If I were a politician, I would pray for enemies like Sarah Palin has
I already commented on the crazy episode of the e-mails; an episode that, to the disinterested observer or to the candid friend, conveys nothing but desperation and lack of principle. (Or desperation so intense as to destroy principle, and for that matter commonsense.) Now we have had another damp squib, at the end of what was, like the tapes, a highly publicized attempt to damage her. A journalist - and not just any journalist, but the prestigious author of The Selling of the President, a book that has become a minor classic of American political studies - deliberately and publicly set out to dig the dirt on her. He actually rented the house next door to her - as good as a notification that he intended to take her down. And what do we get? We get a book so bad that even the New York Times - a protagonist of the e-mails episode, and hardly a friend of Palin - dismisses it with one of the most murderous reviews I have ever read. (And I have read a few; in fact, I've written most of them.) So someone claims to have had an affair with her before she was married? Someone else claims to have experimented with drugs? And unnamed sources claim that the break-up of Todd's business partnership was due to her having an affair with the partner? Good Lord, if that is the best you can do, for the sake of your own career give it up and go home. You have just shown that the most aggressive investigation by one of the best-known investigative reporters in the New World can turn up nothing but anonymous sexual spite and misreported thirty-year-old tosh. Anyone who investigated my life could come up with fifty thousand times worse stuff. If this woman has feet of clay, they haven't found them yet; and all the while, any reasonable spectator would conclude, one, that there is nothing serious to charge Sarah Palin with (an honest politician? Can you believe it?), and, two, that the effort to prove otherwise has clear and worrying pathological features. McGinnis has just made himself and all of Palin's enemies look sour, petty, ineffective and obsessed.
Indeed, at this point, what I said about the New York Times being no friend of Palin's just might be starting to be out of date. Janet Maslin's carpet-bombing review of McGinnis' book is at least the third NYT item that treats her, if not with support, then at least with enough respect to trash the typical left "dumb bimbo" narrative. First one reporter described, with what can only be called rueful admiration,
her ability to trash the media and still drag them after her like barbarians in chains after some Roman general; and then a columnist took a look at her Indianola speech and found that it was full of sagacious and attractive political ideas, ideas that could, in his view, attract many people beyond the Republican and Tea Party boundaries. And now its prestigious and important book section trashes a book that tried to trash her. This may not be a shift in allegiances, but it certainly sounds like the beginnings of a change of view.
Commentators and bloggers always risk sounding self-important; the very act of speaking your mind implies that your mind is something worth being heard. So I hope I don't sound self-obsessed if I say that her Indianola speech struck me as agreeing with the views I set out years ago in my "A plague on both your houses" series. That may not be quite clear because Palin, who is no historian or sociologist, thinks not in terms of classes but of individuals; but take that into consideration and you will see that what she calls "crony capitalism" and "professional politicians" is no different from what I describe as "the new aristocracy" and "the director class". These are concerns which have been spreading across America, and not only across America, in recent years, and Palin articulates them both more boldly and more clearly than any politician so far - if, indeed, anyone has. To her credit, she also seems to have wholly ignored Angelo Codevilla's clever but tendentious and partisan account of the same social development, in spite of the fact that it has been widely influential among her Tea Party supporters and that it is intended to turn the perception of the rise of a New Aristocracy into a Republican party political fighting tool. No, the way Palin formulates the issue is entirely her own; she has clearly thought about it, and is not parrotting anyone the way Codevilla is often heard parrotted in conservative circles; and again to her credit, she is as willing to see the evil among her own party as among the Democrats.
Having said that, I remain uneasy about her. First and foremost, anyone who accepted a post with Rupert Murdoch - let alone a graduate in journalism! - ought to know that she was making a pact with the Devil. If her enemies had any brains, that is what they would throw at her, not anonymous rumours of affairs. If there is one instance of crony capitalism, corrupt interest-selling, the stifling of competition, the oppression of the small guy, and every possible corporate evil, Murdoch is it. Sarah Palin has been in politics all her adult life. I cannot believe that she was unaware of what the Murdoch empire is or of how it does things - intimidation, blackmail, "monstering", complicity. Second, there is the fact that, far from being the Christian fanatic depicted by some particularly ignorant bloggers, I see Palin's commitment to life and social conservatism as iffy at best. The Indianola speech did not contain one allusion to such things, and among her supporters there are a lot of obvious libertarians and "conservative gays". Since I have no interest whatever in libertarianism, right-wing anarchism, "fiscal conservatism" and allied superstitions, this means that I see no particular reason to support her. As I argued that the Tea Party is not only a Murdoch creation, but meant to suck the life out of the growing anti-abortion movement and redirect it into Murdoch-approved anti-tax channels, I really worry about the Tea Party placing a Murdoch employee in the Republican presidential candidacy. And the Murdoch connection is only one of a number of really strange ties. What on Earth was she doing, earlier on in the year, meeting with Donald Trump when Trump's farcical candidacy was still on? EDITED IN: What on Earth was she doing supporting Carly Fiorina - not only an incompetent CEO who ran HP into the ground and was deservedly forced from her post, not only a hard-line liberal who never saw an abortion she didn't like, but the person who, as (equally incomprehensibly) part of the McCain campaign, was the first and the nastiest in attacking Palin herself? Likewise, why support Ron Paul's loyally extreme son Rand? And a friend is a friend, but is it really sensible to cultivate Greta van Susteren, a woman involved with Scientology? If Palin's enemies had any sense, they would be asking questions like these.
