David Solway: Can Sarah Upstage Barack?

Two more years of Obama, and America may find itself with its first female president
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The more Sarah Palin seems unelectable, argues David Solway, the more electable she may actually be. The media's long war against the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate is not, he explains, an indicator of her unfitness for office, but "precisely as a measure of her eligibility":

Thus we are told that Palin’s “national negatives” are too high for her to be regarded as a viable candidate. But this is to forget that such “negatives” are mainly the result of a coordinated media assault whose effect can be mitigated with time, intelligent pushback and increased exposure on the ground. Presence can counter image and word of mouth can triumph over print. Negatives can be neutralized and even turned into positives. Harry Truman’s whistle-stop tour through the American heartland enabled him to upstage a heavily-favored Tom Dewey in 1948. The cries of “Give ‘em Hell, Harry,” which became his campaign theme, can translate in the present context as “Give ‘em Hell, Sarah,” if she takes her show on the road.

We are also told that Palin has polarized the nation, which is the fiction the media wants us to accept. The truth is that America has been unraveling since the ’60s and that Obama, not Palin, has even further divided the nation, so much so that America has come to resemble not a single, unified country but two or more countries in a state of internecine conflict. As the “culture wars” continue to heat up, E pluribus unum might better read Ex uno plures. Metaphorically speaking, the waters are rising, not receding, as President Canute once assured us. There should be no doubt about this. It is Obama, the putative redeemer of his nation and the great healer, who, through both his agenda and his failings, has brought his nation to the very brink.

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Consequently, the media are in panic mode and will mobilize their inventory of maledictions to sink the candidacy of the woman they fear in order to buttress the fortunes of the man they adore. Their offensive could not be more, well, offensive. The moral filth of the New York Times and MSNBC, for example, among many other similar outlets in the MSM and the blogosphere, is enough to repel anyone who looks for even a modicum of decency in the conduct of the press. To target Palin for her convictions and selected aspects of her demeanor while giving Obama a Get Out of Jail Free card and airbrushing the Democratic crowd of warts and blotches — for example, the innumerable gaffes of Joe Biden, the imbecilities of Nancy Pelosi, the catatonia of Janet Napolitano, or the zingers of Obama himself—is the epitome of bad faith. Intellectually, the media are quite frankly out to lunch; politically, as is increasingly evident, they function as a fifth column in league with the American left, which is intent on transforming the country into something it was never meant to be. And this is precisely what Palin understands.

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Arguably, there is no other candidate in either party at present who can approach her public engagingness, her undoubted patriotism, her authenticity, her experience as a house-cleaning state governor (however curtailed), and her unwillingness to compromise with the truth. This is not to say that Palin doesn’t have a learning curve to climb, but she seems eminently capable of the task. And this is not to say that there are no fine Republican candidates in the offing. I think particularly of Herman Cain, the self-described “dark horse,” Allen West, John Thune and possibly Michele Bachmann, all pretty impressive people. (MSNBC’s resident blowhard Chris Matthews is now going after Bachmann — another good sign.) But there is no one as of this moment who brings the entire package to the table as does Palin.

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h/t: TrueblueNZ

- JP

David Solway: Sarah in 2012?

She may yet be able to count on the 70% solution.
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David Solway, literary critic and author of Hear, O Israel!, is the latest of many authors who have embarked on a quest for the reason why the ruling class -- and their faithful servants, the chattering class -- are so opposed to Sarah Palin:

Palin is neither a liar nor a parasite, but a truth-teller and an industrious worker—two attributes that have cost her dearly in a liberal environment dominated by special interest groups, entitlement seekers, political predators, fiscal sycophants, tax evaders, people addicted to welfare, single-parent families living off the dole, labor union apparatchiks, official and media appeasers in the “war against terror”—in short, the swarm of barnacles that have battened onto the ship of state.

Historian and commentator Victor Davis Hanson concurs. In a summarizing article for Pajamas Media, he concludes that Palin’s being “a mom of five children flies in the face of the demography of yuppie careerism.” In the “binary world” of network columnists, late-night TV hosts and the culture of the left, “Sarah Palin is apparently all that they are not.” Moreover, Hanson points out what is palpably obvious but often unadmitted. “And how can it be fair that Sarah Palin seems stunning after five children when so many in the DC-NY corridor after millennia on the exercise machine and gallons of Botox are, well, ‘interesting looking’?” This latter phrase is the most tactful—and tactical—of satirical put-downs, and says volumes about unconfessed resentment. Palin’s undeniable beauty works against her, especially among the feminist sorority, no less than her candidness, moral rectitude and integrity of character feature as liabilities in the eyes of her detractors.

