October 2, 2008
I admit that I was like many others in the country who tuned into the first McCain-Obama debate last Friday: I tuned out halfway through. Having all those sound-bites from their stump speeches aggregated into one enormous mega-bite was just too much to bear.
I might do the same for tonight’s vice-presidential debate too, but for a different reason: The pathos of it may be too much to bear.
A few columns back, I wrote that Sarah Palin had hit the national scene like a hurricane, overturning conventional (and convention) wisdom and throwing presidential politics into disarray: Would she exhibit exceptional insight and judgment, compensating for her paucity of experience? Could she get up to speed on the issues in time for the debate with Joe Biden — and beyond? Would her gender alone be able to attract disaffected Hillary voters, despite her opposite opinions on just about every subject? Would she make McCain look even older and voters even more frightened of the Unthinkable, now compounded with a second Unthinkable that she’d have to step into his shoes?
After a month on the campaign trail, often appearing as Maverick’s sidekick to draw out the curious and energize his rallies, sometimes appearing on her own to give the same "Thanks-but-no-thanks" speech over and over, and occasionally appearing on TV interviews to stutter and sputter, some of her virginal appeal may be waning. She’s holding her evangelical base, of course, and still drawing out the curious, but even some in her own party are recoiling in embarrassment, and in dread of what she might do next. Kathleen Parker of the conservative National Review has called on her to quit the race for the good of the ticket.
The debate with Biden might be the clincher. New York Times columnist William Kristol, editor of the neocon Weekly Standard, thinks that Palin’s problem is repression: Her true self is being inhibited by "the former Bush aides brought in to handle her." McCain, he writes, "needs to free her to use her political talents and communicate in her own voice."
Perhaps he is right. Perhaps she was so befuddled in her interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric because she was over-scripted. Perhaps, left to be the Sarah Barracuda of old, she can overcome that feeling of pity most of us experienced as we watched her squirm.
But Biden has his own problem. Speaking of handling, how will he handle her? He’s had 30 years of senatorial experience in domestic and foreign policy, starting his learning curve when she was a teenager. He also has the richly deserved reputation for the thoughtless and outlandish remark. Will he attack her without mercy? Will he snicker at her naïveté? Will he keep his distance and wait for her to sink her own ship? Will he be deferential? Can he be deferential? He may destroy his objectively overwhelming advantage with a couple shots from his own loose cannon.
Biden’s challenge here is not only to be political but to be "politic," which Webster’s defines as "shrewdly tactful." He can’t bash her as he’s been bashing McCain on the stump, however much her statements may beg for it. He can’t just ignore her as Obama has done — that’s impossible for him. He has to tack carefully because she is not just a politician, she is a symbol, and a unique one at that. Unlike the hard-bitten Hilary, the true pit bull with lipstick, Palin comes across as childlike and vulnerable, and the slightest misspoken word or look from Biden may trigger a backlash of negativity against him and of sympathy for her.
Kristol argues that Palin will acquit herself in the debate if she can "dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president" — and then go on to attack Obama. It may not be that easy.
What we may see tonight is not a political contest but a psychodrama, a playing out of various meanings of power and weakness. We may find ourselves cringing and changing the channel. Or we may find ourselves transfixed.
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
THREE HURRICANES
September 4, 2008
Why are hurricanes given names? Long before the National Weather Service began doing it alphabetically in 1950, the colonial Spanish had done it using saints’ names, and in fact borrowed the word itself from the Mayan-Carib storm-god, Hurican.
It’s understandable. Hurricanes have a kind of organic life, and like certain animals, they remind us of ourselves: They are born; they grow up; some stay weak, others become powerful; they often behave erratically and destructively; they get old; they die — or more correctly, just fade away.
America’s most recent brushes with hurricanes have been eerily anthropomorphic. Three years ago, the one called Katrina laid New Orleans low and issued an indictment of the Bush administration’s negligence and incompetence better than any human whistle-blower ever could. To mark the anniversary almost to the day, Gustav appeared like some Nordic god to render judgment on the Republican party assembled in convention.
