Hurricane Sarah

Andrew Sullivan concludes his live-blogging of Sarah Palin's speech with an exasperated sigh: "Reality television has become our politics." Perhaps. More likely, politics has been a reality TV show since before John Logie Baird invented the damn goggle box. Because, yes, you choose the candidate you like best or the one that has impressed you most after a long, painfully drawn out period of interrogation, speculation and hype. Just like on American Idol. That is the way it works. Talent matters, but it's not enough without personality, authenticity, charm, something else...

Of course Andrew's so committed to Obama that it's unlikely Palin could have done anything to convince him she's not painfully out of her depth. There's lots to like about Obama, but let's not pretend that he'd be favourite to win this election - or have Andrew's backing - if he were a first term Irish-American Senator called Barry O'Bama.

This race has been framed in terms of personality and biography from the beginning. Sure, Obama's opposition to the war was vital to him gaining traction and yes he has tremendous political gifts, but, really, the Democratic primary was a Reality TV-style beauty contest and November's election will be as well. That's why people are tuning in.

Policies matter, but they matter much more once you're in office than they do on the campaign trail. That's a place where plausibility is more important than policy. And by that standard, Sarah Palin passed her test with flying colours tonight. Sure, the sceptics say, but all she had to do was read a speech someone else had written? How hard can that be? Well, as John McCain will show us on Thursday, harder than you might think. And if Palin had blown-up tonight, these same sceptics would have seized on that too: see, she's not ready for prime time they'd have said.

As always in this election season - primary and general - the test of your criticism is whether you would accept them as fair if they were applied to your own side. This is a test some folk have been failing in dramatic style.

And Sarah Palin answered the plausibility question tonight. Yes, large parts of her speech (ie, on foreign policy - is Venezuela really going to launch an oil war?) made little sense. But this is true of almost all campaign speeches. Obama's pledge last week to cut taxes and finance massive increases in spending by closing tax "loopholes" didn't make much sense either. And yes, she seems to have lied about the Bridge to Nowhere (anyone know where I can find one of these cool t-shirts?) and doubtless much of what she said about her performance as governor could legitimately be interpreted rather differently.

It still seems a stretch that the incumbent party - the party that controls the White House, the Senate and the house of Representatives - could actually run on a platform of reform. But strange things can happen. That's the strategy Nicolas Sarkozy used in France. Granted, Obama is a much more accomplished opponent than Segolene Royale. But...

I suppose Palin had to talk about some policy tonight, but too much of it sounded as though it had been written for her. Consequently she seemed to be stressing her credentials a little too earnestly.

The best bits of the speech  -and the parts that showed how she might be able to reach out beyond the evangelical base  - came when she stressed her small town credentials. Ezra Klein, who has the best liberal response I've seen, is right to say that even here there were missed opportunities: she should have talked more, not less about the lessons she had learnt about the government that matters most to people (and the limitations of government) and about how she would take those lessons with her to Washington.

Still, presumably this can be developed in due course. This was, to my mind, the most important part of the speech:

I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and 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. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA.

I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.

So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education even better. And when I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too.

This is where she must make her stand. Other people can do the foreign policy stuff and the big picture theorising the punditocracy loves and uses to measure a candidate's worth. Her Unique Selling Point is her ordinaryness. Ordinaryness laced with sass and confidence for sure, but the ordinary values and interests of small town America nonetheless. She is the first Vice-Presidential nominee in more than 30 years who's not served in - or, if you prefer, been corrupted by - Washington. That should be a strength, not a weakness. (The hockey mom line was ad-libbed incidentally. It's not in the prepared script.)

It's precisely because she was sitting on the PTA a handful of years ago that she can talk to "ordinary" voters in terms they can understand. It's precisely because she's not rich that she can claim, with more plausibility than, say, a Hillary Clinton, that she gets it. She gets it because, you know, her sister Heather runs a gas station and Sarah Palin knows the pressures ordinary folks are struggling with, understands their concerns about the costs of health care or college tuition and all the other things that matter most to people. It's not the quantity of experience that matters but the quality.

Now, yes, you may say that the Republicans are singularly ill-equipped to solve, or rather ameliorate, these problems, but that's a different matter. And, yes, she will need to graft detail onto empathy but I suspect she's a quick study. She better be, anyway. But she's a candidate McCain can send to Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan. She can go to the Cincinnati suburbs or Macomb County and speak to voters in these places with an immediate and uncontrived authenticity that no other candidate, not even Joe Biden, can quite hope to equal. Time will tell what impact that will have. With more detail, she could offer a kind of Sam's Club Republicanism.

Much of the talk about Palin focused on whether she could appeal to women who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary? Well, I don't know about that. Her position on abortion is extreme (though no more extreme than that of a politician who opposes any restriction on abortion. Somehow, I doubt New York Times would consider this latter position extreme would it?) and most Hillary supporters are pro-choice. But it's easy to see her appealing to women who are more ambivalent about abortion. I doubt she can persuade many single college-educated women to take a second look at McCain, but women with children? That might be a different matter. She has a chance anyway.

But there's another constituency she can make a play for: pissed-off men. The kind of men who, as John Judis notes, voted for Ross Perot. (David Kusnet has more on this. Plus, William Jennings Bryan!)  These are the hunting and fishing types who are drawn to attitude and folksy charm. Reagan Democrats in other words. As one such friend of mine put it this evening, "She is awesome and I love her.  She is a pitbull and she can deliver red meat and solid punches without coming off cross or mean. A star is born." Yes, yes: small sample size and all that. Nonetheless, her potential appeal to these voters ought not to be discounted.

