Lu Powell wrote:

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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...



Not all of them. WAFA is just WAY out of control.