by hilzoy
Peter Suderman does not know what this statement by Sarah Palin means:
“Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don’t get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we’re dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations.”
It doesn’t get better in context.
I completely agree with Andrew Sullivan:
“Let’s be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months – and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish – is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural “identity”. Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring.”
And even more with Kevin Drum:
“I continue to think that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate represents the breaking of a consensual cultural barrier far more fundamental than most people realize. It’s not just that she was inexperienced (Spiro Agnew and John Edwards weren’t much more experienced than Palin when they ran for VP) but that she was — obviously, transparently, completely — uninterested in and uninformed about national policy at nearly every level. We’ve simply never seen someone so completely unmoored from the normal requirements of national office before. She was chosen purely at the level of celebrity, and an awful lot of people seemed to be just fine with that.
Unfortunately, I’ve never really been able to find the words to describe just how corrosive I think her choice was. The whole affair just left me gobsmacked.”
People who don’t follow politics closely often assume that candidates meet some basic level of competence. They have to, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t someone have said something, or somehow stopped them?
As far as the Republican Party is concerned, the answer is clearly ‘no’. It’s not that no one has the power to keep obviously incompetent candidates from being nominated. Obviously, John McCain could easily have not nominated Sarah Palin. But other people could have blocked her as well — recall that McCain supposedly wanted to nominate Joe Lieberman, but was told that the party would not accept it. I am not by any stretch of the imagination a Lieberman fan, but the idea that there is some standard for Vice Presidential nominees that Sarah Palin meets but Lieberman does not, and that enough people accept that standard that Lieberman could not be nominated but Palin could, is frightening.
Someone should have said: no, this is just unacceptable, and if you nominate her, I will say so publicly, and oppose her nomination on the convention floor. Apparently, people said this about Lieberman. But no one said it about Sarah Palin. And that’s just astonishingly irresponsible.
But it was clear back in 1999 that Republican elites were irresponsible in just this way. Until recently, Presidential campaigns have always had (at least) one ineliminable role for political elites, namely: winnowing down the large list of people who might want to run for President to a more manageable number who have enough support and enough money to be taken seriously. I hope the internet is changing this, but back in 1999, the kind of early fundraising and support that moves a candidate onto what is, for most voters, the initial list of serious candidates involved a small number of well-connected (and generally wealthy) people.
A number of those people knew George W. Bush. His father, for one; his father’s friends, for another. They must have known that he had neither the character, the temperament, nor the basic competence to be President. They could have put the word out. They could have let people know that Bush was not a person who should ever become President. But they didn’t. Whether they kept silent because they thought Bush could win and winning was all that mattered to them, or because (in some cases) of their friendship with Bush’s father, or for some other reason, they did not put the interests of the country first.
They let their party nominate Bush. They let McCain nominate Palin. Who knows who they’ll try to foist off on us next time: Joe the Plumber? The latest winner of American Idol? Fred Flintstone?
Well put.
I agree wholeheartedly with Drum’s comment that “…the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate represents the breaking of a consensual cultural barrier far more fundamental than most people realize.”
To me the Palin nomination sets an ominous precedent, one that we may come to regret later, especially if conventional wisdom doesn’t harden around the idea that her lack of qualifications played a large role in sinking the McCain campaign, thereby discouraging a repetition. I guess we will find out in the 2012 GOP primaries how much this lesson has sunk in.
As for how the GOP could come to this pass in 2008, the best rational explanations I can imagine are:
– It was a default assumption that the Governor of any state would be capable of stepping into a high level national office absent evidence to the contrary, and they were as taken by surprise as anyone when the reality of Gov. Palin’s woeful levels of knowledge and preparation became clear. By then it was too late to put the toothpaste back into the tube, so they decided to hang on and hope and pray for the best, and to trust that Sen. McCain would remain healthy enough to serve out a full 4 year term if the GOP ticket won.
– or, the powers that be in the GOP see the VP and/or the President as someone who can (if necessity so dictates) be manipulated and controlled by handlers, serving as a figurehead while powers behind the scene go about the business of actually running the country. Like Cheney with Bush, only much more so (note that Reagan late in his 2nd term and Wilson in his last months furnish some precedent for this notion). They were comfortable with the idea of Palin in the Oval Office because the real decisions would be made elsewhere. Or so they hoped.
From the evidence currently on display on the right (i.e. from the pro-Palin arguments being made on blogs, in magazines, and on TV) it seems that some credence has to be given to the seemingly irrational (but much simpler) explanation that very large portions of the GOP really did (and do) think that Gov. Palin is qualified to be President.
Fred Flintstone would be an improvement.
