"HK" wrote in message
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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.




First a disclaimer: I don't believe Gov. Palin is a viable candidate for
national office.

It is amazing to me how much energy the leftist pundits, politicians, and
would-be intellectuals spend on destroying a simple person from Alaska,
whose political future seems dim.

What are they afraid of? Do they fear that there are a lot more Palins in
the populace than there are Maureen Dowds?

The loony left is in control in Washington, for now. Why keep harping on a
flash in the pan vice presidential candidate that lost?

Maybe conservatives should belatedly begin now trashing every liberal
presidential candidate that lost in the primaries of 2008. Would that
accomplish any good for our country?

Inquiring minds want to know...