by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n They Say\/We Say<\/strong><\/p>\n The debate over Palin is sort of ossified.<\/p>\n The Left continues to ridicule her accent, family, and middling roots. The Right enjoys such authenticity \u2014 but enjoys even more the hysteria it incurs in liberals.<\/p>\n Will It Be Politics or Money?<\/strong><\/p>\n But lost in all of this is whether she is up to national politics, or simply wishes to capitalize (an Oprah-like talk show?) on her sizable financial potential. On the one hand, Palin is obviously bright. Few could raise a family without capital in Wasilla, and within a decade end up as Governor of a large state \u2014 whose protocols hinged on an old-boy network where politicians accommodated oil and mineral interests.<\/p>\n On the other hand, a mother of five, knee-deep in local politics, without money and leisure, is not going to be reading Gibbon for perspective, or spending the afternoon perusing Foreign Affairs. Nor is she going to remember a quip that her Prof at the Kennedy school once offered years ago. Nor is she going to recall clever repartee at a Georgetown dinner party from one grandee to another.<\/p>\n She has natural gifts \u2014 stamina, earthy grit, sensitivity to what most Americans go through raising a family on a limited budget, practicality from working with her hands in a natural world. All that is no small beer. Look at Truman\u2019s various experiences in Missouri.<\/p>\n No Way 2012 \u2014 Maybe 2016, 2020?<\/strong><\/p>\n But if, a big if, she decides to become a national political figure, Palin should use these next few years (in addition to making some money to support her family) to travel and read widely in the manner that a Reagan did in his wilderness period. She has natural intelligence and is curious. I think most would like to see her do another Couric interview five years from now after she had time to size up DC insiders, meet more politicians, lecture in front of hostile audiences \u2014 and just read and reflect. At fifty-five she could become a formidable candidate, given her natural charisma and authentic middle-class persona.<\/p>\n They All Resign \u2014 One Way or Another<\/strong><\/p>\n As far as her resignation, it will be forgotten in two years. Politicians like William Weld, Bob Dole, Fred Thompson, and Bill Bradley have done it (to no real advantage). John McCain and Barack Obama essentially resigned from the Senate by campaigning nonstop for two years (but while getting paid). In Obama\u2019s case, it is hard to believe whether he was ever really working as a Senator, but instead almost began prepping for the Presidency (after swearing that he would not) as soon as he was elected.<\/p>\n So Why the Hatred?<\/strong><\/p>\n A Huffington Post satirist offers jokes about her son Trig\u2019s disability, and mental impairment in general.<\/p>\n David Letterman laughs at the notion of her 14-year-old daughter having sex in a dugout with a baseball player.<\/p>\n Andrew Sullivan offered up conspiracy theories about how her daughter, not Palin herself, \u201creally\u201d delivered Trig.<\/p>\n Maureen Dowd declares that \u201cCaribou Barbie is one nutty puppy,\u201d and laughs at the names of her children, some geese-honking in the background during her interview, even the Piper Cub tiny plane near the Palin house.<\/p>\n A\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em>\u00a0author swears that on his trip to Alaska, people came up to him and, quite independently of one another, proclaimed that Palin was a narcissist. According to Todd Purdum,\u00a0mirabile dictu<\/em>, many have consulted the ol\u2019 handy Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (which we all carry in our backpockets) and, presto, discovered that Palin has a \u201d pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy\u2019 \u2014 and thought it fit her perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n In short, if Palin is a \u201cnutty puppy,\u201d these Washington and New York insiders are a deranged pack of rabid dogs. Why, though, the venom?<\/p>\n Let us count the ways in which Palin enrages:<\/p>\n False Consciousness<\/strong><\/p>\n 1) The sophisticated elite \u201csees\u201d the real world behind the middle-American fa\u00e7ade \u2014 how the mob is led, fooled, mesmerized \u2014 exploited and manipulated through addiction to idiotic things like Wal-Mart, wall-to-wall carpeting, tract houses, Yukons, etc. Can\u2019t smart people see that Palin\u2019s naugahyde family is a reification of all this middle-class, mindless consumerism, without style, erudition, nuance and skepticism? How infuriating to sit here in New York and think that a winking tart could ever be elected, when seasoned sophisticates like Joe Biden and cosmopolitan metrosexuals like Barack Obama, who see it all, might not have been.