The plans of the gods often backfire, however. Though Gustav brought the whole Katrina nightmare and the government’s bumbling and often heartless response back to national consciousness, the hurricane also provided the Republicans unexpected opportunities: first, to knock their chief liabilities, the despised president and his conniving mentor Cheney off the St. Paul stage; second, to put a human face on the convention, turning it from the usual self-absorbed hoopla to a telethon for disaster relief, like Jerry Lewis was doing for muscular dystrophy at the same time; and third, to allow John McCain to project for the voting public his future on-the-ball and caring presidency by flying down to Mississippi to simulate taking matters in hand.
As Gustav aimed at the Gulf Coast, a third hurricane arrived from exactly the opposite direction — Alaska — and in exactly the opposite form — not a storm with human qualities but a human with storm qualities. As soon as she hit the mainland, Sarah Palin blew the shingles off presidential politics. Like all hurricanes, she started as a mild disturbance in an obscure place; few bothered to track her. But in the space of a few days she had become a Category Four, destroying the Democrats’ plans and forcing the temporary evacuation of pundits and strategists to firmer, if not higher, ground.
The gales now blow every which way. If McCain had chosen a male with the identical set of ideological credentials — evangelical Christian, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage, pro-drilling in wildlife refuges (Mike Huckabee, for instance), he’d have predictably solidified his conservative base and also predictably lost many swing-voters to Obama, a relatively simple cost-benefit calculation. But a young female throws everything into disarray. Palin may not finally draw very many disgruntled but issue-oriented Hillary women, but she’s got even them thinking twice. Those she will draw are the non-ideological independents and undecideds, female and male, old and young, people who vote from the gut, admiring the veteran McCain yet looking for freshness, youth, and that certain feminine quality to balance him out — yin and yang.
Hurricane Sarah has also blown to bits the "experience" issue. After all the harangues against Obama’s callowness, and despite McCain’s lame assertions that Palin as governor and former mayor has the "executive experience" that his legislator-opponents lack (he, the lifetime legislator, of course lacks it too), this woman clearly would not be ready on Day One; Obama looks like an aged sage next to her. She could possibly hold her own on domestic questions, but on foreign policy she’s swimming entirely beyond her depth; her learning curve will be as steep as it gets with just a few weeks to bone up to debate Joe Biden. McCain may be thinking of grooming her to lead a new generation of Republicans made in his image by giving her the task of cleaning up corruption and waste in the federal bureaucracy as she has been doing in Alaska. But what if the grooming is interrupted by the unthinkable, which in constitutional terms is what the vice presidency is for? If that occurs, what the country will get is an appointed, not elected, vice president to be her regent.
Finally, at least for now, there are all those tornadoes that continue to spin off her personal life, upending ideological preconceptions like so many mobile homes. People, for example, find it admirable that she exercised her right to choose by choosing to have her Down-syndrome baby, but disturbing that she’s forsaking the demands of his care for the demands of a run for national office. They find it socially typical that her teenage daughter is pregnant, yet ask themselves if for all her family values she’s not just another absentee mom. And then there’s that Alaska state senate investigation of whether she spitefully fired her public safety commissioner for not firing her estranged former brother-in-law, a state trooper.
Just when you think you’ve got things straight, another cross-wind knocks you over.
Right now, the peaceful eye of Hurricane Sarah is moving over the St. Paul convention center, but what will happen next? Like Hurricane Gustav, she may quickly turn into an un-tropical depression without doing great damage. On the other hand, fueled by the hot and murky waters of politics and the press, new furies may be yet to come.
Meanwhile, Obama and Co. are hunkered down in hurricane central, sifting through the latest bulletins and devising contingency plans.
Why are hurricanes given names? Long before the National Weather Service began doing it alphabetically in 1950, the colonial Spanish had done it using saints’ names, and in fact borrowed the word itself from the Mayan-Carib storm-god, Hurican.
It’s understandable. Hurricanes have a kind of organic life, and like certain animals, they remind us of ourselves: They are born; they grow up; some stay weak, others become powerful; they often behave erratically and destructively; they get old; they die — or more correctly, just fade away.