America is becoming a dynastic nation, with the Bush family at the top. But there are others as well, in politics, finance and even sports. They want to leave their titles, money and power to their sons. Daughters aren’t qualifying yet.
But that’s why the friends and family won’t speak up, they’ve bought into the idea of dynasty. And they get to share in the spoils.
The rationale behind the silence of those who knew Bush I always took to be of one general kind. People who had supported H.W. figured that W. was a) capable of winning nationally and b) pliable enough to surround with figures from the H.W. and Reagan administrations. I know this is cynical (and that this is probably a pretty common cynical liberal interpretation), but it strikes me as at least plausible that various people who legitimately wanted the executive branch back in the control of this group of individuals were willing to tolerate an unqualified candidate as the linchpin to the organization.
There is Lisa Murkowski — the reason the Alaska legislature changed the law so that the governor doesn’t appoint a replacement senator. Her father the senator was elected governor and appointed her as his successor.
Fortunately it doesn’t look like the change in the law will be relevant immediately, since Begich has pulled ahead of Stevens as the counting in Alaska continues.
Can someone give me an estimate of when Sarah Palin will no longer be on my TV? Her 15 minutes should have run out several days ago. Why are the media extending it?
It shouldn’t be any more surprising that a major political party took advantage of our obsession with celebrity than that a bunch of greedy money changers took advantage of our obsession with laissez faire economic policies.
As far as the media goes, most of our TV “journalists” are spokesmodels hired for their celebrity, so why should we expect them to recognize mere substance as somehow more admirable than style?
The really crazy thing here is that it wasn’t just the country that dodged a bullet on election day, it was also the GOP – but they seem doggedly determined to force that bullet back into their vital organs nonetheless. For about a day and a half, it seemed like the party, in the form of insiders speaking through Fox, were going to attempt to erase this horrific mistake, but the problem is that the party’s activist base prefer their monster, who may be a complete dunderhead but at least she’s one of them, to the people who do those elitist things like reading newspapers and watching the sunday morning shows (when they really pught to be at church!). And it’s not only the RedState folks with their “Operation Leper”, Palin is playing along to work on her reputation and create her own reality – she will have done about as many major interviews in the two weeks since the election as in the twelve weeks between her selection and the election. So long as she is permitted to do this unchallenged by significant Republicans, the GOP are ratifying its reinvention as the party that wants not only to be home to Archie Bunker but also to be led by him.
First of all, God bless KCinDC for realizing that the word media is a plural noun. The phrase, “The media is . . .” grates like fingernails on a chalkboard. They is?? (And I am ancient enough to remember chalkboards)
The media watch Ms. Palin in earnest for the same reason it is well nigh impossible to turn away from a trainwreck.
Sarah Palin: Sharp as a light bulb. Bright as a tack. Winks like a Hooters waitress.
It’s Congress for Joe the Plumber first (I hear rumors* that he intends to run). So do not expect his run for presidency before 2016.Meanwhile he can extend his base through his fame as country music performer and book author**. Well at least he can hire colleagues for the next Watergate should he go to the WH 😉
More seriously, I think Huckabee as a “compromise” candidate is more likely (with a Norquist clone as VP). But let’s just hope for a moment it will not be the Newt.
*Keith Olbermann ranted about it.
**There is no evidence yet that it will be titled “Tubes from my father” (or that his first album will include “Plumb, plumb, plumb Iran”)
“It doesn’t get better in context.”
It actually does. You eliminated both the question, and her introductory sentence. Now, of course, all she ever says for the most part is nothing but a string of blathering cliche phrases that are rarely even a sentence. It’s always an astounding farrago of non-content with Palin.
But the context was:
And so the “meaning” of what she said, which is as much or little as she generally “says,” is that she’s not proposing anything specific, and gosh, governors are a good thing.
Which is as much content as almost all of her “statements” have.
So, what’s the unedited audio sound like? If there’s one thing we’ve learned from this campaign, it’s that if the media don’t like you, you’re going to come across as an idiot in the transcript, and probably the edited audio.
The days are over when anybody should trust a transcript.
“The days are over when anybody should trust a transcript.”
I’ve never trusted transcripts, but it’s a fact that Palin talks in a string of barely connected phrases, and only occasionally utters an actual sentence. She’s far far worse than George W. Bush, or most rambling speakers.
So, what’s the unedited audio sound like?
For those with goggles to Google… (Quoted section starts around 14:00)
Yeah, in fairness to Palin — and this is far more charity than she deserves, frankly — there’s a way, when listening to the audio, to punctuate that paragraph so at least it doesn’t look like a William Burroughs excerpt on the page:
Sarah Palin is the perfect candidate for a tendency that has millions of followers. The things many of us see as weaknesses are the exact qualities many people see as her strengths.
