That tinny voice. The Prom Queen hair-doo. The Tina Fey thing. But, mostly, the audacity at work here. Governor Sarah Palin is, to me, a walking, breathing insult to: (1) Hillary Clinton’s PUMAS, (2) Hillary Clinton, (3) her historic campaign—which Palin is directly benefitting from in a very cheap way, (4) polar bears, (5) most anyone who graduated middle school. The saddest part about all of this, to me, is that this will probably work. It is, in its iniquity, quite the genius move. Go back and watch those West Wing eps where James Brolin created a Bush-esque fop as a GOP candidate running against the erudite Martin Sheen and you’ll see what I mean. Palin is a parody of the whole Obama phenomena and actually kind of makes McCain’s point for him: that style wins over substance every time. She’s a fake Hillary, which must really, and I mean really, burn Hillary up. Reporters speculate Obama has Hillary muzzled while he lets this thing play itself out over the next couple weeks, hoping that America’s short attention span will eventually wane over Palin or demand more of her, or that Palin’s shallowness will become evident as she reluctantly gives in to interview requests.
I don’t buy the McCain campaign’s flimsy assertion that they’ve kept Palin off the grid to protect her from reporters “pouncing” on her about her pregnant kid. Memo to McCain campaign: she’s running for Vice President with an old guy who looks exhausted every time I see him. She *needs* to be pounced on. Had McCain selected anyone else, they’d be getting pounced on. Getting pounced on is what happens when you spring people on us at the last minutes. If Sarah Palin can’t take the heat of Chris Matthews and the boys, she’s really in the wrong racket.
Obama vented a bit of his frustration over the weekend, but I wish he’d just stick to the script: redirecting all questions about Governor Palin to Senator McCain. Obama simply can’t afford to be seen as ordinary. At the end of the day, that’s what the McCainites are selling with Palin: ordinary. A “hockey mom” just like you. She’s nothing like us, but McCain wants us to believe she is. And, frankly, if she’s that ordinary, she certainly is not qualified to be president of the United States.
Palin's ordinariness should point out how extraordinary Obama is, but it doesn’t work that way. People just watch TV. Lounge on the sofa and belch. Rub the tummy. Not a whole lot of thinking going on there about a guy whose academic credentials alone puts him several laps around the pool ahead of Palin. But that’s not how most people think: they think it’s a wash. And it’s not.
For one thing, Barack Obama isn’t running for vice president. He’s running against John McCain, but the McCain campaign has successfully seized the agenda, and have the Obamas playing defense. Which, I am assuming, is a calculated risk on Obama’s part to wait for Palin to implode. The problem with that strategy is it puts far too much confidence in the tummy rubbers who think Palin = Obama. It’s the same kind of naïveté the Democrats always use, the egghead high thinking that always loses them elections. Republicans, by contrast, understand that people are stupid. And they exploit our lazy tummy rubbing. And they win every time.
The campaign Obama needs to run is one that explains, in entertaining, simple-minded ways, that a vote for McCain is actually a vote for Palin for president. McCain is old. McCain is tired. Nobody expects McCain to even seek a second term. Short of a Lee Harvey thing, nobody expects Joe Biden to become president during Obama’s term, but the likelihood of Sarah Palin taking the oath of office should give even the tummy rubbers pause. Obama (or some 527) should be running an ad with footage of Palin being sworn in as governor and just ask the question, what if this was the presidency? Can America afford that risk? (Actually, I have to believe that one is already in the can).
I mean, Jethro takes Obama out, at least we’ve got a guy—a real guy—taking over. A big-mouth guy, a hothead guy, for sure, but at least he knows where the situation room is. This Sarah thing frankly scares me to death because it mocks the hockey moms while exploiting them at the same time. While making the point that these women are intrinsically stupid, which is what happens when you have way too much time on your hands and your biggest challenge of the day is getting Sally to ballet class before Ricky gets done with karate. These people, snickering at Obama’s community service (which has become code for minorities if not specifically blacks) are voting their emotion, helping to elect a woman who is utterly clueless about most anything south of Anchorage. And there’s a real probability, not possibility, that, should McCain win, this woman will inevitably take the oath of office.
If that thought doesn’t help Obama, I just give up.
11 Comments
Amen, preacher.
Her first interview will be next week with Charlie Gibson, who is as a political interviewer about as demanding and hard as a damp sponge. Charlie will meekly ask the questions that her staff will tell him she's prepared for, because he's too afraid that he might not get another such interview, or that he'll piss off her handlers, who, after all, are the same people he sees around town going to the same parties and married to the same people.
scrawled by Greg Morrow | September 8, 2008 11:18 AM
I just watched Michael Ritchie's excellent THE CANDIDATE the other day on TCM and let me tell you, it's amazing how much that movie mirrors current events.
Nothing has changed in the last 36 years when it comes to Democrats and Republicans.
scrawled by Hysan | September 8, 2008 11:59 AM
For a moment, I thought you were talking about Rod Kurie's excllent THE CONTENDOR. Joan Allen's Laine Hanson is many, many laps around the pool ahead of Palin.
scrawled by priest | September 8, 2008 2:47 PM
Oh, I love The Contender. I wish we could have a VP as cool as Joan Allen in that movie. Hell, as cool as Joan Allen, period.
