Examining Just Why, Exactly, Sarah Palin is Electrifying

From the years 1932 until roughly 1964, citizens of the U.S.A. felt positive about their Federal government, and for the most part they invested trust in their elected leaders. But this was only a brief anomaly in the long history of our country, and it ended with Watergate and the Vietnam War before it could take hold and flourish. For most of our national history, the opposite sentiment toward Washington has prevailed and from the earliest years of our Republic, Americans historically viewed their government with suspicion, and even outright contempt. So I guess you could say that the Tea Party movement is really a throwback to another time. What’s new is the emergence of Sarah Palin.

Given this high percentage “anti-government” sentiment, it’s surprising that Sarah Palin hasn’t gained more traction with her message of suspicion and distrust of Washington. Recent polls put her disapproval rating at 55%, with fully 71% of Americans saying that she is unqualified to be the next President. Perhaps the reason for this can be found in the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville.

Never, in my recent memory, has so much adulation and applause been given to such simple utterances about simple-minded solutions to galactically unsolvable problems. Evidently, to be in lockstep with the Tea Party, one needs to believe that a speaker is “electrifying” and “galvanizing” when they observe that the United States Government spends too much, by borrowing too much, in order to deliver too little in the way of problem solutions. Knowing this, Sarah Palin is able to rally her troops by overstating the obvious about Washington. Okay, now we know that the Tea Party “gets it” — the Federal Government is inefficient, and generally doesn’t work as well as it did in the past. The thing is, mainstream Democrats and Republicans “get it” too. The only difference is, Republicans and Dems don’t feel that such self-evident truths are “electrifying.”

My politics are, admittedly, schizophrenic. My objection to Bill Clinton molded me into a rabid Conservative, then eight years of George W. Bush transformed me into a flaming Liberal. And after a year of Barack Obama, I’m now a dejected cynic who believes that America is basically ungovernable, and that even an outwardly decent and intellectual person in the Presidency can have very little positive effect on the problems that face the country today. Sarah Palin, we are told by the Tea Party members, should be elected as our next Chief Executive because she shares a certain folksy commonality with the average person. To this I reply, “Not so fast.” My advice is to go out into the street and talk to a lot of common, average Americans, and then ask yourself if you want your grandchildren to inherit a world that is shaped by the common, average American.

For the record, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and all the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were considered to be aristocratic at that time, and there wasn’t a single man among them who would have qualified today as a common average American. I suspect that none of these founding fathers of our country would fare very well in today’s modern Tea Party, and as the Tea Party goes, so goes Sarah Palin.

It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I want To

It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I want To. This pretty much sums up Hillary, and her approach to the Democrats at their national convention in Denver. We think we’ve seen it all, those of us who try to offer intelligent, non-hysterical political blogging with a somewhat jaded and cynical touch, but I must admit that I’m surprised by the Clintons. That’s not their fault. It’s my own naiveté. The Clintons are just being themselves, with the monstrous egos and petulant self-absorption that are their trademarks.

Here’s my mea culpa. I admit, much to my shame, that I pulled the R lever for George W. Bush in 2000. I was motivated to cross over to the dark side by my utter disgust for Bill Clinton— the man and the President. I thought that no president could be worse than Slick Willy. Of course, after the last eight years, I realize just how wrong I was. But looking back, I believe that a lot of Independents did what I did, for similar reasons, and collectively we boosted Bush close enough to a majority so that The Supreme Court could install him without being accused of staging an outright coup.

That’s water under the bridge now. For my atonement, I think I’ll vote for Obama this year, in spite of my doubts about the Democrats, perpetually afflicted as they are with nonsensical silliness, and always willing to appease any whiner who displays sufficient petulance. Right now that whiner is Hillary Clinton, who wants her name to be placed into nomination at the convention so that she can feel relevant. If she doesn’t get her way, Bill will limit his campaign activity to pouting and pontificating. In a perverse way this gives me something that I’ve wanted for a long time, a litmus test to prove to me that the party in power deserves to be in power. The Clintons will be that litmus test for me.

After the eight year nightmare that’s coming to a close, Obama should have been a runaway favorite to win the next election. However, I’ve never been all that comfortable with the certainty of his victory. I think that a lot of Independents, people who would never consider themselves to be racist, will get into the privacy of the voting booth and vote for the white guy, “Just to be on the safe side.” They might even lie about it to their friends afterward. Obama has to overcome that to win, and he needs 100% of the support from his party to do it. If the Democrats are sidetracked with trying so soothe the wounded egos of the Clintons, it could well cost Obama the election. For me, that’s the litmus test that I mentioned earlier. If the Democrats lose the presidency because of the Clintons, they deserve to lose it.

If It Was Fair and Balanced, It Wouldn't Be Essential

Ask the average person to describe the New York Times with one word, and most people will say, “Liberal.” Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. That’s not the word I would use, however. For me, the New York Times is “essential.”