<\/p>\n Powermen \u2014 Not Powerful Men<\/strong><\/p>\n 2) Twenty-first century power women do not marry men like Todd Palin. Looks, physicality, practicality, courage even \u2014 all these are nineteenth-century virtues that now mean nothing in a post-modern, post-industrial society. The fixer in finance, law, academia, politics, or the media \u2014 geek, nerd, wimp, who cares? \u2014 is the new Alpha male. He has three things that we are all supposed to crave \u2014 power, capital, and influence. If one were simply to draw up a list of the fiercest female critics of Palin and trace their own lineages, one would discover that they either are married to powerful insiders, dated powerful insiders, or are the daughters of powerful insiders. (some feminists these!) Who do this Wasilla PTA mom and her broken-arm, snow-mobiling wannabe think they are?<\/p>\n Too Many Rug Rats<\/strong><\/p>\n 3) Smart women do not get pregnant when it is inconvenient, especially when it interferes with one\u2019s\u00a0cursus honorum<\/em>. Palin foolishly had a baby as governor, and waddled around with it the entire time \u2014 with other snotty kids in tow (just like those trashy folk at the mall who pile out of the Tahoe, in the way just as you are parking your Volvo)! And worse, in the age of sonograms and abortion, she delivered a mentally-challenged child. And worse still, the mom of five encouraged her daughter to deliver an out-of-wedlock child. (Is it in Oklahoma or Arkansas where moms and daughters have children about the same time?) And which is worse, to have a kid at 17 or one after 40? And worse, worse yet, she does not support abortion! Here is Hell in Sarah Palin\u2019s world: I am up for a promotion at CNN, foolishly become pregnant at 42, and discover \u201cit\u201d has chromosomal \u201cissues.\u201d Am I supposed to deliver this thing? I don\u2019t think so (nor would my daughter, should she become pregnant by her boyfriend the summer before starting off at Vassar [all that SAT camp for nothing?]).<\/p>\n The Alaskan Clampetts<\/strong><\/p>\n 4) Taste, taste, taste. Sara gushes and talks like she works at Supercuts (cannot someone teach Sarah to drone through her nose?). She shops like she walked out of Wal-Mart. She winks, and gestures as if she\u2019s running a raffle stand at a PTA carnival and flirting with the local State Farm insurance agent. These Palins and their extended family, are, well, like the Clampetts who descend on Beverly Hills. (cf. \u201cTrig\u201d, \u201cPiper\u201d and \u201cBristol\u201d \u2014 the Alaskan equivalents of \u201cJethro Bodine\u201d, \u201cJed\u201d, and \u201cGranny\u201d). And if you are to have scandals in your trailer-park family, let them be elegant ones \u2014 cf. Ted Kennedy, Ted, Kennedy, Jr., Michael Kennedy, William Kennedy Smith, David Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and their assorted sins such as drug convictions, drug overdoses, serial sexual predations, loss of life, etc. \u2014 At least sin and quote Niebuhr, or discuss alleviation of the sin in Palm Beach or Hyannis Port.<\/p>\n Elly May, Not Jackie<\/strong><\/p>\n 5) There are looks and then there are looks. Brainless men without taste think Palin is \u201chot.\u201d And she is in a sort of unsophisticated Carny way. But looks are really defined by an Audrey Hepburn\/Jackie O understated grace, a slightly emaciated look with a grimace now and then. Or through race and gender prisms \u2014 a Michelle Obama or a model that is half-Asian, a quarter-Native American, three-quarters African-American. But a pink woman with curves that delivers kids about every two years? Come on! \u2014 in the old days, who would have preferred an Ann Margaret to a Candice Bergen? A Raquel Welch to a Mia Farrow? In our postmodern DC-NY nexus, women who are highly educated, with Ivy-League degrees, with some sort of exoticism \u2014 a French name, a trace of Indonesian ancestry, a first husband who was Nigerian \u2014 a good title such as Senior Editor at Knopf, or Executive Producer at CNN \u2014 are, by definition, sexy. And then along comes \u201cIt Came From Wasilla\u201d, who excited these Neanderthal males at NASCAR who know nothing of classical understated, real beauty, of real pillow talk.<\/p>\n In the End, What is Wisdom?<\/strong><\/p>\n 6) Euripides asked that in the Bacchae? So who is the better one to sit down across from Putin? What training is critical to size up a Chavez, or say \u2018no thanks, bud\u2019 to Iran?<\/p>\n Does it require brains to manage a family with five kids, live on a limited budget, get elected to local office, fish, hunt, go to sea, cook your own food, navigate in politics with no money, without an influential dad and powerbroker husband \u2014 or is real wisdom finishing prep school, doing B+ work at Yale, and writing a novel, column or short story? (A little of both, you say? That\u2019s why I started this piece off with my suggestion she take her new time to read and digest.)<\/p>\n In all seriousness at last, I\u2019ve found it was harder to calibrate an old spray rig (without getting Parquat [‘liquid death’ we used to call it] up your nose and Simazine down your pants), with a shot roller pump and worn nozzles. It took some skill to put one pound (and only one pound) of Parquat and Simazine per acre on a two-foot-wide vineyard berm, correcting for tractor speed, wind, leaks, pump idiosyncrasies, soil conditions \u2014 knowing that too much preemergent herbicide gives you sick vines, and too little, weeds \u2014 than it was to do an\u00a0apparatus criticus<\/em>\u00a0of 200 lines of the Greek text of Aeschylus\u2019sSuppliants<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 all things, of course, being considered.