Hanson believes that Palin is “scary not so much in 2012” as an antidote to Barack Obama, but that “she could be around—and around in an evolving way—for a long time to come.” Here I would be inclined to vary, however modestly, from Hanson’s analysis of the menace Palin represents to the liberal-left constituency. The veritable tornado of hatred and defamation to which she has been subjected argues something far more immediate in its implications. What the Democrats and their supporters earnestly fear is not only that Palin may be around for the indefinite future, but that she is indeed potentially electable in 2012 and must be stopped at all costs. This is perhaps the principal motive for so libelous a spectacle as the left’s all-out debauch of vilification. But will the strategy work?

We need to remember that the liberal-left ideology which seems so potent and widespread in contemporary America is to a large extent the creature of a progressivist elite and its media organs, busy collimating their quarry. It does not speak for the vast majority of Americans but, as Arthur Brooks clearly sets out in The Battle, accounts for at most 30% of the nation. What he calls the 30% coalition, grounded in “European-style statism…expanded bureaucracies, increasing income redistribution, and government-controlled corporations,” advances an agenda that is not shared by the remaining 70% of the population. And it is precisely here, in the preponderant sector of the electorate, that Palin’s real strength lies.

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That is, she has been targeted for extinction by the 30% minority who control the levers of power and influence. They have her in their “crosshairs.”

But this is to ignore the 70% majority of center and center-right Americans, many of whom have become more and more skeptical of the press and who are correspondingly fed up with the techniques of character assassination employed by the agencies of the generic left. Paradoxically, Palin’s electability can be reckoned as an inverse function of the virulent campaign intent on her delegitimation. The “war against Sarah” is a clear indication of the feasibility of her candidacy for the presidency. The greater the fury and bluster and dissembling she is met with, the greater the likelihood that she poses a genuine threat. One does not raise a mallet to crush an ant.

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- JP

David Solway: Sarah for President?

There is probably no one more qualified for the White House than Sarah Palin
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David Solway, author of Hear, O Israel!, recognizes that Sarah Palin has a lot of advantages, or what should be advantages "in any sane political environment." In a Pajamas Media analysis, Solway examines the main charges her critics have manufactured only to later cite as her "disadvantages":

To begin with, Palin is by no means poorly educated; she merely did not graduate with a degree from an Ivy League institution, which by any reasonable account in today’s academic milieu should stand decidedly in her favor. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley and other so-called elite universities charge prohibitive tuition fees while, for the most part, delivering second-rate curricular fare. They represent the kiss of intellectual death — unless, of course, one wishes to enter the service of the State Department or practice trial or immigration law. Palin did well to avoid these bastions of mainly liberal-left political correctness.

As for the absence of foreign policy experience, David Jenkins reminds us in an article for PJM that, with the exception of the elder Bush (who, incidentally, was no presidential cynosure), “it is not common for presidents to enter office with foreign policy experience.” In this respect, Palin is no different from the vast majority of her predecessors and certainly not from the present incumbent. What is needed in this domain is precisely what Palin would bring to the highest office in the land: insight and principle. As Jenkins writes, “she knows that America must be strong in order to be safe, and…that we must develop our own resources and end our dependence on foreign oil.” Palin also knows that an American president does not bow and apologize to foreign despots and does not alienate loyal and tested allies, but comports himself or herself with dignity and courage.

Nor is there anything wrong with shooting one’s own dinner, especially when one considers that liberal urbanites are perfectly OK with having other people shoot their dinner for them. Unless they are dedicated vegans, their hypocrisy is indigestible, and even vegans would surely vote for a meat-eating Democrat. Being handy with a shotgun and knowing how to skin a caribou is plainly not the real issue here. The implication is that Palin is some sort of primitive rustic rather than a credentialed cosmopolite. But the truth is that frowning on Palin’s wilderness skills is nothing but class snobbery on the part of those who would be utterly lost were they stripped of the “civilized” amenities they thoughtlessly take for granted. It is their mincing pretentiousness and fashionable outrage, not Palin’s honest hardiness, that is deplorable.

