Palin and Repub Presidential Candidates

I commented at neoneocon.



Re Palin

First: being POTUS is not the be all end all (not that anyone said it was, but just as a reminder). It’s AMAZING the way Palin has affected the conversation with a Facebook account.

Second: though much anti Palin animus comes from feminists and leftists, much also comes from Washington insiders - including the condescending “Meet the Press” types of pretentious commentators.

Palin is the ultimate outsider. You’d have to relocate to the North Slope to get much more outside than Wasilla - and no families live on the North Slope. The insiders criticize her for not having the knowledge of an insider. This is silly. If she had the knowledge of an insider, she would BE an insider.

Palin’s opportunity is to demonstrate the truth: she is a learning organism. Althouse said Palin is “dumb” b/c Palin did not, last fall, recognize the treachery of the McCain staffers who would stab her in the back. Althouse fails to recognize that Palin is an outsider and a learning organism: she learns, she advances, she learns, she advances, etc. A President needs to know who he/she is (re principles and beliefs) and be a learning organism. Palin is this, and has opportunity to demonstrate it to the electorate.

I am not over concerned about Palin’s positive/negative rating. Many say she is defined in the public eye. However, I believe much of the public does not know her: she has opportunity to be redefined in their eyes.




re Repub Presidential candidates

I believe Repub candidates have charm and are simply too unknown. This will be rectified: the electorate will come to know them. Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty: it’s true they don’t have military medals and war stories in their backgrounds. Still, they are clever conversationalists, would be engaging over beer, and know their way around a BBQ grill. These guys are not stiffs, and we ought be careful about blithely buying into the media preferred narrative that they are. Some of the bias in that narrative is coastal bias against the midwest. I don’t spend … really any time at all being concerned about coastal bias against the midwest. Still, it exists, and it exists in the “bland” narrative being sold about Romney, Huckabee, and Pawlenty. These guys all enjoy a good ribald story; and they all have more guts, and more understanding of life and of humanity, than either a WaPo reporter or a Meet the Press condescender - especially better than a David Brooks who: worshipfully allowed Barack to fondle his thigh, then worshipfully wrote about it.




re Jindal

You know who is a stiff? Bobby Jindal. And I’ll vote for him for President the instant he runs for the office. He is the most glorious stiff ever, and he is cleaning up Louisiana like it has NEVER been cleaned up before. Ever. Louisiana, quietly, has likely been the most corrupt state in the history of the U.S. Louisiana politics is a web of corruption, and has been for a century. The money amounts of an Illinois or a New York do not flow through Louisiana, yet what money does flow through there has always been heavily susceptible to being embezzled and to being directed to cronies. NO ONE has ever made progress in cleaning up Louisiana like Bobby Jindal is doing right now.




re Palin’s resignation as Governor:

It was outside the box strategic thinking. It was smart. It was ballsy. “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!”

Palin took care of Alaskans. She was hamstrung as governor, and therefore Alaska was hamstrung. For the remaining months of what would have been her legally hamstrung and lame-duck governorship, Alaska is better off without her in the office.

Palin took care of her family: cashing an opportunity to earn, for the first time ever, millions of dollars. It was an opportunity which might not have come around again.

Palin is more viable as a candidate: can speak out and take actions which she could not have taken as Governor.

Her resignation as Governor is a nice indication of her capability as a gutsy strategic thinker and actor.




John Podheretz, says the McCain Campaign Staff attacked Palin to salvage their individual personal futures (in politics and in media):

Perhaps the greatest mark of [the McCain Campaign's] dysfunction was the stream of unnamed McCain advisers who went out of their way to criticize Palin in remarks they were too cowardly to deliver for attribution. It was, to say the least, highly peculiar for them to have acted as they did. [...] They do so to hedge their own bets, to maintain relationships they want to last after the campaign is over. The best way to do that is to reflect the same cultural and theoretical priorities as the journalists to whom they speak, as a means of distancing themselves from the dysfunction and receiving kind post-mortem treatment.

The only “gratitude” Palin owed to the McCain campaign was to McCain. She owed no gratitude to campaign advisers and employees who threw everything but the kitchen sink at her — quite the opposite, in fact. By naming names and revealing the unprofessional behavior of McCain campaign staffers who were doing his election effort no favors by engaging in Palin-bashing, she has struck a blow for a greater degree of campaign civility in the future, in part by letting future potential employers in the political realm know about the poor behavior of people they might hire to help get them elected. The best way to neutralize a hostile leaker in the world of electoral politics is to let the world know that the leaker is a leaker.

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