Catching Palin fever
Okay, not really, but I was procrastinating tonight and decided to listen to her speech (which was an interesting experience in and of itself due to no TV and a sketchy internet connection). I thought she came across well, and for Democrats there will be a danger of overreaching in expecting her selection to be a big mistake. Yes, there are things about her bio that will not play well with large swaths of the population, but I'm not sure how many people care that their Vice President might want to ban books in the public library, scary as that might be. People may certainly see her as unvetted and untested, and a couple of gaffes plus the trail of some extremist views might help people to reach that conclusion. But tonight she came across as a competant politician who could use her own image favorably to help the McCain campaign.
Her line of attack on Obama was interesting to me, in that it started from the "he's just a celebrity" line of attacks and brought back in the critique of Obama's "clinging to God and guns" remark. I thought at the time that that was one of Obama's more damaging mistakes, and now I think it is perhaps the most damaging.
Here was Palin's line of attack:
A writer observed: 'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.' I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.
I grew up with those people.
They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.
They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town....
We don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
I think Palin's image allows the GOP to dredge this up and use it, and (other things aside) it could be somewhat effective. Palin reminded me of my mother's cousin*, also a very conservative small-town woman who has become something of an anchor in her community. I think the GOP uses Palin to paint Obama as out of touch, not just a celebrity but elitist, and tries to turn critiques of her to her advantage not by "crying sexism" in some abstract and easily waved-off way, but by pointing out that women who are feminine in certain ways and identified as mothers and small-town people get taken lightly, at their peril. It would be a very modern attack, straight out of the pages of What's the Matter with Kansas but with a gendered twist.
Of course more stuff could come out about Palin, or she could say some off-the-wall things out of inexperience and lack of training, and this selection could prove as much of a mistake as many Democrats are crowing that it is, but right now, I can at least imagine how the Republicans could make it work.
One final interesting note on the culture wars front: I noticed that in her prepared remarks as released by the Denver Post, the word "nuclear" was replaced with the "new-clear" - twice**: "Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants" and "Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay." I assume that some Republican operative emailed this to the Post, and that they spelled it that way for Palin so that she wouldn't say it the way Bush used to say it, that is, "nookyehler."
Incidentally, as someone who grew up in Kansas, with family roots in rural Kansas, I say it that way too. Rural people and people with rural roots all over the country say it that way, and for people on the Left to poke fun at that is one of the dumbest things they / we could ever do. It's like asking someone to throw a box full of copies of What's the Matter with Kansas off a balcony onto your head.
But evidently the Republicans were sensitive to the notion that Palin might be perceived as ignorant, I suppose by some educated, suburban swing voters, or just that Democrats might make hay out of this issue if it were pronounced that way (regionally, not a mispronounciation, I'll re-emphasize). Interestingly, the word was spelled correctly in the text of Giuliani's remarks as released by the same Denver Post.
(For the record, I'm approaching these kinds of issues largely out of sociological curiosity rather than a strong sense of partisanship in terms of the two major parties. Of course I do want the Left to do something other than self-immolate, so I suppose those are the real stakes for me. Also for the record, I have a fair number of critiques of What's the Matter with Kansas - prescriptively especially, but also analytically - but it is well-written and provides some insight into certain dynamics that continue to play themselves out in this race.)
* I guess this makes her my first cousin, once removed. I have never understood that terminology but finally looked it up. See the things that you can learn through blogging and procrastination?
** I'm kicking myself that Cannon Fodder has a very limited readership, such that I will not be recognized as the first blogger to have noticed this. I think this might be worth a minor dustup of a few posts around the blogosphere for two or three days, but if this happens it won't have come from me. I might have even been satisfied with that for my 15 minutes of fame.... Or not.
Update on this: so it looks like the New Republic noticed this too. Darn. I can't even claim 15 minutes of fame on my own little itsy bitsy corner of the blogosphere.
Her line of attack on Obama was interesting to me, in that it started from the "he's just a celebrity" line of attacks and brought back in the critique of Obama's "clinging to God and guns" remark. I thought at the time that that was one of Obama's more damaging mistakes, and now I think it is perhaps the most damaging.
Here was Palin's line of attack:
A writer observed: 'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.' I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.
I grew up with those people.
They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.
They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town....
We don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
I think Palin's image allows the GOP to dredge this up and use it, and (other things aside) it could be somewhat effective. Palin reminded me of my mother's cousin*, also a very conservative small-town woman who has become something of an anchor in her community. I think the GOP uses Palin to paint Obama as out of touch, not just a celebrity but elitist, and tries to turn critiques of her to her advantage not by "crying sexism" in some abstract and easily waved-off way, but by pointing out that women who are feminine in certain ways and identified as mothers and small-town people get taken lightly, at their peril. It would be a very modern attack, straight out of the pages of What's the Matter with Kansas but with a gendered twist.
Of course more stuff could come out about Palin, or she could say some off-the-wall things out of inexperience and lack of training, and this selection could prove as much of a mistake as many Democrats are crowing that it is, but right now, I can at least imagine how the Republicans could make it work.
One final interesting note on the culture wars front: I noticed that in her prepared remarks as released by the Denver Post, the word "nuclear" was replaced with the "new-clear" - twice**: "Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants" and "Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay." I assume that some Republican operative emailed this to the Post, and that they spelled it that way for Palin so that she wouldn't say it the way Bush used to say it, that is, "nookyehler."
Incidentally, as someone who grew up in Kansas, with family roots in rural Kansas, I say it that way too. Rural people and people with rural roots all over the country say it that way, and for people on the Left to poke fun at that is one of the dumbest things they / we could ever do. It's like asking someone to throw a box full of copies of What's the Matter with Kansas off a balcony onto your head.
But evidently the Republicans were sensitive to the notion that Palin might be perceived as ignorant, I suppose by some educated, suburban swing voters, or just that Democrats might make hay out of this issue if it were pronounced that way (regionally, not a mispronounciation, I'll re-emphasize). Interestingly, the word was spelled correctly in the text of Giuliani's remarks as released by the same Denver Post.
(For the record, I'm approaching these kinds of issues largely out of sociological curiosity rather than a strong sense of partisanship in terms of the two major parties. Of course I do want the Left to do something other than self-immolate, so I suppose those are the real stakes for me. Also for the record, I have a fair number of critiques of What's the Matter with Kansas - prescriptively especially, but also analytically - but it is well-written and provides some insight into certain dynamics that continue to play themselves out in this race.)
* I guess this makes her my first cousin, once removed. I have never understood that terminology but finally looked it up. See the things that you can learn through blogging and procrastination?
** I'm kicking myself that Cannon Fodder has a very limited readership, such that I will not be recognized as the first blogger to have noticed this. I think this might be worth a minor dustup of a few posts around the blogosphere for two or three days, but if this happens it won't have come from me. I might have even been satisfied with that for my 15 minutes of fame.... Or not.
Update on this: so it looks like the New Republic noticed this too. Darn. I can't even claim 15 minutes of fame on my own little itsy bitsy corner of the blogosphere.