Thursday, February 25th 2010
John Galt
OPINION
It’s been quite easy for politicos the world over to dismiss Sarah Palin as a backwoods joke hellbent on embarrassing the nation each time she opens her mouth: her inability to name a newspaper she reads, her claim that she can see Russia from her door, her folksy way of speaking. But are the experts making a big mistake in writing Palin off as a joke? You betcha.
Political observers, rightly or wrongly, tend to laud those who perform best in front of the camera – the Barack Obamas and Pierre Trudeaus of the world. The slick types who have mastered the art of rhetoric and speak for hours without actually saying anything are often held up as the gold standard against which all others are measured.
But Palin, the inexperienced, sometimes inarticulate former governor of a state I suspect many Americans often forget exists, is much more than a political figure. Her persona, her stances on public policy issues, even the way she speaks point to a symbolism far greater than, say, a purely political three-word catch phrase evoking the need for change yet never fully making the case for it.
Though she may sport the red elephant of the Republican party and have served as running mate to the party’s last presidential candidate, Palin is more than a high profile member of the GOP – she is the current representative of a set of beliefs and values held deeply by a great number of Americans (and even some Canadians) and though she may be gaffe-prone, her admirers love her ability to “tell it like it is”. And if the pundits, politicians and others who dislike her don’t begin to understand that, 2012 could very well usher in President Palin.
“Was that a joke?” you’re asking? It depends. Are hundreds of thousands of people gathering together for anti-tax-hikes “tea party” protests a joke? Are the more than 58 million Americans who voted for the McCain-Palin ticket despite the many claims as to the latter’s danger to the country’s reputation just a joke? Or how about the fact that Palin already leads in the polls amongst potential Republican presidential candidates in the next election?
Palin has gone from being an unknown Northern politician to the symbol of an entire way of thinking in little more than a year, and for good reason: she, unlike most politicians, seems to have the courage to convey the ideas of the movement she represents in the face of enormous pressure from those who oppose those ideas, namely Democrats and the mainstream media.
Responsible, constitutionally-limited, less intrusive government, lower taxes and personal self-reliance – the ideals that Palin has come to embody – are topics that will, sooner or later, have to be debated in the public arena, especially if President Obama’s current spending habits don’t subside. It’s time to put away the petty complaints about where Palin writes her speaking notes or when she drops her G’s and start taking her, and the movement behind her, much more seriously.
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I just want to preface this by saying that I’m NOT a fan of Sarah Palin. She HAS made some gaffes, as many politicians have. I do happen to think her gaffes are blown out of proportion to gaffes by other politicians, but that’s another issue.
One thing that has always bugged me when people talk about her is “… her claim that she can see Russia from her door…”
She never said that!!
That was Tina Fey in an SNL sketch! What Palin actually said was that Alaska and Russia are neighbours, and that you can see Russia from land in Alaska.
In other words, at their closest points there is land that belongs to Russia, and land that belongs to Alaska, and you can see one from the other. Look at a map! http://www.rusnet.nl/encyclo/a/alaska.shtml
It amazes me how entrenched the SNL spoof has become in the political discourse while “nailin’ Palin”
It would much easier to take Palin and the Teabaggers seriously if they could spell, got facts straight, or weren’t downright racist, bigoted, and dangerous at times. The values that you mention in closing are valid themes that have been part of Conservative thinking in the United States since its inception. The point is that there are much more articulate, knowledgeable, and tasteful politicians that voice the same message more clearly and calmly than Palin and her army of imbeciles.
As to whether the Alaskan is a joke, she both is and isn’t. Certainly, making Katie Couric look like a master interrogator is grounds for a bit of a laugh. And suggesting that you understand geopolitics because you can see the boundaries of a foreign country is indeed ridiculous (Canada’s greatest diplomats must all hail from Niagara). But the emotion that Sarah Palin most often invokes in me is not humor but horror.
Horror at the level of her popularity and influence over a huge and (perhaps more importantly) enraged section of the American population. Maybe it shouldn’t come as such a shock. After all, these are the same numb skulls who elected George W. Bush not once but twice. The man who read books upside down, nearly died of pretzel inhalation, and famously traded away one of the greatest baseball players of a generation when he ran the Texas Rangers. If Americans can elevate that man to the position of commander in chief, they can officially elect anyone.
The problem is that too many Americans use the same criteria when voting for President when they do when picking the American Idol. Logical platforms are irrelevant. What sells a certain percentage of the US population (and it’s big enough to make me seriously question Darwin) on a political candidate is poorly constructed but angrily delivered polemic. Above all, they want to elect someone that they can relate to (which eliminates anyone articulate or properly educated). Thus, Rainman in a cowboy hat defeats two highly intelligent and skillful politicians who happened to be too scholarly for their own good.
And that makes me afraid. Afraid that the trend could continue in the form of Sarah Palin.
I agree that it’s unnecessary for people to make fun of Palin because she writes notes on her hands, can’t name newspapers she claims to read, etc. … to an extent.
I don’t think it’s right to be insulting, but I do think it’s important to talk about these things. Do you really want an American President who claims to read political and economic newspapers in an interview, but is clearly lying and says “Whatever is in front of me” when asked which ones she reads? We don’t need to insult her or call her dumb, but I think it’s important to discuss these types of events. I don’t think many countries would respect America more than they do now if Palin was President, because she obviously doesn’t know what she’s talking about on so many levels. She is simply uneducated on many political issues and, in my opinion, she isn’t fit to run the country. I’m not trying to make fun of her, I’m just making observations from seeing her televised debates and interviews.
So should we be making fun of her? No. But should we be talking about her public actions and public speeches when she is acting as a political leader? I think we should.