Bruce Benidt
Jon Austin
tcarideo
Ellen Mrja
Mike Keliher
Joe Loveland
On this 4th of July holiday, amidst all of the celebrations, let’s take a moment to note the passing of Sarah Palin’s political career; it was just 17 years old and in the last year briefly captured our attention and a few hearts along the way. The cause of death is still unknown, but it’s clear the wound was self-inflicted.
Forget all of the “political analysis” that’s filling the internet about what a smart move this was because it’s bullshit. Yesterday, Sarah Palin drove a stake right through the heart of her presidential prospects. She might become a talk show host, she might go on the radio, become an advocate for causes and a fixture on the speaking circuit. She will not, however, ever be a credible candidate for president again.
Sarah Palin did not cost John McCain the election, but she made the trainwreck worse. Outside of the hardcore movement conservatives who respond to her emotionally, the rest of us saw a women ill-prepared for the national stage, uneducated and unsophisticated about the critical issues of the day, and emotionally and intellectually immature. Questions about her judgment made questions about John McCain’s judgment a legitimate campaign issue. Throughout the fall, her standing among the American electorate dropped faster that an SUV gas gauge on the highway as each exposure made it clear that the woman who would be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office was a scary prospect indeed.
Ms. Palin might have had a chance to run in 2012 if she had gone back to Juneau, governed effectively, spent as much time as possible on the lower 48 fundraising/political circuit (admittedly no small feat for a sitting Alaska governor) and brought in a faculty to provide a three-year crash course on the policy issues and political skills (message discipline, interview skills, etc.) that she tried to skip over last year. That way, when the spotlight came back around, the public would see a Sarah Palin ready to govern the most complex country in the world during one of the most complex periods in world history and she would have built up a record and political organization to support a campaign.
A very tough, narrow road to walk, admittedly, but the only one I can think of that would have possibly undone the damage she did among the 75 percent of us who found her varying degrees of scary. If she could persuade a third of us that she was qualified, she could have been a contender.
Instead, she has done the one thing I can think of to effectively cement her image as a capricious and emotionally immature personality; she’s elected to simply walk away from her job as governor with 18 months to go. And to do so because it’s become a burden.
Ms. Palin may or may not chose to try to run for president in 2012 or thereafter. If she does, however, her entire campaign will be defined by a single question that she can expect to hear over and over and which – for her – there is now no correct answer:
“Governor Palin, you abandoned your responsibilities as the governor of one of our nation’s smallest (other than geography) and least complex states; what makes you qualified to serve as President of the United States?”
RIP.
- Austin
Filed under: Communications, Politics | Tagged: 2012, Alaska, John McCain, Sarah Palin
Beautiful essay (curious timing on the part of the governor) and a Happy Fourth to all!
Were you kicking her ass or lamenting her departure? It was conflicting to me.
I think Ms.Not to be the female equivalent to Jethro Bodeen, as you painted her. She is proof there exists a large part of America not in the know of the full inner beltway circle. I have relatives in the Midwest who are not up to speed with what I hear everyday as I live 8 miles from the White House. Politico speak is like sewage effuse here.
I saw the Letterman show when he made the “jokes” concerning Palin’s daughter. That was in truly bad taste but par for a Jewish standup comedian.
Palin was chosen from a rather limited stock of young Republicans around the country to inject a spark into the GOP. Was she groomed before hand? Absolutely not. Was that her fault? Again, absolutely not. She was blindsided for the most part and thrust into a den of wolves Obama couldn’t have survived if he didn’t have over half a billion dollars and full support of liberal America behind him.
I think she removed herself from the public eye to shield her family from the media who has been nothing but evil as far as she was involved.
She had the same problems in her family that too many others in this nation face and never hid it. Her teenage daughter was pregnant and not unlike 2/3 of the mothers of African-American children born in the USA. How could the liberal press go after when facing the comparison? could the fact that Obama was black and that discounted any strikes against other blacks? How about her son with Downs syndrome? She didn’t deserve the press the media raised over that either.