Further, Palin is by no means politically unnuanced. Quite the contrary, she is as politically savvy as they come, whether on the domestic or international front. Her speeches during the recent congressional elections were not only unteleprompted barnburners in the best populist tradition, but revealed a meticulous command of the domestic issues currently bedeviling the nation as well as a finely nuanced understanding of America’s pancreatic failures in international diplomacy. She displays a far more realistic perspective on the Middle East and has far more accurately taken the measure of America’s geopolitical competitors, particularly Russia and China, than anyone in the Democratic administration.

Palin does not believe in tax and spend, in fiat printing, in redistributive economics, in ObamaCare, in the AGW nonsense that is only an opaque wealth transfer scheme, in making purses out of sows’ ears (aka pork and earmarks), in pressing reset buttons, in blaming Israel for the Palestinians, or in a degrading and unproductive “outreach” to the Islamic umma. These are policies she would reverse, as indeed would anyone with a nuanced understanding of the economic and political worlds. There is little doubt that Palin would be a strong, resolute, and effective president should she ever accede to the White House.

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- JP

David Solway: Palin, Frum, and the Tea Party

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Canadian David Solway, author of the recently-released Hear, O Israel, takes on notorious Vichy Republican and Conservative Lite^® David Frum for the latter's unfortunate Palin obsession in a Pajamas Media op-ed. Solway's full opinion piece is what we consider a must read, but here are some excerpts to prime the pump:

To my mind, Frum is tooling about in another galaxy; yet, oddly enough, his mugging of Sarah Palin in a series of newspaper articles belies his own recommendation. According to Frum, Palin is “rambling, angry, and self-pitying.” She self-immolated in the 2008 elections and is guilty of “dereliction of duty.” After having once dismissed her as a “neophyte” — what, one wonders, does that make Obama who, unlike Palin, had no governing experience whatsoever when he came to power? — Frum goes on to suggest that there is a “sexual dynamic at work” in the enthusiasm for Palin among a contingent of conservative men. What other reason, after all, could explain such advocacy? Palin is hot and conservative males are randy. “Whatever impulse it is that so excites Palin supporters,” he opines, “it is not shared by their wives.” Frum’s drearily incessant diatribes steer perilously close to unwholesome obsession, so much so that there seems to be something distinctly “Freudian” about his imagined relationship to the poor woman. It is as if, pace Frum, there were a “sexual dynamic at work” here too. Certainly, when it comes to Sarah Palin, he has not availed himself of the temperate address he solemnly urges upon others.

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Frum is way too nuanced about the battle for America’s soul that is playing out before our very eyes. He may ride a bicycle to the Washington Mall — a nice little touch — but he would be far more useful, metaphorically speaking, doing yeoman service in a tank. Frum, I suspect, was always a PRINO, a Prospective Republican in Name Only. It’s consoling to note that Frum seems to be wrong about most things. He predicted that the economy will have improved by this November and that the advantages of Obama’s health care legislation will have become evident by then. He predicted that Sarah Palin’s career “seems headed nowhere positive” with her approval ratings in free fall. Perhaps we should take a cue from Lewis Carroll and “shun the frumious Bandersnatch.”

Palin, for her part, is constantly being savaged and grossly misrepresented by an “educated elite,” including many of a conservative persuasion, whose scorn and contumely seem to be a function of class. She is derided as grammatically challenged, but then she does not rely on a teleprompter and speaks extemporaneously, pretty much like any normal person. She is derogated as flaky and impetuous, as someone who would not fit in with the New York cocktail crowd or the Princeton intellectuals, and is regarded by the patrician cenacles as, in effect, a rabble-rousing commoner and uncouth provincial. Such taunting is truly beyond the pale, or beyond the Palin, and only reflects back upon the empty self-regard and caste pretentiousness of the accusers themselves.