This’ll be more than 15 minutes.
Unless she gets the party cross-wise on technical stuff like party-bought clothes.
A bigger point, though: neither of the parties really has a mechanism for directing who the nominee is going to be. The formulation ‘the Democratic party ran John Kerry for office’ is false on both sides, unless one means ‘party’ as the collection of voters, rather than a legal entity with officers, management, etc. I see a longing for ‘wise men’ — remember the people who were supposed to make the deal to avoid the Clinton impeachment — but that’s a paradigm that’s been gone since the early 1960s, if not before.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
I think we unfairly malign Palin’s intellectual gifts.
Thanks –
It’s not only frightening that she made it on the ballot and that she seemed popular with the GOP base, but that she was exceedingly popular with the base. She was outdrawing the nominee, by a wide margin, for God’s sakes.
I could only think to myself, what, exactly, do these people see in a person that they knew nothing about before she was nominated, that makes them turn out in cheering droves???
In fairness to Palin, her comments make more sense if you hear them. However, she talks continually about how Governors MUST be on task, and MUST have ideas on the economy, and then carefully avoids saying anything about what these ideas are, or what they have done in the past…. I think it’s clear that she doesn’t have any ideas about these things, and is still winging it.
A better version of themselves. Same thing a different bunch of people saw in Sen. Obama.
Which is not to say this was the only reason anyone supported either of them.
Why is it so hard to grasp that the role of the presidency, from the perspective of political actors within each party, is principally to *distribute power and goodies and jobs* to party members? Of Course most republican voters didn’t have any problem with Palin–most of them, like Palin, have no idea that the president is other than the figurehead, the CEO emeritus of a large corporation where the real work is done by policy wonks and operatives in the bowels of some big building. These are the same people who slide seamlessly from “the world will end if we elect socialist marxist black guy” to “there’s really not that much difference between the two parties anyway” or “there’s not much that politicians can do about real problems.” Palin was supported by, and thrust upon McCain by, a cabal of religious nutcases who quite properly foresaw that if she could be gotten into power they would get more power. Her lack of curiosity and her lack of information and her lack of knowledge about the world she was proposing to run? A feature, and not a bug, because those supporting her thought that someone else would do that little job–their cousins, their friends, people like them, or people they trusted.
aimai
Surprised the Republicans would nominate a celebrity type?? Do the names Reagan and Arnold ring a bell? In Texas we had Jesse James as our Treasurer for many years. Popular names and faces win. They never care about policy and good government, only winning and power.
Seems to me it’s not that opaque what it means. Filter out the word salad and it’s a straightforward attack on Obama (“voting present”) and a claim that she’s more qualified to be President than he is.
I’ll make the same comment about Palin that I used to make about Bush when he was running back in 2000.
It’s not that either of them are stupid, because they’re not.
It’s not that either of them are incapable of stating their points in a clear, articulate way, because both are.
They just don’t.
In Bush’s case, I think it was mostly because he just did give a damn. He knew what he was thinking, why the hell should he have to explain it to you? If you didn’t get it, that was your problem.
In Palin’s case, I think she just talks the way she thinks, without considering that maybe some editing is called for. Maybe she has an attention deficit thing going on.
She’s got about five things in her head at the same time, each with an associated catch-phrase, and she just flings whatever the appropriate catch-phrase is for whatever pops into her head at any moment out there, like a big colorful word salad.
Taxes! Oh yeah, personal responsibility! Oh yeah, family values! Did I mention taxes?
Unscrambling that into one or more coherent, possibly related thoughts is your problem.
Both of them get positive feedback for being, basically, profoundly inarticulate, because some folks just seem to find that down-home and comforting. I don’t really relate to that point of view, and I’m kind of done trying to understand or appreciate it. I’m just glad that, electorally, it didn’t win the day this time around.
And yes, I agree that it’s irresponsible to nominate, for positions of significant responsibility, people who, whether due to lack of interest or inability, can’t articulate simple, basic ideas, coherently, in plain English.
People talk the way they think. What you see (or hear) is what you get.
Thanks –
Pardon me, Sir. I speak bullshit.
Here’s the English Translation:
“Me like being governor in charge of stuff, not like stupid United States Senator.”
Governoring is hard. It’s hard work.
They let their party nominate Bush. They let McCain nominate Palin. Who knows who they’ll try to foist off on us next time: Joe the Plumber? The latest winner of American Idol? Fred Flintstone?
President Camacho.
“She was outdrawing the nominee, by a wide margin, for God’s sakes.”
But the nominee was McCain, for God’s sake. Outdrawing him among Republicans was not that great a challenge, just about anybody who didn’t have a record of deliberately sticking his thumb in conservatives’ eyes, and calling it being a “maverick”, could have done that.
