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?)