The nomination of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate resonated with the conservative faithful for the very reasons that she was immediately ridiculed by the mainline media and, apparently, the wise guys running John McCain’s presidential bid.
McCain demonstrated during the 2008 campaign that he was a throwback to the era of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. He also revealed that, like Jimmy Carter, also a graduate of Annapolis, McCain is without a clue when it comes to the science of economics or history.
McCain was and is fighting the last war, the one in which he earned the status of “war hero,” not the current war against radical Islam. There is something about the Naval Academy’s curriculum that creates leaders, hard chargers, with technical skills, but complete boobs about everything else. A lightweight like McCain could have grown intellectually had he surrounded himself with intellectuals like the staff Jack Kemp or Scoop Jackson attracted. Instead, nobody knows who McCain’s staff members are, where they came from and what they know.
Contrast McCain with Ronald Reagan who spent years before becoming Governor of California reading books, taking notes, clipping articles and writing his own speeches and radio commentaries. First person reports from persons who met Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office or Air Force One testify to the presence of a current book he was reading.
Does it matter?
Well, when you are asked by Katie Couric what newspapers or books you’ve read, you can tell her without blinking, and that brings me to Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin is a real person lacking any of the artificiality we see in the well coiffed and cosmetically improved candidate of today. She did not have the luxury of a college education with conservative faculty who tutored her in the basics she would need in her future political life. Sarah Palin earned the credits she needed for a Bachelor’s degree and did so at a series of colleges and universities. She married, had five children, one a Downs syndrome baby, entered politics, first as mayor of a small hamlet in Alaska, and then became Governor of Alaska. From that obscurity she was plucked and thrown into the national spotlight and subjected to intense scrutiny.
What we saw and heard, we liked. A good look looking, straight talking, sitting Governor, with a working class husband and relatives like yours and mine. The media focused on the relatives, her pregnant teenage daughter, and then moved on to raise questions about her knowledge and capacity to serve as President, if necessary.
Her counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden, had a compelling story too, if you focused on his personal life, the loss of his first wife, and his devotion to his surviving children. But, the scrutiny of Biden’s ability to serve was not as severe as that of Palin. Biden is arguably the shallowest member of a very shallow U.S. Senate. A walking cliché, Biden’s main accomplishment was to be to the left of his Delaware constituents—the smallest state in the Union—while giving the impression that he is “one of us.” Back-slapping, joking and earnest, Joe Biden lived a charmed life made possible by journalists just like him.
Sarah Palin, however, was the real thing—a mother, ambitious politician, Christian believer who walked the walk and talked the talk—right to life, limited government, no more taxes, private sector over public sector.
That made her a target.
A little reflection when asked to run with Sen. McCain might have led her to adjust her ambitions to her abilities and the needs of her family. The teenager who got pregnant, the problems caused by a former brother-in-law, the five kids and service as Governor are more than enough for a young woman to handle—running for Vice President was not a good decision at this moment in her life.
Well, she did that and now must prepare for the next act.
Rumors of disorganization in the apparatus she has put together for the next four years tells us to look for an impending train wreck.
Now is the time for Sarah Palin to do what Ronald Reagan did. Read, take notes, listen to persons who can be trusted and have something to say, create a shadow cabinet now to advise her on the many issues she’ll confront four or eight years from now—or just the important ones—the causes of inflation; the value of private healthcare; the danger of Entitlements that will bankrupt the Republic, the real causes of acts of terror in the Middle East, and the changing demography of Western Europe. Why not just take a break and go on one of those historical tours of Naples or Rome?
There’s a big world out there and Sarah Palin can use her time well and get to know it or she can do nothing and slowly self destruct. Palin has proven that she is the brightest politician in the GOP and now we’ll learn whether being intelligent is enough. That’s the Palin paradox.
