Sunday, July 05, 2009
The Emperor Has No Clothes
from The Anonymous Liberal


One of the more fascinating sociological phenomenon is the tendency
people have, in certain situations, to ignore what their own senses are
telling them and instead buy into an elaborate fiction just because
other people appear to be doing the same thing. The classic illustration
of this phenomenon is Hans Christian Andersen's story The Emperor's New
Clothes -- where a couple of con men convince the Emperor that they've
made him a new suit out of the finest cloth there is, but that only
smart people can see it. Not wanting to look dumb, the Emperor and his
ministers rave about how beautiful the suit is and organize a procession
through town. The villagers, not wanting to admit they don't understand
what's going on, also rave about the Emperor's beautiful new suit as he
marches naked through the town. It's not until a child points out the
obvious -- that the Emperor has no clothes -- that the entire fiction
crumbles.

Sarah Palin's manic, rambling, completely incoherent resignation speech
the other day was just the latest of her many naked processions through
town. Yet for reasons I can't begin to fathom, a large number of people,
in both Republican circles and the mainstream media, continue to insist
that she's wearing a beautiful new suit. For instance, Mark Halperin of
TIME insists-- despite all evidence and common sense to the contrary --
that by quitting her only significant governmental job before serving
out her first term, and doing so in a complete train wreck of a speech,
Palin actually strengthened her 2012 prospects. And though many on the
right are belatedly acknowledging that the Emperor has no clothes, many
others continue to insist that Palin is a viable presidential candidate
and that her decision to step down may have been a "shrewd" one.

As Josh Marshall so perfectly put it earlier today:

[A]ny pundit who thinks this is some risky but potentially
brilliant strategic move is absolutely smoking crack. Hitting the crack
pipe, or, just as likely, being witlessly contrarian to set themselves
apart from the common herd of sane people.

Though I'm sympathetic to the crack-smoking theory, it's probably the
second sentence that most accurately describes why people like Halperin
say the things they say, and have been doing so since last fall. Sarah
Palin has gone out of her way over the last year to display for everyone
who is willing to acknowledge what their senses are telling them just
how totally and completely unsuited she is to hold high office. She is a
complete mediocrity, quite possibly the most superficial, ignorant, joke
of a politician ever to have achieved such political prominence.

It is nothing short of astonishing what Palin has been able to get away
with while still being taken seriously. During the presidential
campaign, she was kept completely away from the media for nearly a month
after being selected--something that is completely unprecedented. When
she was finally permitted to be interviewed, she flamed out in
spectacular fashion, displaying a profound lack of policy knowledge and
a near total inability to express her thoughts coherently or logically.
Her stump speech was riddled with easily falsifiable claims about her
record, claims that she continued to repeat even after they had been
repeatedly and exhaustively debunked. She never held a press conference
or appeared on any of the Sunday news shows. Toward the end of the
campaign, polls were conclusively showing that she was a drag on the
ticket and her own staff was trashing her in the media. Rather than send
her to contested states, the McCain campaign began shipping her off to
reliably red states, a clear acknowledgment that she was doing more harm
than good in the states that mattered.

Yet despite all of this, many within the media continued to treat Palin
as if she was a serious presidential candidate in her own right. They
continued to pretend that the Emperor's new suit was, if not
spectacular, at least well-tailored.

But this past weekend, even those who continued to buy into this
delusion should have been jolted back to reality. Palin announced that
she is resigning as Governor of Alaska, just over halfway through her
first term. In a hastily thrown together press conference, she gave one
of the craziest speeches I've ever seen. It was manic from start to
finish, a totally unintelligible hodge-podge of random and often
contradictory quotes and metaphors that left you wondering whether she
had completely lost her mind and provided no insight at all into why she
was actually resigning from office, leaving even her defenders not
knowing what to say.

The Emperor has no clothes, people. It's well past time to put an end to
this delusion. Sarah Palin is transparently, manifestly unqualified to
be in any position of power and this is obvious to anyone who cares to look.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat weighs in on Palin and, thankfully, points out the
obvious: that it is "delusional" to believe that Palin's decision to
resign the governship will help her presidential chances and that her
"bizarre, rambling resignation speech should take her off the political
map for the duration of the Obama era."

Ross devotes the second half of his column, however, to spinning the
tired narrative of Palin as victim of the cruel misogynist liberal
media. Though Ross doesn't seem to realize it, this meme is just as
delusional. Does Ross really believe that the media would have been
kinder to a male liberal politician who performed as disastrously as
Palin did during the presidential campaign? Imagine Obama had picked Tim
Kaine as his runningmate and Kaine then hid from the press for most of
the campaign, lied repeatedly about his record in every speech, and gave
interviews like the ones Palin gave to Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.
Let's further suppose that this hypothetical Kaine became embroiled in a
number of scandals, became an obvious drag on an ultimately losing
ticket, and that his own staffers began viciously attacking him in the
media before the campaign was even over. Would anyone be indulging in
the fantasy that this hypothetical governor was a viable presidential
candidate? Would anyone be claiming that he was a victim of the media?
Of course not. Indeed, I'm virtually certain that the press treatment
this hypothetical Democratic governor would have endured would have been
far more brutal than anything Sarah Palin has endured. The truth is, the
media has been far kinder to Sarah Palin than she deserves. They've
continued to take her seriously long after she gave them any reason to.
They've been delicate in pointing out her obvious inadequacies as a
politician and gentle in rebutting her repeated bold-faced lies. They've
continued to indulge in the delusion that Palin is a serious national
candidate long after there was any reason to believe that was true.

This last line from Ross's column also bothers me:

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested,
however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can
grow up to be president might actually be true.

This is a ridiculous statement. If you want evidence that anyone can
grow up to be president, how about looking at the current President.
It's hard to imagine a more unlikely future president than the biracial
son of a teenage mother in Hawaii who was given the name of his absentee
Muslim father. But Obama did well in school, worked hard, impressed
everyone he met with his intellect and managed to put himself in a
position to become president.

Palin stands for a very different proposition, that if you have the
right backers, anyone, no matter how unqualified or unsuited for the
job, can potentially become president. That's scary. While I very much
want to believe that a smart kid who works hard and plays her cards
right can become president someday, no matter where she comes from, I
don't want to believe that any random schmuck can become president. The
president shouldn't be an average person. The president should be
someone who is most decidedly above average in most respects. Pedigree
doesn't matter to me, but capability does. And it should to all Americans.