Basically, Robert Redford in The Candidate is very close to being like Obama.
scrawled by Hysan | September 8, 2008 4:45 PM
Look...I'm a big fan of your work, and I hate Palin just as much as you do. I'm very liberal, and was rooting for Obama the whole time over Clinton even. But it bothers me slightly that it sounds like you're attacking Palin basically for being a woman. Her voice isn't deep enough? She doesn't have short hair, so she ties it back? You're annoyed by the Tina Fey geek-chick look? What the hell, man?
scrawled by Kate | September 8, 2008 6:24 PM
I dislike Sarah Palin because she is a woman exploiting women and fraudulently cashing Hillary checks. I've never met a soccer-hockey-T-ball mom I could relate to because these people, who think NOT keeping score at a child's sporting event somehow teaches the little tykes something about the real world, have fairly little in common with me. Now, I completely respect soccer moms' choices and their right to live on Planet Soccer Mom, but theirs is a different reality from mine. I'm not saying mine is better, but my life has been one of struggle and sacrifice, with the harsh reality of fatherlessness and poverty destroying my childhood. What fascinated me about the show thirtysomething, which I liked a great deal, was it was, for me, a show about the problems of people who have no problems. It was all this whining done by people who, while not being rich, weren't sleeping through a New York winter in a house with no heat.
My mother, my sister and I huddled together in one room, freezing, running our oven night and day, sectioning off rooms in the house--that's an experience that shapes you. I find Palin's benign disconnect from such realities disconcerting. Not that everyone should suffer the way my family has suffered, but that that suffering has connected me to a level of humanity that I find missing in people whose biggest concern in the morning is choosing a place to eat lunch.
She has a tinny voice. If she were a man with a tinny vice, she'd still be a veep nominee with a tinny voice. She wears an outdated hairstyle. If she were a man with an outdated hairstyle, I'd bring that up, too. If it will make you feel more comfortable, I can compare her to Ben Affleck. But she looks like Tina Fey. I mean, she looks *exactly* like Tina Fey. I'm not sure in what way that sounds sexist or misogynistic.
I don’t dislike Palin *because* she's a woman, but the fact that she IS a woman is central to the GOP's exploitation of (a) women and (b) Palin, who doesn’t seem to either notice she's being used or, frankly, care, since the odds of her ascending to the presidency are categorically higher than those of Joe Biden.
scrawled by priest | September 8, 2008 8:10 PM
Good tag-teaming of Palin by Olbermann and Maddow tonight. And I notice that, Pat Buchanan's obligatory segment aside, Maddow wasn't forced to play the "stick two mouthpieces from opposite sides on air and let them trade talking points" game. She's a lefty, cope. :)
scrawled by David Van Domelen | September 8, 2008 9:36 PM
Your misanthropy is a source of continuous amazement to me.
Obama's a credentialed nitwit, there are plenty of smart voters who like her and don't hate Obama, and he's going to get spanked.
scrawled by greg zywicki | September 9, 2008 2:01 PM
I think some of what you are getting at here, and I agree, is that the Palin pick is more and more looking like a well-planned offensive move by the McCain campaign. Because she comes so literally out of nowhere and is so spectacularly unqualified for national office, it forces the media to put the question of experience back onto center stage. And once there, it can easily be turned on Obama. Even if a better case can be made for him, Obama winds up getting bogged down in that debate, leaving the way clear for McCain.
scrawled by Matt Adler | September 9, 2008 3:16 PM
There is in fact not a single smart voter who likes her.
As she's lied about just about everything in her public persona (to the point that I question if she's actually a woman), if you like her, you are either a) too stupid to realize you're being lied to, or b) ok with someone lying to you, in which case, you're stupid.
Stopped the "Bridge to Nowhere"? Not until after she championed it during her run for Governor. When it hit the national press, she quashed it...and kept the money, and is using the money to build a Road to Nowhere going to the same local as the bridge.
Sold the jet on ebay for a profit? IN FACT, FAILED to sell the jet on ebay several times, eventually selling it thru a broker for a huge loss.
Fired the chef? No...retitled the chef's job...who continued to do the cooking.
Hates earmarks and lobbiests? I'm sure she does..other than the ones she hires to bring in HUGE amounts of cash for her small town.
Fights corruption? I'll grant that the governor she replaced was apparantly really corrupt....But she's taking money that's supposed to be used for travel expenses to pay for when she stays at home rather than the Governor's mansion, NOT TO MENTION the 2 seperate ethics/abuse of power investigations she's under.
(on that...they say she's a maverick for going against her party on ethics and corruption issues....so that means the Republicans stand for unethical behavior?)
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Priest, I apologize for ranting on your page. Greg's welcome to come to my LJ to respond..just find a Palin thread..I got a bunch (go for the 2008 Republican Token thread...I'm proud of the art work in that one).
scrawled by Scavenger | September 9, 2008 11:21 PM
"Palin's ordinariness should point out how extraordinary Obama is, but it doesn’t work that way. People just watch TV. Lounge on the sofa and belch. Rub the tummy. Not a whole lot of thinking going on there about a guy whose academic credentials alone puts him several laps around the pool ahead of Palin. But that’s not how most people think: they think it’s a wash. And it’s not."
That's what amazes me, even though I suppose it shouldn't, that the legions of 'ordinary' folks in middle america will run the other way from somone like Sen. Obama (or consider themselves ambivalent with the "is he s muslim??" rumors), but jump and shout 'yippee!' when a candidate like Palin is ushered to the fore-- Is it really just because she likes to take potshots at caribou and polar bears?
scrawled by christopher currie | September 10, 2008 10:03 AM