VDH on Hypocrisy in Service to Revolution on the Left

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In an analysis of the Left's philosophy of hypocrisy, Victor Davis Hanson's first example is the Palin/Edwards dichotomy:

John McCain was damned for picking Sarah Palin who had not finished her first term as governor, and had previously only been elected to local political offices and served on a state commission.

Her middle American ‘you betcha’ twang, NASCAR persona, good looks, and occasional deer-in-the-headlines interviews with hostile anchor people, coupled with the kids, conservative creed, Christianity, and 19th century husband, sickened—there is no other word for it— the DC-New York punditocracy. Yes, they concluded, she really was from Wasilla. Yuk.

So we got everything in the media from the maverick McCain suddenly as cynical sell-out who settled for third-best, to Palin, the clueless Alaskan yokel.

In contrast, to this day, there is no in-depth analysis of Kerry’s disastrous pick of the first-term, uninformed Senator Edwards as his VP choice in 2004. And it took the National Inquirer to inform us of his later conspiratorial lying and bribery involving his illegitimate child—sordid facts apparently well known to—and hushed up by—the mainstream media. Remember, later presidential candidate Edwards was not just inexperienced, but as a confessed wonk, did not open a book. He was the owner of a mansion who preached about “two-nations” inequality, and he alternately used and humiliated his alternately heroic and conniving cancer-stricken spouse.

Hanson asks what explains the treatment of an Edwards versus Palin, and concludes that "hypocrisy vanishes, and revolutionary pigs walk on two legs in the farmhouse":

An Edwards is mellifluous, puts his energy on behalf of those in the “other nation”, and is devoted to promoting a society where we are all about as wealthy as John Edwards, who uses his wealth for proper contemplation and preparation for further good deeds, and thus needs a castle of compassion. Given that, who cares that he is a congenial liar, lives one way, lectures another, helped destroy the practice of obstetrics in his home state, and took a great deal of money for doing very little? The former considerations alone count, the later are mere right wing talking points.

Read this VDH essay unabridged at his Pajamas Media web journal Works and Days.

- JP