America’s most recent brushes with hurricanes have been eerily anthropomorphic. Three years ago, the one called Katrina laid New Orleans low and issued an indictment of the Bush administration’s negligence and incompetence better than any human whistle-blower ever could. To mark the anniversary almost to the day, Gustav appeared like some Nordic god to render judgment on the Republican party assembled in convention.
The plans of the gods often backfire, however. Though Gustav brought the whole Katrina nightmare and the government’s bumbling and often heartless response back to national consciousness, the hurricane also provided the Republicans unexpected opportunities: first, to knock their chief liabilities, the despised president and his conniving mentor Cheney off the St. Paul stage; second, to put a human face on the convention, turning it from the usual self-absorbed hoopla to a telethon for disaster relief, like Jerry Lewis was doing for muscular dystrophy at the same time; and third, to allow John McCain to project for the voting public his future on-the-ball and caring presidency by flying down to Mississippi to simulate taking matters in hand.
As Gustav aimed at the Gulf Coast, a third hurricane arrived from exactly the opposite direction — Alaska — and in exactly the opposite form — not a storm with human qualities but a human with storm qualities. As soon as she hit the mainland, Sarah Palin blew the shingles off presidential politics. Like all hurricanes, she started as a mild disturbance in an obscure place; few bothered to track her. But in the space of a few days she had become a Category Four, destroying the Democrats’ plans and forcing the temporary evacuation of pundits and strategists to firmer, if not higher, ground.
The gales now blow every which way. If McCain had chosen a male with the identical set of ideological credentials — evangelical Christian, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage, pro-drilling in wildlife refuges (Mike Huckabee, for instance), he’d have predictably solidified his conservative base and also predictably lost many swing-voters to Obama, a relatively simple cost-benefit calculation. But a young female throws everything into disarray. Palin may not finally draw very many disgruntled but issue-oriented Hillary women, but she’s got even them thinking twice. Those she will draw are the non-ideological independents and undecideds, female and male, old and young, people who vote from the gut, admiring the veteran McCain yet looking for freshness, youth, and that certain feminine quality to balance him out — yin and yang.
Hurricane Sarah has also blown to bits the "experience" issue. After all the harangues against Obama’s callowness, and despite McCain’s lame assertions that Palin as governor and former mayor has the "executive experience" that his legislator-opponents lack (he, the lifetime legislator, of course lacks it too), this woman clearly would not be ready on Day One; Obama looks like an aged sage next to her. She could possibly hold her own on domestic questions, but on foreign policy she’s swimming entirely beyond her depth; her learning curve will be as steep as it gets with just a few weeks to bone up to debate Joe Biden. McCain may be thinking of grooming her to lead a new generation of Republicans made in his image by giving her the task of cleaning up corruption and waste in the federal bureaucracy as she has been doing in Alaska. But what if the grooming is interrupted by the unthinkable, which in constitutional terms is what the vice presidency is for? If that occurs, what the country will get is an appointed, not elected, vice president to be her regent.
Finally, at least for now, there are all those tornadoes that continue to spin off her personal life, upending ideological preconceptions like so many mobile homes. People, for example, find it admirable that she exercised her right to choose by choosing to have her Down-syndrome baby, but disturbing that she’s forsaking the demands of his care for the demands of a run for national office. They find it socially typical that her teenage daughter is pregnant, yet ask themselves if for all her family values she’s not just another absentee mom. And then there’s that Alaska state senate investigation of whether she spitefully fired her public safety commissioner for not firing her estranged former brother-in-law, a state trooper.
Just when you think you’ve got things straight, another cross-wind knocks you over.
Right now, the peaceful eye of Hurricane Sarah is moving over the St. Paul convention center, but what will happen next? Like Hurricane Gustav, she may quickly turn into an un-tropical depression without doing great damage. On the other hand, fueled by the hot and murky waters of politics and the press, new furies may be yet to come.
Meanwhile, Obama and Co. are hunkered down in hurricane central, sifting through the latest bulletins and devising contingency plans.
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