Sarah Palin is gone! Woot! Tho now I’m worried that she’ll come back as a zombie politician…

Following this, I was asked on my facebook later why it is that I ‘hated’ the woman, with the same person also saying that he could not understand why so many people had such vehement hatred for her. But here’s the thing. I don’t hate Sarah Palin. I have problems with her politics as a general rule, and and as I said when she first appeared on the scene , I don’t believe that she’s the ‘maverick’ or ‘political genius’ that’s she’s been made out to be, but I will admit I find her commitment to her family and her pro-life beliefs to be an admirable characteristic at least.

Saying all of that though, brings me to the problem I have with her. Which isn’t really a problem with her, but rather with the narrative that exists around her.

(Full disclosure, I’m writing this post largely off my experience of two particular people I know who are strong Republican/Palin supporters, but I’m also trying to use my experience of what Republican followers seem to say anyway)

In this narrative, Sarah Palin is an honest, knowledgeable, hard-working politician who would have been a perfect Vice-President (and later in the narrative great future President) who, despite having as much, if not more ‘experience’ than Barack Obama, was not seen as a credible candidate with the reasons for this being either
A) That she was unfairly beaten down by the ‘Liberal (sneer when you say it for full effect) Media’
B) That she wasn’t given a fair shake because ‘Barack’s Black’ and he wasn’t questioned on things by a biased media/political class
C) Both of the above
D) She’s a woman
Etc.

And the thing is, this narrative continues. What bugs me about this, is that it’s not based on any objective facts. For example, was Palin given a hard time with regards to her CV? Yes. But in fairness, when the best Fox could come up with for her foreign policy skills was ‘she can see Russia from Alaska’ (see bottom of the linked post), what do you expect? Had John McCain even tried to run a campaign of two halves saying: ‘I’ll handle the International ‘stuff’, the VP is here for domestic’, the effect still would have been the same, as really the main thing Palin had was that she was doing an ‘ok’ job as a first term Governor. However, that is not a ringing endorsement for such a major job as Vice-President especially given that Palin really had no major strength’s as a domestic politician either.

Now, did Barack Obama have a CV that was as (if not even more) empty? Yes. Probably. But, and it’s a pretty big ‘but’, he managed to avoid gaffs like the Couric Interview and for the most part seemed to have the presence and knowledge that would be required for a national leader. I mean compare these:


I mean, interviews where Palin came across looking like she had no idea what she was talking about, where she can’t answer questions that really should be answerable by somebody running for the second most powerful job in the world do not exactly inspire confidence. And her attempts didn’t inspire confidence when you look at the results of the U.S election.

Now what about the points A, B and C? Firstly the ‘liberal media’ point.. This is a point I have never understood. Essentially it seems to be that any media that makes the case for liberal politics, or questions the Republican ‘view’ or even just asks questions is ‘liberal’. To a large extent it seems to be simply part of the persecution complex of many Republican politicians. I mean, look at this quote from the BBC article on Palin’s resignation:

At the same time, she said the response in the media to her surprise announcement was “most predictable” and “detached from the live of ordinary Americans”.
“How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country,” Mrs Palin wrote.

“Detached from the live (sic) of ordinary Americans”? What does that even mean? That ALL of the American news coverage of her has ‘attacked’ her on some level? Surely asking why a person resigns before the end of her term is a legitimate question?

B – the ‘Barack got an easy time of things because he’s a Black Man’ line. I’ve seen (otherwise sensible) people seriously use this argument which generally seems to run something to the effect of ‘Liberal guilt meant people elected an incompetent Black Man rather than a competent White Woman/Barack wasn’t asked ‘the hard questions because he’s black/etc.

I think I’ve covered this line pretty well in the rest of the post – but I will ask, if Barack was given such a ‘free ride’ by the ‘Liberal Media’ why couldn’t all the people who voted Republican the previous eight years see through the ‘Liberal bias’ and see how ‘useless’ he was? If he was given such a ‘free ride’, why wasn’t Hilary Clinton able to poke holes in his ‘obvious’ weaknesses?

And what about the coverage of the Jeremiah Wright affair? Essentially, Barack Obama was able to convince people that he not only knew what he was talking about, but that he was a good man capable of leading the United States. These arguments for Palin often seem to end up taking a very ‘anti-democratic’ element as the eventual stance of her supporters is that ‘the people’ ‘didn’t know what they were doing’.

The final, and biggest problem I have with Sarah Palin though, is this. She never pretended to even represent ‘all Americans’, but only those whose world-view was similarly narrow, religious and conservative. Though she eventually apologised for the comments, it is hard to not believe that they reflected pretty accurately the reality of how she viewed a lot of her fellow countrymen (and women).

Personally, I think that people that complain about how Palin was ‘treated’ miss the point. To me, their bitterness over the fact that Barack Obama ran a better campaign, and won a fair election has blinded them to many of Palin’s flaws. A woman who tries to claim that people who bomb abortion clinics AREN’T terrorists, who nearly seems willing to claim that anybody who isn’t a Republican isn’t an American, who runs a campaign that is designed to appeal to a very specific section of the population and who claims that everything negative said about her is down to media bias is NOT a national politician. Rather she is a sectional politician with national coverage.

Do I hate Sarah Palin? No. But I have find it hard to take seriously a woman who still seems to be claiming to have national ambitions, despite seeming to have no interest in educating herself as to international politics. A woman who has resigned from a high-profile (in political terms) Governorship before her term is finished and for no apparent reason. A woman who believes that media coverage that asks questions is ‘biased’ and regards not believing what Republicans tell you as ‘being anti-American’. I don’t believe asking these questions or saying these things are unreasonable, or show ‘hatred’ for the woman.

Unless somebody can tell me why I’m wrong?

