sarah palin « Letters from Grenada

sarah palin

Sarah Palin, earlier today, checking out the podium at which she'll deliver her speech later. Doesn't she look a bit tense?

I spend most of my day writing while listening to CNN or the BBC, so I’m experiencing full-on Sarah Palin overload right now. I had, in fact, determinedly determined not to write about her here. It’s like my friend Sarah says, “Shh! You’ll jinx it!”. Besides, explaining why she’s unfit for national office is like explaining to my dad why listening to Rush Limbaugh causes me gastric distress. If he doesn’t just get it, I am so not going there.

But then the more I read the more I just can’t wrap my mind around this. Palin has provoked some of the most astute and unique political commentary I have ever witnessed in real-time. For example, I knew Ying Yang cared about American politics, but I didn’t realize she cared this much. And I just love love love Mudflats, a blog about Alaskan politics that has gone viral. Mudflats is like a Sarah Palin primer.

So, as it turns out, I can’t resist this bizarre, potentially Eagleton-esque situation. Below are four items not to be missed:

1. The only thing that shocks and confuses me more than her nomination is the fact that the Republicans are pretending to be thrilled about this. When you press them on it, though, things fall apart. The video below is Campbell Brown (of CNN) interviewing Tucker Bounds (of the McCain campaign). She asks him a very simple question about Palin’s alleged decision-making re: the Alaska National Guard, and all poor, woefully unprepared Tucker can do is talk about Obama.

Wow, right? Almost as funny as that guy a few months back who just kept shouting the word ‘appeasement’ at Chris Matthews. Anyway, McCain is vexed and cancelled his interview on Larry King. (But why cancel? Larry, unlike Campbell Brown, is notorious for letting his interviewees duck the questions they prefer not to answer.)

2. Erik Ose at asks: Is John McCain Mentally Fit to Be President? He suggests that McCain has Alzheimer’s, and includes some telling video of McCain’s memory lapses. Anyone who thinks that John McCain is in robust health should check this out.

3. Arianna Huffington, inspired as always, writes the following in Saving the GOP and the Unbearable Lightness of Being Sarah Palin:

McCain doesn’t just need someone with a fresh face; he desperately needs someone with fresh ideas. That would have been the real maverick choice.

Instead, he’s got someone who, in perfect agreement with the Republican platform, believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

He’s got someone who, in defiance of science, doesn’t believe global warming is man-made.

He’s got someone who, in defiance of science, wants creationism taught in schools.

He’s got someone who wants to further increase the health-care burden on the patient.

He’s got someone who wants to ban all stem-cell research.

The Republican Party isn’t in dire electoral straits because Middle America loves these ideas but just wants to see them implemented by a woman.

The Republican Party is in dire electoral straits because its ideas are outside the mainstream. And in choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has moved his ticket even further from the center of the country. Yes, she energizes the GOP base — a fact that should scare the hell out of any Republican who cares about the future of the party.

The problem with today’s GOP isn’t the packaging; it’s the product.

Amen, sister!

4. Last but most certainly not least is David Brook’s column, What the Palin Pick Says. The whole thing is so brilliant I’m repeating more than half of it here:

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

What I like so much about this last piece is that Brooks pushes past all the drama and really looks Palin’s fundamental unsuitability for the role into which she has been thrust.

More and more, I just don’t get it. Really, what is McCain thinking? I’m reminded of this woman I used to know who was so caught up in how much she wanted to get married, she married someone she didn’t really want to marry, just because she really really wanted a wedding.

The very first thought I had when I heard this news was: Holy shit. McCain just threw the election. He doesn’t want to win. I put that idea away because it just seemed too crazy. But now I wonder. Is there any other possible answer?