There’s a legend in the folklore of politics about Karl Rove in his early days in Texas. He wanted a direct mail list of Conservative Republicans in the state, and because such a thing did not exist at the time, Rove bought himself a list of the subscribers to Field and Stream Magazine. He knew that such a list would be overwhelmingly comprised of Conservative Republicans, and he was comfortable in the knowledge that Field and Stream would not begin opposing the NRA just to broaden its appeal to a wider audience. Rove knew that publications all have their own identifiable and predictable constituencies, and this is true of newspapers as well as magazines.

The constituency of the New York Times is primarily composed of East Coast, urban intellectuals, and such a group tends to be politically liberal. News is a product, and a newspaper is a business, and the reader is the customer. And the first rule of business is to give the customer what they want. The New York Times does this well. To become more balanced and nonjudgmental, the newspaper could reach out to a broader audience of Conservatives by printing the daily diatribes of Rush Limbaugh, or quoting the rants of Bill O’Reilly, but decision makers at the Times are smart enough to know that red-meat, Right-wingers like to get their venom directly from the source by tuning in to the EIB Network or the FOX News Channel. The Times appeals to Liberals because Liberals are the ones who read the paper.

For me, the important question is not whether the Times is liberal, but is the Times essential? I believe that it is, and here’s why. About five years ago, I had the privilege of being part of a group discussion with Daniel Ellsberg, and Ellsberg told us, personally, why he gave the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. He said that the Times, in his opinion, was the only institution with the clout and the courage to withstand the predictable onslaught from the Nixon administration. Ellsberg confided that, prior to turning over the papers to the Times, he had experienced an “All-The-President’s-Men” moment when he genuinely feared for his life. The New York Times, for Ellsberg, was not just an outlet to expose the lies of the Pentagon about Vietnam, but it was also an ally to help guarantee his personal safety.

Here’s the essential thing about why such a liberal bastion is necessary. When power on the Left goes off the track, it tends toward the silly and the pathetic, and maybe even the tragic. I would cite LBJ, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton as examples, annoying, but not really threatening. But when power on the Right gets out of control, it is downright destructive. Both ends of the political spectrum are not above punishing their enemies, but whereas the Lefties do it with some temerity, those on the Right do it with a kind of evil enthusiasm. Joe McCarthy, the Nixon administration, and Bush-Cheney are examples of this. Even an institution as strong as the U.S. Congress doesn’t seem up to the task of speaking truth to that kind of power. I don’t mean to imply that the New York Times is the only thing standing between us and outright fascism, but it does seem to have a good track record in helping keep the Right under control. If this offends some Conservatives, it seems like a fair trade-off.

WANTED- President. MENSA members need not apply

The message that “intellect is important” has become a tough-sell in the modern United States. Maybe this was always the case. After all, ever since the earliest days of the American Revolution, the new nation saw itself, partly, as a kind of thumb-in-the-eye response to the obnoxious and snooty European aristocracies. “America,” we were told, “celebrated the common man,” although it’s doubtful that anyone ever knew, precisely, just what that phrase meant. What sustained us, however, and what allowed us to prosper beyond anything the world had ever seen was the fact that we selected leaders who were just a little bit smarter than the common man. There was a time, not so long ago, that we actually wanted to be governed by the best and the brightest.

Sometime during the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton or one of his strategists had the bright idea to position candidate Clinton as something of a common man. It worked like magic. Voters were told by pundits that they seemed to rally around Clinton because he was “like them.” He didn’t talk like FDR or Eisenhower or JFK. In fact, he didn’t talk like any previous presidential contender or president. He was the kindly and folksy Sheriff of Mayberry and we were all little Opie Taylors. The ground had shifted, and future presidential aspirants would now be judged on how much they were like the voters—the common man.

It should have come as no surprise, then, that George W. Bush failed to measure up in intellect or performance when faced with 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, and massive Mexican immigration, and skyrocketing oil prices. His election was based in part on the fact that he was like the voters, people who were easily blindsided by adjustable rate mortgages, people who were unlikely to be attending MENSA meetings. In a nation where 25% of high school students drop out before graduation, we need to ask the question, “Do we really want our president to be just like us?”

We are now faced with the candidacy of a man who makes no pretense at being just like the voters. On top of that, he’s black. And because he speaks in complete and eloquent sentences, there is the suspicion that he might be an “uppity” black, with none of the comforting Uncle Remus qualities that made Bill Clinton our honorary first black president. This new black candidate has been labeled (dare I say it?) an “elitist.” For eight years we’ve seen the destruction that defined the presidency of a pseudo cowboy with a room-temperature I.Q. God forbid that we should now raise an “elitist” to the presidency. Is there any possible way that an unvarnished elitist could be worse than a "decider" shooting from the hip like a common man. I have a message for the American voters. The fact that we’ve never been a particularly cerebral populace should not condemn us to be forever governed by nitwits.