More Thoughts on Palin
I wanted to only reblog part of this post but it’s just not possible. It’s absolutely great.Look, I know that she’s going to take a lot of hits. But the thing that excites me about her is that she’s what Obama pretends to be.
He talks a big game, but his political jobs have all been legislative, which means easy. It’s easy to vote on things. (It’s even easier to vote “present” on things). It’s hard to run things. It’s harder, therefore, to be a mayor than it is to be a state legislator. It’s harder, similarly, to be a Governor than it is to be a Senator. When you are an executive, you stand alone and take all the hits. You are accountable. It’s why incumbent legislators are almost always reelected, even when they take bribes. And it’s why executive office holders are regularly defeated, even in primaries, by members of their own party.
Thus, Palin has accomplished things in her political career, like cutting property taxes as mayor, or cutting wasteful spending as Governor. What has Obama done? Seriously, there’s nothing. He’s done nothing. (Although he’ll tell you he “stood by” factory workers as their jobs left and their factories shut down. I’m not sure if this means he actually stood by them physically or empathetically, and I’m not sure how either was of much help.)
But it’s more than this. Palin got where she is by taking on her own party, by filing ethics complaints against corrupt party leaders, and by defeating an incumbent Republican governor. She got where she is by fighting against politics as usual. Now, Obama talks this game, but he doesn’t play it. He got where he is by falling in line. By joining the Daley machine. By attending the Ayers fundraisers. By becoming buddies with people like Renzo. By joining Jeremiah Wright’s church. All of things things helped him advance within his party. Has he ever taken one brave stand in his life? Time, and time again, he sided with the corrupt against the reformers. Obama had the chance to be Sarah Palin, to fight his way in from the outside, and he said no.
Obama is a cautious man; circumspect; aloof; thoughtful, but detached. He’s friends with everyone, and no one knows what he thinks. He’s more complicated than any of us could possibly know. Is he smart? Yes. Smarter than the other candidates on the ballot, I’m sure. Smarter than me, no doubt. But there’s a difference between being smart and being right.
I wanted to like Obama. Obama hangs with some of the right people; he has great advisors; he’s read all the right books. But he sides with the wrong people; ignores good advice; and agrees with all the wrong books. (And I don’t just mean the libertarian books that I love … Nozick and Friedman and Rand … but even good liberal books, like John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Obama’s more concerned with making sure everyone has an equal piece of the pie, and less concerned with growing the pie. He’s the anti-Rawls. Why have a 3-6-9 distribution, when everyone can have just 2?)
I don’t know if Palin is up for this task. Biden has been running for President for two years … he’s up on all the policy books, he’s been in a ton of debates, and he knows the names of every foreign leader. Palin has been busy … busy governing and busy mothering. Now they’ve got to put a hundred binders in front of her and she’s got to start reading. We’ll see how she does. But maybe, in the end, all the facts and statistics won’t matter. Maybe it will come down to authenticity. And she seems pretty darn authentic.
