A Pilgrim’s Digression

If it wasn’t clear before, it ought to be clear now: Sarah Palin will one day be a Republican nominee for President.  She is their Venus, rising in the west.  Unfortunately for the country, like that planet she is hot, but inhospitable to earthlings.

Frank Rich had an op-ed this weekend essentially saying just that: her ambition is unlimited by her lack of intelligence, and she does want to be President.  What I think Rich draws out for the first time is how, behind the smiling facade, there is a coldness to her.  It’s not just that she has given subconscious hints that she hopes McCain will die in office–her reference to Harry Truman in her convention speech–but that nothing can break her cheery facade, not even her debate opponent breaking up when remembering the death of his wife in a car accident.

It’s fair to say that liberals like me are going to be predisposed to dislike her and find in her all the qualities we despise in people–ambition, selfishness, dishonesty, shallowness, and anti-intellectualism.  It’s also fair to say that she exhibits traits which give credence to those concerns.

On the issue of her depth of intelligence, reading a transcript of some of her remarks provides a better sense of how incomprehensible she can be than listening to her.  To some degree, she speaks as badly as any of us, and just as when listening to a friend who tends to speak poorly, we mentally correct her speech so that we can understand it, without realizing that we are doing so.  But seeing the words on paper reveals just what gibberish she spouts, even when being supposedly “prepared” to speak.

Example: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.”

And one of my favorites: “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.”

I know nukes are the be-all, end-all to me.  What about you?  I just love ‘em, God Bless their little radioactive hearts.

I am not going to fool myself that the nonsense she speaks will matter to anyone other than the educated “elites,” but it’s difficult to ignore.  Just as it’s difficult for Republicans to ignore a candidate who, in their view, spends his days “palling around with terrorists,” I can’t ignore flagrant idiocy.

This woman is a worse speaker than George Bush, and I thought that was simply impossible.  If it were only a matter of not being able to express herself clearly, I’d be inclined to give her more of a pass.  But she simply has nothing to express.  Nothing.  There is not an original thought in her head, or even an unoriginal thought that doesn’t get mangled in transition from her memory to her tongue.

Again, though, we can’t fool ourselves that this will matter.  As Rich points out, it just endears her more to the Republican base.  The more she misspeaks, the more people like me mock–and the more stridently her defenders lay down a barrage of covering fire about the evil, elitist mainstream liberal media.

When she goes out to smear Obama with the Ayers “connection,” Limbaugh cheers.  She’s a fighter!  McCain’s a has-been.  Never mind that what she’s fighting for is a non-issue.  Even the Times story she cites concludes that there was no significant relationship between Obama and Ayers.

What’s most sad is that this woman is (apparently) the best Republicans can produce right now.  And she is in the national eye by sheer virtue of the fact that, in his ambition, McCain tapped her for his running mate (ugh, bad choice of words there, maybe “tagged” would be better).  If she one day runs for President, it will not be for any outstanding qualification other than her having been on the McCain ticket.

What gives me hope is that I do believe Obama will win this election.  Republicans may think that this is a 1976 election year, in which Reagan was established to lead the conservative revolution in 1980, but Obama is no Jimmy Carter.  Once he is elected, he will be hard to beat in 2012.  By then, experience will no longer be an issue.  By then, Americans will know him better, and my prediction is that more Americans will like him and appreciate his talents, as well.

If Republicans are betting on Palin’s future buoying conservative dreams of dominance, they had better look past 2012.  Maybe they should even ignore Palin’s advice and look to the past.  Reagan at least offered something different.  It’s hard to see what Palin offers that is new and different, except in comparison with her worn-out running mate.

The political wind has shifted, and Obama is running with it.  Palin simply offers the same tired talk radio conservatism that has determined the course of Republican politics for the past twenty years.  I don’t think that will beat Obama in four years, because it isn’t beating him now.