Sarah Palin
A few people are commenting on a good line by Marc Ambinder about Sarah Palin:
For Sarah Palin to come back from somewhere, she needs to set a goal. To start with, she might immerse herself in a single issue for a few years, become an expert, and then use it to launch a broader conversation about what America ought to look like. Her policy statements to date have been, and don't believe me, just ask any smart Republican you know, treacly at best. If Palin gets smarter and more serious, if she embraces reality, then she can probably change the perception that many Americans have of her. Palin can be formidable and a real player in American politics, if she wants to. But she has so far expressed no doubt that her 2008 persona is the right persona for the future. No self-doubt. No awareness of her own humanity and imperfections.
Needless to say, Sarah Palin's core competency is not competency. She's barely capable as a conservative boilerplate mad-lib talking point machine but she really shines when she starts complaining about all the persecution she's endured. And unfortunately this makes her the ideal Republican candidate for politics today.
Republicans are still wrestling with the dissonance between what they believe and where those beliefs led them from 2000 to 2008. I was hoping that they'd turn that failure into a retooling of their platform, message, and constituency but they seem to be relieving that dissonance with persecution conspiracies from serious stuff like Acorn stealing the election and socialist death panels to simple stuff like where stuff gets written on coins to all the crazy tea party stuff. I think there are more productive ways to go, but if that's the direction the Republican party seems to be going Sarah Palin is the perfect leader to take them there.
For Sarah Palin to come back from somewhere, she needs to set a goal. To start with, she might immerse herself in a single issue for a few years, become an expert, and then use it to launch a broader conversation about what America ought to look like. Her policy statements to date have been, and don't believe me, just ask any smart Republican you know, treacly at best. If Palin gets smarter and more serious, if she embraces reality, then she can probably change the perception that many Americans have of her. Palin can be formidable and a real player in American politics, if she wants to. But she has so far expressed no doubt that her 2008 persona is the right persona for the future. No self-doubt. No awareness of her own humanity and imperfections.
Needless to say, Sarah Palin's core competency is not competency. She's barely capable as a conservative boilerplate mad-lib talking point machine but she really shines when she starts complaining about all the persecution she's endured. And unfortunately this makes her the ideal Republican candidate for politics today.
Republicans are still wrestling with the dissonance between what they believe and where those beliefs led them from 2000 to 2008. I was hoping that they'd turn that failure into a retooling of their platform, message, and constituency but they seem to be relieving that dissonance with persecution conspiracies from serious stuff like Acorn stealing the election and socialist death panels to simple stuff like where stuff gets written on coins to all the crazy tea party stuff. I think there are more productive ways to go, but if that's the direction the Republican party seems to be going Sarah Palin is the perfect leader to take them there.