<\/p>\n Sorry for the \u2018either\/or\u2019 reductive binary: but I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke \u2014 and more of the latter whom I\u2019d trust not to bankrupt the country and let down our defenses than of the former.<\/p>\n While we rightly argue that the Sarahs of the world, if they are to be taken seriously as leaders, must read and study more, why do we not also suggest that the Baracks of the world could do a little more chain-sawing, run a coffee shop for a summer, or drive a Winnebago cross-country? (Who knows, he might meet a fellow woodcutter who knew there were 50 states or that it was dumb to make fun of the Special Olympics.)<\/p>\n After all, a lot of geniuses are now calling for a \u201csecond stimulus\u201d to borrow another trillion or so still, but I don\u2019t think they come from Wasilla.<\/p>\n So I am afraid right now, but not of Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media They Say\/We Say The debate over Palin is sort of ossified. The Left continues to ridicule her accent, family, and middling roots. The Right enjoys such authenticity \u2014 but enjoys even more the hysteria it incurs in liberals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[714],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-G3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3034,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-media-morality-tale\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":0},"title":"A Media Morality Tale","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The putative Caroline Kennedy candidacy for senator has had the odd effect of reopening the media can of worms treatment of Gov. Palin. Compared to Sarah Palin's almost immediate immersion into crowds and public speaking, Kennedy seems like a deer in the headlights before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3258,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/an-instructive-candidacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":1},"title":"An Instructive Candidacy","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What Sarah Palin taught us about ourselves. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Soon this depressing campaign will be over, and we can reflect on what we learned from our two-month introduction to Sarah Palin. Clearly, it is more than we would have ever wished to know about ourselves.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2008"","block_context":{"text":"October 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/october-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4082,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-war-against-palin-goes-on-and-on-and\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":2},"title":"The War Against Palin Goes On and On and . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media We Are Civil Now In emulation of Jonathan Chait\u2019s now infamous 2004\u00a0New Republic\u00a0essay, \u201cThe Case for Bush Hatred\u201d (\u201cI hate George Bush \u2014 there, I said it\u201d),\u00a0Slate\u00a0just published an op-ed, \u201cWhy I Loathe My Connecticut Senator\u201d by one Emily Bazelon, with a detailed description\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2661,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/davis-letterman-rev-wright-and-thoughts-on-a-creepy-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":3},"title":"David Letterman, Rev. Wright, and Thoughts on a Creepy Culture","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Demise of David Letterman I had a number of exchanges on the Palin-Letterman controversy (see below). Where to start on David Letterman\u2019s attack on Palin on her visit to New York to do charitable work, accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter Willow? The hypocrisy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2009"","block_context":{"text":"June 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/june-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4098,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/political-vultures\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":4},"title":"Political Vultures","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The sick are of turning insanity into politics by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Very few Americans are fans of both\u00a0The Communist Manifesto\u00a0and\u00a0Mein Kampf, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. Fewer still post on the Internet fears about \u201cbrainwashing,\u201d \u201cmind control,\u201d and \u201cconscience dreaming\u201d; have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2145,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/palin-odes\/","url_meta":{"origin":2607,"position":5},"title":"Palin-odes?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Furor The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin\u2019s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?) Bloggers post on Palin\u2019s live interviews minute by minute; few, if any, opponents of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}