What I can gather from what happened to Palin during the election season is she threatened the “good-ole-boy” network to the point of ridiculing her. Kid Katie Couric enjoy her role in it? I’ve never liked that stupid ditz as it is. I don’t like most of television so no big deal there.
She doesn’t have to be president of the USA. None of the financial big rollers want to be – they pay the way for those such as Obama to be the hood ornament on their vehicles.
Isn’t the issue of whether she can answer the closing question you posed sufficiently a matter of whether a person approves of Palin as a politician to begin with? I don’t see that as a big winner or a big loser for her (which, considering the 2008 election results, isn’t a good thing).
Less than 6 months ago, Palin had 5 times the amount of executive experience Obama Had (has). That means she actually led something. He was a state rep for 6 years, and less than 3 years as a US senator. A man who accomplished nothing in his lifetime until 11/4/08. Nothing, and I defy anyone to name an accomplishment on any scale.
Elites despise Middle America. They hate people from common backgrounds, with regional accents, with familial travails, who speak plainly, etc. Appearances and packaging trump substance to elites. Enter John Kerry who is predigreed, needlessly confident, articulate, showy and dead wrong on every major issue. Elites love him.
You hate middle America, in the same way Keillor pretends to like (but mocks) Midwesterners.
Quitter.
When the going got tough, she quit.
Write me a campaign response for that, and she has a chance.
Mike Keliher -
You are right in a sense: Ms. Palin has – I think – forever capped her approval rating at 25% or wherever it stood on Friday. The people who like her will probably still like her (most of them, though there’s a distinct walking away going on among conservatives this weekend in the media) and the rest of us have the ultimate confirmation of why we don’t. Not many candidates get to office with 25 percent of the vote.
JJ -
I’m not sure I accept the “I hate Midwesterners” label since I grew up in St. Louis and have lived 18 years in Minneapolis. In fact, since I did go to college out east and worked on both the east and west coasts before settling here, I can claim to be a Midwesterner by choice.
I do, however, confess to being an elitist in the sense that I value competence, intelligence, judgment and accomplishment. I am also elitist in the sense that I think we should be led by our best and brightest people.
Governor Palin has shown me to be neither. What accomplishments she has achieved have been because of a raw talent for demagoguery, the meanest sort of political skills. She comes from the line of politicians who believe that our problems can be solved with simple solutions and who bid for power on the strength of their personalities rather than the strength of their ideas. IMHO, our biggest threat from within is the rise of a person like this at a time when people are scared and desperate.
This is not a right-left, liberal-conservative phenomenon because it includes people like Huey Long and Jesse Ventura along with Ross Perot, George Wallace and George W. Bush. I do admit that these days there seems to be more of them on the right than the left, but that’s a transient condition not an inherent flaw in conservatism.
- Austin
“She comes from the line of politicians who believe that our problems can be solved with simple solutions…”
The solutions are quite simple, but they don’t involve cutting two checks for $785 billion.
Elitists think public policy needs to be heavily nuanced and packaged in flowery talk . Bull shit.
The real fixes are amazingly straight forward. Reagan proved that.
As Obama has his hand on the throttle, with America headed straight for the mountain side, there will be a complete reversal of political fortunes in the next 36 months. Palin may have the last laugh.
P.S. All this talk about the best and brightest, and now we have Al Franken on the Judiciary Committee?
Franken is certainly and unarguably bright–you can see that in his humor. The question is his judgement (for example–although some of his comments about women and rape might have been funny, better judgement might have suggested he keep them to himself). Those are very different things.
Part of what made Franken so successful on SNL was his willingness to suspend normal judgement and say things out loud that others only thought. If he wants to be successful in the Senate, he will need to relearn impulse control.
As I read several of the above comments I continue to be amazed that Sarah Palin has any advocates in either party. Please someone explain how she has demonstrated any sound understanding, let alone proactive position on any of the issues–prior to, during, or in the months following the election. How she became a public luminary is the stuff of pure fiction. However, informative to learn that bad taste in humor is a province exclusively cultivated by “Jewish” comedians. I had no idea (or that Letterman is Jewish).