No, it wasn’t.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but first I want to go back to my initial response to the situation. While I really have a strong dislike for the Republican Party, as my tongue-in-cheek ‘Republicans are evil’ tag on my blogging hopefully suggests, I initially saw a certain appeal to Palin. It didn’t mean that I thought the Republicans were suddenly ‘good’ or anything, it was just initially I thought she might be a good choice. She’s young (like Obama, but in contrast to McCain), conservative (in a way that ‘the right’ don’t feel McCain is), a ‘maverick’ (like McCain *is* {not really but we’el let the poor media analysis stand for a minute}), pretty and was a woman (to appeal to disaffected Hillary supporters) and so suggested ‘change’ as a general possibility on the Republican side of the election.

And then I started thinking again and the whole house of cards came crashing down.

Firstly, the female vote, which seems to be a big part of choosing her. While this a generalisation, and should be treated with the suspicion that such generalisations deserve, I doubt that many of the women who voted for Hillary support the kind of ‘small government, pro-life, anti-choice’ Republican politics that my reading of Palin suggests she has. A woman who is part of a group like ‘Feminists for life’ that is completely against abortion would have extremely limited appeal in my opinion to Democratic women for whom abortion rights (in some form) are a major issue. Hillary’s campaign featured a lot about universal health care and women’s rights in general. I doubt that Palin reflects either of those views. Furthermore, Hillary also ran on her *strong* foreign affairs and security experience and Palin completely lacks those. So, in that case, if the reasoning was to get Hillary supporters, it failed miserably and what’s worse looks like poor pandering to women in the hope that they’ll be stupid enough to vote for a woman purely becuase she’s there.

Secondly, there’s the ‘maverick’ thing. Now John McCain isn’t a maverick. A person that votes the same way as Bush 90% of the time is not that much of a maverick. As an aside the Economist covered where McCain actually *was* a maverick but notes that he’s since either repudiated those views or has endorsed views that run contrary to those same views. Hardly the actions of a Maverick.

But what about Palin’s supposed ‘maverick nature’? As far as I can see these are a result of her actions in exposing corruption in the Alaska oil and gas commission and her actions against fellow Republicans accused of corrupt behaviour in Alaska (and isn’t it sad that a politician being honest counts as them being a ‘maverick’?). As well as this there is the way she became governor in challenging the Republican party machine in Alaska. In terms of her attacks on fellow Republicans, once again I question how much we should read into an apparently honest politician attacking corrupt ones. While I don’t want to sound to cynical, a person with ambition challenging a famously corrupt political machine is a good way to get votes (and if genuine reflects well on Palin’s personal integrity). Beyond an apparent honest streak however, I don’t see Palin as being that much of a ‘maverick’.

This brings me to Palin’s conservative politics. Given that McCain has had a hard time connecting to those ‘value voters’ on the Republican side so far, choosing a woman who has (at the very least) endorsed creationism, is extremely anti-abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, supports drilling in Alaska (which appeals to those who feel environmentalism is a crock AND those who like ‘energy security’), is pro-NRA and so on. While I have very little to say on this, I will be curious to see how this plays outside of the Republican base. Will McCain gain ‘the right’ but lose ‘the Centre’ from this choice? Certainly, and going back to that Economist article I referenced earlier, that would seem to be the case.

Finally, there is Palin’s youth. This I feel is her biggest weakness. Certainly I feel there’s nothing in what I’m going to say next that she couldn’t overcome but in my opinion, it will be an uphill slog to do so. John McCain has largely run his campaign on the basis of ‘reliability’, ‘experience’ and other such words which suggest that he’s tested. His most convincing attacks have to been to suggest that Obama completely lacks experience and that his ‘change’ (especially given his recent choice of running mate) is largely superficial. Yet having Palin, who if anything is even less experienced than Obama, strongly damages that experience claim. Having been completely untested in national politics, she is going to have a steep learning curve in getting used to the limelight. In contrasting ‘experience’ with Obama, one can see that he at least, got that out of the way in running the primary campaign. Her complete lack of knowledge of foreign affairs is going to be an easy route of attack as is her lack of experience in running large government, especially when one considers that she has not even completed one term as governor.

While she could grow into this job, given that McCain’s health is a definite worry, one has to consider whether someone with such a wafer-thin resume is capable of assuming such office. While Presidents that lacked experience have definitely held the job – look at Bush jr., Kennedy, LBJ and Harry Truman, all of those men had at least had grown up in political families or had considerable experience before becoming VP. Palin, to me, seems a considerable risk to take when it is considered that her running mate is not exactly a picture of perfect health and is quite elderly. Her choice also casts doubt on whether McCain’s claim to be interested in serving the nation rather than his own ego is actually true as she seems a choice of a political machine rather than a choice of the best person for the job. It also shows a lack of clear vision on McCain’s part to his own health, which is hardly a sign of a responsible leader.

Probably the best summary of the whole ‘VP choice’ can in my opinion be best summed up by this cartoon:

But I have to admit that I love the Fox News analysis as to why Palin understands foreign affairs…

You can find the original video of Bill O Reilly freaking out here

Usually, when the man is shown to be the father, the woman gets up, chases the man, victoriously declares that she told him so, and does the “give me yo money” dance which includes cash hand gestures. Then she challenges him to follow through on his claim that he will provide support to the child; there is usually no follow-up to see if this actually happens, possibly due to the rather large number of cases that appear on the show monthly. Upon such confirmation, most men accept the fact that they are the father. Conversely, when the man is proven not to be the father, it is common for the men to celebrate by performing dance steps or running in to the audience to high-five audience members while the women walk or run backstage crying, often collapsing (or sometimes even diving) to the floor into the fetal position. In such cases, the man rarely receives an apology.