of them, the Read My Lipstick Network, and their blogroll is now in the sidebar. (I must confess it seems a little strange to me, not being the type to wear lipstick, but American politics is in something of an odd phase these days anyway.) For those who are into politics (which isn’t everyone who drops in here, I know), there are some good blogs in there, and I encourage you to check them out.
Sarah Palin, sexism, and shoddy research
I haven’t wanted to waste time and space giving attention to the dubious study that purports to show that Sarah Palin’s looks hurt her as a politician; but when Bill O’Reilly interviewed one of the academics behind the study, with Tammy Bruce also in the conversation, I had to post this. I do think there’s some legitimate material here about the way in which women are perceived in our society, but it’s clear watching this smirking Ph.D. that she wants people to draw negative conclusions about Gov. Palin which, as O’Reilly and Bruce point out, her study simply doesn’t justify. (The real question here is whether the Democratic Party deliberately used and encouraged societal impulses and tendencies which they would normally have denounced as “sexist” in an effort to undermine Gov. Palin specifically and the McCain/Palin ticket more generally; for my part, I think they did, and believe a study on that could be quite enlightening.)
HT: C4P
Some people don’t need PR
Conservatives4Palin found an astonishing post on the Governor by a blogger who goes by the handle The Aged P, an infrequent poster but clearly someone well worth listening to when he does post. I’m going to do something I rarely do and quote the post in full, because it would be a shame to chop up the analysis:
The one thing that Gov Palin has not been short of since the election has been advice from Republicans and the media—stand for governor again in 2010, go for the Senate, go for POTUS 2012, wait until 2016, write a book, go into the media, give up politics and concentrate on her family—the options are endless.As an outside observer, however, it strikes me that she is intelligent enough and shrewd enough to make up her own mind. I think that maybe she has already decided on a course – I believe she is going de Gaulle.General de Gaulle entered France alongside the Allies at the head of his Free French army after years of exile in London. Initially greeted as a returning hero by the French he served as the President of the Provisional Government but within two years he had resigned, disillusioned by the re-emergence of the old inter-party squabbles that had characterised the pre-war regime.For the next few years he led his own political party but, tiring of the political rat race in 1953 he withdrew from public life and retired in self-imposed internal exile to his home in the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises to write his war memoirs, and many pundits wrote him off as a man whose time had passed.His followers, however, retained their cohesion because they saw de Gaulle as a man of destiny who one day would be called forth from his exile by the people of France to rescue them at a time of great danger—which is exactly what happened in 1958 when France was torn apart by the Algerian crisis. The General returned to office but this time on his own terms and remained in power for the next decade.Since the Alfalfa Dinner Gov Palin appears to have chosen Alaska as her own Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, far enough away from the mainstream of US politics, concerning herself with her responsibilities as Governor and keeping a distance between herself and the spotlight, just as de Gaulle did in the 1950s. She has stayed away from CPAC, she did not attend the NGA, causing some irritation amongst some elements who would prefer her to act as some Joan of Arc type figure scorching across the lower 48 thrusting and slashing at the President and Congress. Staying out of the spotlight is not an option for some of these folk who often see politics as showbiz where your PR people will tell you that you have to be forever working on your next film or album to remain in the public eye.But the Governor does not need any of that—like de Gaulle she is so deeply impressed upon the public’s imagination that she needs no PR, she is simply there.De Gaulle was relatively unknown to the French people in 1940 but millions of them heard his broadcast from London at the moment of their deepest despair and in those few minutes he became the inspiration and hope for so many. Governor Palin walked onto the stage at the Republican Convention, electrified millions and stole their hearts forever with her grace, her honesty and her love of life sealing there and then a contract and covenant of support through fire and flood whatever may happen. Camille Paglia called her an immensely talented politician whose time had not yet come. But perhaps, one day, just as in 1958 with de Gaulle, a message will go across Canada to the north saying her time has come—and then the banners must unfurl . . .
Other than noting that Gov. Palin isn’t exactly in internal exile, but is in fact continuing to do her job as an effective and popular governor, I don’t think there’s anything here I’d argue with. Click the link, give this man some traffic and leave a comment, because he’s produced a remarkable piece of political commentary here.And I agree with Ramrocks—that last sentence really gets me.
This would be a high point in political geekery
Here at CPAC a well placed source with knowledge of the Republican Senate Committee plans tells me that Larry Kudlow is “considering” a Senate run against embattled Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd’s approval ratings have been plummeting in light of the Friend of Angelo scandal and the ongoing effort to stonewall local and national media. Kudlow would bring instant name recognition and plenty of funding, but more importantly a wealth of economic knowledge. A debate between the two over the management of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would be a thing to behold. Kudlow has been approached and is considering the possibilities.
I hope he does it; that race would be a blast to follow. Rubin says it would be “the most entertaining and most educational senate race in a long time,” and if anything I think that undersells it; running against Sen. Dodd would give Kudlow the chance to put on a veritable clinic on the economy and the roots of our current problems (one of those roots being Sen. Dodd himself), and given his personality, I think it would be absolutely fascinating to watch him do it. It would also give the GOP a real chance to steal the seat, since Kudlow would be nearly the ideal person to take full advantage of Sen. Dodd’s vulnerability (and would seem to have no qualms about doing so, not being one to pull his punches).Given the way Kudlow’s interviews with Sarah Palin raised her national profile and gave her the ability to show her stuff, do you think we’d see the governor return the favor by campaigning for him in CT? That could be a lot of fun, too.Update: Looks like Kudlow’s serious about this—he had dinner with Sen. John Cornyn, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to talk about it.
Sarah Palin vs. David Brooks for the soul of the GOP
OK, so that’s both oversimplified and overstated, but I think that captures the essence of the problem R. S. McCain’s talking about in his latest post.