The GOP has a broken nomination system, that pukes up people the party base really don’t much like. This was just like the Dole run, a geriatric Senator, with a record of screwing over conservatives, deciding he wanted the Presidential nomination as a gold watch for his retirement. The election was lost way back when it became a race for the nomination between a collection of people, all of whom revolted the base in one way or another.
And I don’t see it being fixed, the people responsible all hold “safe” seats.
It seems there is still a view in Republican circles Palin was worth the risk. It is probably true she didn’t cost McCain this election given ‘erratic’, Lehman, Bush 20% approval, Obama fundraising edge etc etc. But what if instead of a 7% victory margin, the election had been decided by a couple thousand votes in Virginia or Ohio? I think we’d be hearing much more about Palin as the negative. Palin being a fiasco, but also not being the reason McCain lost, aren’t mutually exclusive.
In terms of the comments around why the Republican elite grouped around W, I don’t think this is a Republican only feature, it is true of the Democratic Party as well. I think one could say the Democratic Establishment had rallied around Hillary as strongly as the Republican Establishment rallied around Bush in 2000.
Now extrapolating from the campaign to governing can be a stretch, but given how Hillary mismanaged her campaign vs the organization shown by Obama, where were the Party Leaders questioning if Hillary would really have the skills to be effective ie she had Bill’s management skill without the charm. Could it be they just wanted to win? Now Hillary it is true is no Palin, but still there seemed to be a willingness to look the other way in terms of basic management abilities that the President needs to exhibit.
You could argue the Republican elite matters more than the Democrat elite, and that this matters more given the Republican Primary process – eg it was always going to be harder for, say, Huckabee to breakthrough than Obama given the rules of game. But fairness around rally-round-the-leader need to acknowledge this is not just a Republican Party risk.
‘erratic’, Lehman, Bush 20% approval, Obama fundraising edge etc etc.
Why do people keep talking about the fundraising edge as if it were some independent cause of support for Obama, rather than another reflection of how wide and how intense that support was? Why does it keep getting listed alongside external events, as if it were something with which neither McCain nor Obama really had anything to do except to react?
Not that I mean to pick particularly on Scott, who wrote an intelligent comment. Beyond that particular nit, I’d respond that the Democratic elites were initially rallied around Hillary, but the lack of winner-take-all caucuses and primaries meant that the elites had less leverage over the final decision, and when they realized they weren’t going to get their way, most of them adjusted. The situation in 2000 was such that that couldn’t happen; a candidate with the GOP establishment support Bush had and a winner-take-all process pretty much couldn’t lose.
The GOP has a broken nomination system, that pukes up people the party base really don’t much like. This was just like the Dole run, a geriatric Senator, with a record of screwing over conservatives, deciding he wanted the Presidential nomination as a gold watch for his retirement. The election was lost way back when it became a race for the nomination between a collection of people, all of whom revolted the base in one way or another.
And I don’t see it being fixed, the people responsible all hold “safe” seats.
As I recall the preiod leading up to the early primaries, the McCain campaign almost didn’t make it – they were perilously close to being completely out of money by New Hampshire, and a lack luster finish in that state probably would have been the end of the road for them. Which means that it would not have taken a huge change in the process to produce a different outcome.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the GOP nomination process could be changed (perhaps via a magic nomination process changing wand, or those “safe” seats prove to be less safe than thought and a new generation of Republicans breaks through to shake up the process, etc..).
Brett, what changes would you make if the process could be changed? Get rid of winner take all primaries? Or something else? And which 2008 candidate(s) would have been the beneficiaries of those changes, such that someone other than McCain might have been the GOP nominee?
I think the shocking thing is that the GOP is ok with Palin given what has happened in the last two elections. i doubt they are going to blame it on conservative ideology, and the ‘wise men’ are bright enough to know it wasn’t medicaire drug benefits or homeland security boondoggles (or whatever the latest ‘bush wasn’t a REAL conservative scape goat is). The lesson i’d think they’d take away is that you need some minimal level of competance in your dbag-in-chief or lots of stuff will go wrong and your party will get the blame. I mean, whatever your fix for any of the many fups in the bush administration, you could at least argue that bush’s policies would have worked if he had actually gotten out in front of them instead of sitting around eating cake with mccain or whatever. I can understand the moneymen believing hocus-pocus about tax rates and whatever, but noone of them would hire bush to shine their shoes.
One name. Ronald Reagan. So why not Sarah Palin?
r: One name. Ronald Reagan. So why not Sarah Palin?
Indeed, if in the US having Alzheimers is no bar to becoming President, why not Sarah Palin?