Let’s agree on this: Both parties are failing miserably at advancing the best, most-qualified candidates.
Instead, we get the most personally-ambitious.
Read “The United States of Ambition” by Alan Ehrenhalt for a great exposition of how politicians are no longer part timers, but simply another profession, filled by people who have gone to school and studied and apprenticed in order to become a US Senator, etc.. Politics is simply another job, another career, and politicians are more and more alike, because it has become professionalized. Like it or not, mavericks like Franken and Ventura are not professional politicians like Coleman and Pawlenty and Obama. That is a part of their appeal to a large number of people.
Coleman, even if he stays out of elective politics, will become a lobbyist/consultant. He is a part of a system, and that is where he is staying. What else does he know? But I am not trying to pick on him–this is a bipartisan affliction.
I once worked along side a young ambitious guy who had just graduated from Georgetown and his career aspiration was to do opposition research for political campaigns. He was a sleezebag apprentice to even sleezier bags like James Carville and Lee Atwater. He knew who was banging who. How to trace prepaid postage on direct mail campaigns to corporate addresses. Which DC bars to hang out in. He would have his cops friends run license plate numbers and do cell phone reverse lookups. He knew a quick way to look up tail numbers on corporate jets. His first job was helping the campaign of a young Congressional aspirant, who was more ambitious than the young tools he had working for him.
The wrong people, helping the wrong people, succeed at the wrong things, for all the wrong reasons.
And thus, the cycle continues.
Opposition research is not entirely a sleazy profession sayeth the man who used to do it and once wrote a computer application that campaigns could use to create a database of votes, speeches, news articles, contributions and other material that goes into understanding your opponent’s record, where her money comes from and where she spends it. Along the way I did in fact learn how to track aircraft tail numbers, which states sold drivers’ license information, how to read upside down and how to decipher the microscopic print on a union bug to make sure it was legitimate. I did once follow a candidate around to record his speeches on a cassette recorder.
The “who’s banging whom” information was a bonus and mostly a matter of envy rather than professional interest for a young man who might charitably have been thought of as socially challenged.
Ambition to serve is not a disqualifier in my opinion as long as the call to service is motivated by a desire to do something rather than simply accumulate power. There are more people out there in this category than conventional wisdom would allow. I don’t politically agree with lots of them, but I respect their intent.
- Austin
Love the “character” Bloomington describes. What in a person’s genome or experience would motivate that particular career choice? Not exactly the American Dream I was taught. What’s gone wrong? Or is it me? Obviously that person cultivated some unique and highly marketable skills.
It is just you, Dennis.
This is a desire to know the “real” dirt, to be an insider. to have power thru knowledge, to have influence. Think of J. Edgar Hoover, or almost any spy or lobbyist. It is profoundly tempting to very many people–and the foundation of all gossip. There is nothing new about this–it is what courtiers did at the court of Louis XIV. And long before that, as well. It is what people do at PTA meetings and over the back fence.
plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
You are too much of the idealist.
Good one PM. So what do you think, an inherited characteristic, traceable to our primitive origins–sort of like why men prefer nineteen year-old nubile blonds (so I’ve read)– or somehow a learned behavior attributable to the evolution of Western culture, society, political systems?
C’est la guerre.
I think some infants rise from the cradle, ready to do opposition research and smear others.
OK, here is another book: “Grooming, Gossip and the evolution of language”, by Robin Dunbar. Basically, Dunbar says that social grooming (picture a bunch of baboons picking ticks off of each other) and gossip are the glue that hold apes and people together in groups, and that language evolved as a by product of this urge to groom–and that gossip is essential to human bonding.
Opposition research is simply a specialized version of this.
We still are nothing more than hairless apes.
I half-expect her to pull a Hillary, establish residency in one of the lower 48, and make another run at it. As much as it pains me to say, I highly doubt this is the last we’ve heard from her.