Friday, I had lunch with Tim Mooney of Save Our Secret Ballot and, in the course of discussing everyone’s favorite CPAC ’09 topic—what’s wrong with the GOP?—discussed the problem of the polluted information stream.Among the ill effects of liberal bias in the media is that much political “news” amounts to thinly disguised DNC talking-points. The conservative must learn to think critically about news and politics, to filter out that which is misleading, or else he will internalize the funhouse-mirror distortions of reality that define the liberal weltanschauung.This, I said to Mr. Mooney, is one of the major problems of the Republican Party, that so many of its supporters have unwittingly accepted liberal beliefs as political truths. Therefore, when those who present themselves as conservatives parrot the liberal line, the damage they do is far worse than if the same statements were made by Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. Why? Because this “conservative” echo tends to act as a hardening catalyst for the conventional wisdom.I have never forgiven David Brooks for “National Greatness.” Brooks’s argument, that “anti-government” conservatism is both wrong as policy and doomed as politics, had a demoralizing effect on the Republican Party. The elegance of Brooks’s writing—whatever your opinion of the man, the elegance of his prose style is beyond dispute—was the spoonful of sugar to make that poisonous medicine go down. That was 12 years ago, and if the GOP now appears disastrously ill, Brooks and his erstwhile publishers at the Weekly Standard are heavily implicated in this perhaps fatal disease.
This is, I believe, both a major reason why the David Brooks segment of the GOP is opposed to Gov. Palin and the major reason why the party needs Gov. Palin to play a major role, not just in Alaska but nationally. She’s a Reagan conservative (and hands-down the most Reaganesque conservative we have, to boot) and an outsider to the “chattering class,” and both these things are essential characteristics for the next leader of the GOP, if the party is to have any hope of recovering from its political exile any time soon. She won’t make the party elites happy—but then, neither did Reagan, at least until he was safely out of office and one of their own (George H. W. Bush) was safely in control. (Of course, the elder Bush promptly lost the next election, the one he had to run on his own merits, but the GOP establishment didn’t get the point . . .) What she can do, and I believe will do, is lead the party back to the point where it actually stands for something besides merely gaining and using political power—and that’s what matters most.Update: Here’s a fine example of what I’m talking about, courtesy of the ever-diminishing David Frum, who looks increasingly like a RINO in sheep’s clothing. Allahpundit linked to it as “the quote of the day,” which makes me think he was hoping to use it against Gov. Palin, but it looks like the commenters on his post have been too smart for that; one of them, DFCtomm, summed it up particularly nicely:
Frum is willing to say or do anything to win. I imagine there is no principle too big to be abandoned, and he justifies this by saying that once we’re in total power then we can steer the country to the right. It just doesn’t seem like a workable strategy to me.
Sarah Palin and Whittaker Chambers: politics by pedigree
If the always-astute Thomas Sowell is right—and I believe he is—then that’s really what the irrational negative reaction to Sarah Palin in some quarters last fall came down to. It explains the fact that many liberals thought her wonderful (even though they would never vote for her because they agree with her on almost nothing), while a number of prominent conservatives came down with the reaction even though they agree with her on almost everything. It also, I think (though Dr. Sowell doesn’t go this direction), explains why many of those same conservatives came out for Barack Obama over against John McCain: because if Gov. Palin is “not one of us,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said of “slouching, overweight and disheveled” Whittaker Chambers, while the “trim, erect and impeccably dressed” Ivy League New Dealer Alger Hiss was, it’s also true that Sen. McCain isn’t “one of them” either, while Barack Obama most certainly is, on almost all the same scores. (Sen. McCain actually fares worse in that respect than Gov. Palin does; neither of them is overweight, but posture and fashion are only problems for him.) Never mind that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy, or that Barack Obama had no discernible record of accomplishment in actual governance: to the intelligentsia, each man qualified as “one of us,” and at a visceral level, that’s the qualification that they really believe matters.We are not as far removed from the class system of our British forebears as we like to think; we’ve just changed the terms, is all.HT: Conservatives4Palin
Could the political pot boil over?
I haven’t posted on Yuval Levin’s essay on “The Meaning of Sarah Palin,” in part because for all the things he gets right, he makes one critical error: he mistakes Gov. Palin as “handled” and portrayed by the McCain campaign for Gov. Palin as she actually is. He thus ends up blaming her for failing to do things which in fact she was prevented from doing (or attempting to do, at any rate) by folks like Nicolle Wallace. I was, however, quite interested by William Jacobson’s comment on Levin’s article:
The politics in this country is like a simmering pot. The boiling water represents the desire of people to be left alone and to make their own way in life. The cover on the pot is the set of liberal assumptions which tells people that they have no right to lead life the way they want, and that those who have assumed the reigns of power know better. My sense is that the tighter that lid is pressed—by attacking people like Sarah Palin, by forcing government into every aspect of our lives, by appointing people like Tom Daschle who have milked the system dry—the more likely it is the pot will boil over.
The one point where I would disagree with him, regretfully, is that I don’t think we can simply call those assumptions “liberal”; functionally speaking, the GOP has operated in much the same fashion over the last number of years—which is probably why the last two elections have pretty well blown the party out of the water. (Plus, of course, while conservatism explicitly disavows the idea that “those who have assumed the reigns of power know better,” our liberal critics would accuse conservatives of being those who “tell people that they have no right to lead life the way they want,” and there are certain areas in which they have a case; only the purest of libertarians could really duck such a charge completely.) Taken as a whole, though, I think Dr. Jacobson is on to something; if he is, we might have another Jacksonian revolution coming. (This time with a woman of the frontier in the lead, mayhap?)