I have heard people say — responsible, thoughtful people — that Palin is a one-dimensional dilettante, someone who has never read a book. Apart from the absurdity of this claim, it should be obvious that reading a book with understanding and profit depends upon sensibility and temperament. Obama has presumably read a book (apart from The Communist Manifesto and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals), Van Jones has read a book, Larry Summers has read a book, Tim Geithner has read a book, John Brennan has read a book, Cass Sunstein has read a book, Valerie Jarrett has read a book, Rahm Emanuel has read a book, Hillary Clinton has read a book, Robert Gibbs has read a book, Joe Biden has read a book (well, maybe not), David Plouffe has read a book, Andy Stern has read a book, David Axelrod has read a book, Pete Rouse has read a book, Ken Salazar has surely read a book — some of these people have even written a book — and look at the mess they have created. Seriously, though, Palin strikes me as better informed than all of these political actors lumped together. She has most certainly read a book with understanding and profit and it wasn’t Lamont the Lonely Monster or Fun with Dick and Jane. Her recent speeches have been impressive and display a sure knowledge of American history and the intricacies of the Constitution — far superior, as it happens, to the president’s wobbly grasp of such matters.

There is another factor at work in the demonizing of Sarah among people who should know better. Even those who believe they are inured to the media’s disingenuous spin and are too savvy to be influenced by its microbial indoctrination are nonetheless subtly infected. The often unfavorable response to Palin by both liberal and conservative intellectuals is, without their being fully aware of it, in some measure a response to the media’s artfully crafted simulacrum. Palin’s one public relations disaster was the infamous interview with Katie Couric, but we forget that the interview was pre-recorded and that many hours of tape were afterward segmented and spliced to put her in the worst possible light. The gaffe-prone Joe Biden was treated very differently by Couric (who infamously let slide his remark about FDR going on television after the stock market crash of 1929), as was, for that matter, Barack Obama and his numerous howlers, displaying both unfitness for public office and wholesale ignorance. Palin, being neither liberal-left nor a member of the prestige class, was and is a customized victim of cliché knowledge, which circulates readily despite the supposed immunity of the intelligent. The media contagion goes deep.

The staple accusation that Palin is merely an uncultivated zealot who has no program to bring to the nation can be easily “refudiated” (lovely word!) by simply paying attention. Palin has strongly endorsed the basic Republican platform — limited government, reduced taxes, race-neutral justice, Constitutional oversight, sealed borders, a muscular foreign policy, closer ties with Israel — much of this before the new Pledge to America was released. So it’s not correct to say that she is merely reacting rather than proposing.

On the contrary, Palin should be respected for her natural intelligence, her stick-to-it-tiveness, and her patriotic instincts. She had no real material advantages, came from relatively humble origins, did not attend the best schools (had she been African-American, affirmative action would likely have lofted her into Harvard), yet rose to become the governor of a state whose political sewers she cleaned out despite determined opposition. This is not a feat that many politicians would have been capable of. Palin is indisputably miles above anyone on the liberal-left side of the ledger. If one compares her — on such criteria as personal integrity, logical consistency, moral authority, strategic insight, and political rectitude — to the other two most conspicuous women in the political theater, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, well, it’s just no contest.

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- JP

David Solway: Redeeming Sarah

David Solway, author of The Big Lie and Hear O Israel, sounds off at Pajamas Media with Redeeming Sarah:

"Her greatest weakness during the electoral run was not what she stood for, or her personal aura, or her knowledge — or lack of same — of foreign affairs, but an ingrained naiveté about the extent of the unmitigated hatred and disdain with which many liberal Americans and almost the entirety of the liberal-left media greeted her candidacy."

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"Such bewilderment, I believe, was a function of her essential good nature, her moral dignity, and her natural optimism. These are attributes that would by no means handicap her in her dealings with actual and potential enemies of the country she obviously loves and is sworn to defend — no Michelle-like resentment of America in her bones..."

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"Palin is surely wiser now that she has been put through the domestic wringer. And when compared to her major political opponents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, she comes across as prime presidential material indeed. The gaffes committed by the president and his hobbling mate during their pre-election speeches defy credulity and betoken not only the sort of “shallowness” that [Rick] Moran accuses Palin of, but suggest an ignorance so profound and entrenched as should have disqualified them immediately from running for office."

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"Further, as has been often pointed out, Palin has actual hands-on experience of what it means to govern; Obama was a short-stint senator who voted “present.” Palin’s record as a mayor and governor is squarely in the public domain and is undeniably impressive; Obama’s CV remains largely sequestered in sealed archives and nobody quite knows what a “community organizer” really does. Palin has genuine accomplishments to her credit; Obama is a cryptograph, who is, in addition, devoid of any notable achievements."

The unabridged original is definitely worth the read.

- JP