And for all that the public has soured on Iraq, the appeal of a ticket promising that "victory" (with honour!) is in sight should not be discounted, especially when that promise is couple with a reminder that the other guy who never talks about victory at all. True, this would have worked better in 2004 than 2008, but it may still help. It probably is true that the GOP can only win if they can "out-America" Obama. Palin gives them their best chance of doing that.

At the very least it is clear that Palin has energised the GOP base. That in itself is no small feat. She really has changed the game. McCain was doomed if he could only count on grudging support from the base (and in fact I still think Obama's ground-game is likely to be better than the GOP's) but Palin has brought an enthusiasm and a freshness to the ticket that can only help. It may still, of course, be too little, too late.

In the end, I rather agree with Nick Gillespie's line:

I've got to admit that, as someone who doesn't care for Dem-Rep politics, I like Palin as a character. She's on a totally different script than any of us are used to; she's white trash in the same way Angelina Jolie is (and no wonder she scares the hell out of so many people). I want to think there's some latent libertarianism in her shtick...

Like him I doubt there really is much libertarianism there, but one lives in hope. It wouldn't take much for her to be the most libertarian-friendly of them all. 

For sure, there wasn't much reason given to vote for John McCain other than his military record. That's not enough. But as plenty of folk have suggested, if you're restarting the culture wars mabe you don't need much more than that? Except of course, Nixon did have policies...

I'm not sure, in any case, that those old tunes necessarily have the appeal they once did. They may have been played on the jukebox once too often. But it is the case, I think, that this offers the GOP their best chance at shoring up their vote (complete with impact on down ticket races).

My immediate reaction to her selection was that she was a reckless, perhaps even frivolous pick. Reckless, yes, if McCain dies in office. Frivolous? Not any more. This is a deadly serious selection that, though it's still an outside bet, could change the dynamics of the campaign in ways no Veep has done in recent political history. 

Also: barring a meltdown on the campaign trail (entirely possible) then win or lose she is going to be a candidate in four years time. You better get used to Sarah Palin folks, 'cos she could be here for quite a while.

ps: One other thing: McCain-Palin's total repudiation of Bush-Cheney. Neither man was mentioned once tonight. Makes sense, of course, not least if you are running on a "Reform" platform, but it was also a repudiation, rhetorically at least, of the corporate-conservative complex...

Comments

[ben]

"let's not pretend that he'd be favourite to win this election - or have Andrew's backing - if he were a first term Irish-American Senator called Barry O'Bama"

"Sports Illustrated" said something very similar on the occasion of Jackie Robinson's Major League debut, and to see the Ferraro Sneer on The Debatable Land comes as a shock.

The man who would have been Senator Barry O'Bama in your parallel universe got done for some sort of plutocratic sex crime in a seaplane near Cape Cod in this one. In this reality, the dynamic and idealistic short-term Senator who galvanized the world is black.

[ndm]

I wonder if Sarah Palin knows how to spell Afghanistan- because she didn't mention the place once in her speech tonight. Rumour has it that the US went to war in Afghanistan to find the people who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. But, I guess, neither the Republican party nor Sarah Palin really care about 9/11.

[toby]

Re: Barry O'Bama

Oddly enough, Obama's campaign has just set up a committee of the usual suspects (Teddy Kennedy, George Mitchell, Chris Dodd...) to help get out the Irish-American vote (Irish Times, 3rd Sept).

Obama has committed (as Bush did, and McCain also) to appoint a Special Representative on Northern Ireland, usually a White House functionary who has other duties also. Small potatoes maybe, but Bush's rep. did have a role in the St. Andrews Agreement.

There was concern expressed by Niall O'Dowd of the Irish News some weeks ago that Obama was not doing enough to bring out the Irish vote. For axample, Hilary had a big fundraiser in Dublin last Feb. (I think) which she and Bill attended.

[toby]

Palin should pray McCain loses because as VP or even as President (should McCain pop his clogs), she will have to work with a majority Democratic Senate and Congress. A Senate, incidentally, with a defiant Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton just dying to wreak their own kind of vengance.

There won't be much scope for her brand of "reform" then.

Better for her to build her profile and organization, accept defeat gracefully and get ready for a full tilt at the Presidency in 2012 against what (she hopes) might be a chaotic and failed Dem administration.

[ohioarn]

The weird thing about Palin is she can speak to the woman's club in the Cincinnati suburbs, but she ALSO CAN give a better speech than ol' McCain.
I think Americans are eager for some freshness in national politics specifically b/c we aren't by nature cynical.

"One other thing: McCain-Palin's total repudiation of Bush-Cheney."

What Obama and Biden have to bring home is that this is just smoke and mirrors. To hear Rudy Giuliani talk, you would think liberals have been running the Government for the last 8 years. Its been the most right-wing administration ever.

So where is a right-winger like Sarah Palin likely to bring it? And where are McCain's reform credentials then?

[RW Rogers]

Thank you for the thought-provoking essay, Alex. Outstanding.

[Ron]

the one that has impressed you most after a long, painfully drawn out period of interrogation

Exactly...and Obama's had that for the last two years, against the venerable Clinton machine AND in the last 6 months or so against the GOP...and he's hovering around 50% in the polls...
Palin has had...3 days. Please, call me when we reach the 'painfully drawn out interrogation' of Gov. Palin.

[Doug]

McCain-Palin's total repudiation of Bush-Cheney. Neither man was mentioned once tonight.

If simply not mentioning someone equals "repudiation," then by that standard I've already repudiated Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Brett Favre, Miley Cyrus, and Jesus Christ today. And it's barely even lunch.

McCain and Palin can act like Bush and Cheney simply don't exist anymore, but until they come up with a single policy proposal that deviates even an iota from the current administration's, they're going to have problems with that.