Bing! Or something like that.
I mean: Yes. What Kelly said.
Has no conservative since Ronald Reagan had a good idea? Gawd, he left office 20 years ago.
Sorry, my conservative friends, but he was not the ultimate expression of the great American democratic experiment.
In a way I almost feel bad for her. I don’t think she ever envisioned having such a prominent place in American politics. Who had heard of her until McCain picked her as a running mate? She probably thought being the Gov. of Alaska would be her pinnacle – which isn’t too shabby.
Today she commented on her political future, “”if I die, I die. So be it.”
We can only hope she truly is tired of the political machine. She obviously can’t handle the dreaded main stream media. She would wilt under the spotlight of being president or VP.
I don’t think she is a terrible person, just a terrible presidential candidate. The Republicans must have better horses in the race.
Can you imagine how she would react to a special prosecutor? Say, Ken Starr with an unlimited budget and agenda looking into everything?
Fair has nothing to do with it–this is the kind of pressure that is part and parcel of the job. Just as it was silly of Jesse Ventura to complain about the media being too harsh on his family, so it continues to be silly when Palin complains.
Welcome to life in the fast lane
I meant to put this into the original post, but forgot…Kelly’s prediction jogged my increasingly frail memory.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Governor Palin changes her mind before the end of the month and decides to stay in office after all. I can already hear the speech done Sarah-style:
“Since I made my announcement, thousands of Alaskans, hard-working Alaskans who know what it’s like to have a household budget, who love their kids and this great State of ours with all their heart, are telling me loud and clear that they get it. They get how tough it is to fight those media elites who want to tear down America and not build it up, the good-old boy network who feel threatened, the haters who want to stop us from no more government as usual. They get it. But, they say to me – and I get it because I’m a point guard who learned all about tough oppoents on the court – ‘I know you’re hurting and the other guys aren’t playing fair and it’s a hometown ref, but we still need you on the court. We may be up by a couple of points, but we could still lose this one if you don’t stay out there and keep callin’ the plays. I get that.
“After I talked to so many of those great Alaskans and heard the pride and the grit and the determination and their love of this State and this great Country of ours, I had to call my team together – those four ‘yeahs’ and one ‘Hell yeah’ who are the most precious people in the world to me – and tell them I was going to finish the game and make sure the corrupt special interests that we threw out don’t sneak back in at the last minute. Let me tell you, that was the toughest audience I’ve ever faced, but they all voted – because that’s what we do in our family, we vote on everything so that when Todd and I as parents, as co-equals in our great partnership of marriage that we believe is the rock of our society, have decided what we as a family are going to do, there’s a democracy right at our kitchen table. That’s where we make all of our really important decisions and we decided that I had to stay to help those Alaskans who have been asking me, pleading with me, begging me to stay and keep up the good work. And to those people, I say, ‘I hear you’ and I’m not going to let you down.”
- Austin
The only ones I hear howling are Palin’s previous detractors (the ones who already hated her). Which tells me she’s probably doing the right thing politically.
You seem to be unable to tell the difference between laughter and howling….
@ PM–Thanks for the titles above.
And speaking of S. Palin, isn’t there something a little excessive in this ceremonial reverance and media saturation today for Michael Jackson? Heck, I can understand Valentino, millions of us shoulder to shoulder on Broadway, but this is baffling.
Yes, finally a point where I agree with Bill O’Reilly! What is it about all of this Michael Jackson mourning? And the defensiveness of his fans? Somewhere in this is a great study in mass psychology/psychosis.
While we’re still on the subject….So I’m reading in today’s “Star/Trib” (seemingly a bit a smaller each successive morning) that “Transformers” pulled $60 million on a Wednesday! (Story courtesy of “Orange County Register.) I’m thinking for anyone who hasn’t figured it out yet, the real skill to cultivate is reading the prevailing temperment of culture at any given moment in real time. Figuring out a way to feed that appetite whatever it happens to be–doesn’t matter– then charging as much as you can for the service. Bullet-proof recession beater and should be pre-requisite in institutions of higher learning.