But that she will run, I have no doubt. She is playing this like the England soccer team in the 1930s. At the time, the English were still the masters of football, to the extent that they did not bother to take part in the newly-created World Cup. Instead, they would wait for the end, then invite the winner to play and beat them. That is what Mrs.Palin is intending to do to whoever comes out on top in the current round of debates and candidacies.
Indeed, at this point, what I said about the New York Times being no friend of Palin's just might be starting to be out of date. Janet Maslin's carpet-bombing review of McGinnis' book is at least the third NYT item that treats her, if not with support, then at least with enough respect to trash the typical left "dumb bimbo" narrative. First one reporter described, with what can only be called rueful admiration,
her ability to trash the media and still drag them after her like barbarians in chains after some Roman general; and then a columnist took a look at her Indianola speech and found that it was full of sagacious and attractive political ideas, ideas that could, in his view, attract many people beyond the Republican and Tea Party boundaries. And now its prestigious and important book section trashes a book that tried to trash her. This may not be a shift in allegiances, but it certainly sounds like the beginnings of a change of view.
Commentators and bloggers always risk sounding self-important; the very act of speaking your mind implies that your mind is something worth being heard. So I hope I don't sound self-obsessed if I say that her Indianola speech struck me as agreeing with the views I set out years ago in my "A plague on both your houses" series. That may not be quite clear because Palin, who is no historian or sociologist, thinks not in terms of classes but of individuals; but take that into consideration and you will see that what she calls "crony capitalism" and "professional politicians" is no different from what I describe as "the new aristocracy" and "the director class". These are concerns which have been spreading across America, and not only across America, in recent years, and Palin articulates them both more boldly and more clearly than any politician so far - if, indeed, anyone has. To her credit, she also seems to have wholly ignored Angelo Codevilla's clever but tendentious and partisan account of the same social development, in spite of the fact that it has been widely influential among her Tea Party supporters and that it is intended to turn the perception of the rise of a New Aristocracy into a Republican party political fighting tool. No, the way Palin formulates the issue is entirely her own; she has clearly thought about it, and is not parrotting anyone the way Codevilla is often heard parrotted in conservative circles; and again to her credit, she is as willing to see the evil among her own party as among the Democrats.
Having said that, I remain uneasy about her. First and foremost, anyone who accepted a post with Rupert Murdoch - let alone a graduate in journalism! - ought to know that she was making a pact with the Devil. If her enemies had any brains, that is what they would throw at her, not anonymous rumours of affairs. If there is one instance of crony capitalism, corrupt interest-selling, the stifling of competition, the oppression of the small guy, and every possible corporate evil, Murdoch is it. Sarah Palin has been in politics all her adult life. I cannot believe that she was unaware of what the Murdoch empire is or of how it does things - intimidation, blackmail, "monstering", complicity. Second, there is the fact that, far from being the Christian fanatic depicted by some particularly ignorant bloggers, I see Palin's commitment to life and social conservatism as iffy at best. The Indianola speech did not contain one allusion to such things, and among her supporters there are a lot of obvious libertarians and "conservative gays". Since I have no interest whatever in libertarianism, right-wing anarchism, "fiscal conservatism" and allied superstitions, this means that I see no particular reason to support her. As I argued that the Tea Party is not only a Murdoch creation, but meant to suck the life out of the growing anti-abortion movement and redirect it into Murdoch-approved anti-tax channels, I really worry about the Tea Party placing a Murdoch employee in the Republican presidential candidacy. And the Murdoch connection is only one of a number of really strange ties. What on Earth was she doing, earlier on in the year, meeting with Donald Trump when Trump's farcical candidacy was still on? EDITED IN: What on Earth was she doing supporting Carly Fiorina - not only an incompetent CEO who ran HP into the ground and was deservedly forced from her post, not only a hard-line liberal who never saw an abortion she didn't like, but the person who, as (equally incomprehensibly) part of the McCain campaign, was the first and the nastiest in attacking Palin herself? Likewise, why support Ron Paul's loyally extreme son Rand? And a friend is a friend, but is it really sensible to cultivate Greta van Susteren, a woman involved with Scientology? If Palin's enemies had any sense, they would be asking questions like these.
But that she will run, I have no doubt. She is playing this like the England soccer team in the 1930s. At the time, the English were still the masters of football, to the extent that they did not bother to take part in the newly-created World Cup. Instead, they would wait for the end, then invite the winner to play and beat them. That is what Mrs.Palin is intending to do to whoever comes out on top in the current round of debates and candidacies.