And the trick is to be just a bit ahead of the curve–Transformers, for instance, had to start up about 5 years ago, with ideas and scripts and fundraising, etc.
Or, sometimes, the race goes to the swift–who can get their idea into production the fastest.
Yes, you are right–the money is still out there, and is being spent–but not on the same things it was being spent on. People are sharper about focusing in on their priorities, and they have many more options to choose from, so they are becoming more and more discriminating. Those who are suffering (think Detroit and newspapers) are those who are not reacting fast enough to stay abreast.ahead of what the public wants, or are not capable of changing fast enough with the times.
Of course, all of that said, I’m still not certain I know what to do about it all……
And would such an Unresign Speech work, Jon? Would the dominant public verdict be “courageous” or “coo-coo”?
It would have the same effect as last week’s announcement. Her supporters – the hard core – would view her as courageous and principled and self-sacrificing. Her detractors would see it as more evidence of her unsuitability for high office.
Stay or go, either way, you can stick a fork in Ms. Palin’s political career; it’s done.
- Austin
Have you read her entire resignation statement? Oy vay.
It ends, by the way, with a quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “We are not retreating. We are advancing in a different direction.”
But guess what? MacArthur or his speech writer plagiarized it from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “We’re not retreating. Hell! We’re just attacking from different direction.”
http://en.thinkexist.com/search/searchQuotation.asp?search=we+are+not+retreating
Wow, I think I’m going to steal that line and use it on my girlfriend the next time I get lost while driving.
I might be butchering it, but another old saying seems to apply to Sara, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
Maybe Noonan was putting party fealty above good analysis. But maybe she really thought Palin would turn into a credible national leader if she only had some time and exposure to the experts. I think a lot of Republicans hoped and thought that. Maybe Noonan couldn’t come to the same conclusions about Palin in October 2008 as she did in July 2009 because she didn’t possess the evidence that only additional observations could provide. Maybe Noonan needed those nine months to prove to her that Palin would never be presidential timber.
WallStreetJournal online says it was a case of “Death by a Thousand FOIAs” — requests for information from everyone from FBI to environmentalists — that had paralyzed her efforts to be an effective leader in AK. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124700261179807839.html
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but, what do you think of this column by Peggy Noonan in the WSJ?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124716984620819351.html
And not specifically the content of the article (which I think is pretty insightful), but rather the arc of Noonan’s responses to Palin?
Remember that when Palin was first announced as the VP choice, Noonan was caught on a live mike talking about what a disaster the pick was. The Noonan spent months backpedalling on Palin, saying that what she said wasn’t what she meant. And now she is back, saying that she was right the first time.
I understand the necessity of being a part of a group (Republicans) and having to live with your peers, even when they make what you think are mistakes, and the need to support the party–but how far do you go in this?
In particular, Republicans seem far less willing to forgive apostasy than Democrats (if you disagree, please let me know). I’d point to David Frum as a recent example. And maybe also David Brooks. And Noonan as an example of just how far you have to go to avoid this fate.
Why does loyalty always seem to trump personal integrity? And also seem to prevent reflection?
Good article. Provocative question. Under what circumstances do we leave our integrity at the door? Certainly the question extends beyond politics and conversation on this Blog has crossed its path many times on the topic of communications in “public relations”.
Palin never had a hope of getting elected President anyway, the best she could hope for is a cabinet position. She and the economy caused McCain’s defeat to a vacuous neophyte. “the rest of us saw a women ill-prepared for the national stage, uneducated” – nice. I supported McCain before and after the decision but he never should have picked her. She never had a shot after that election cuz it’s the Democrats that elect ditzes, the Republicans look for competence. Look at the leading primary candidates last winter: the Republicans had three experienced, smart guys in McCain, Romney, and Giulliani, while the Democrats had the three ditzes, Hilary, Obama, and Edwards. The Democrats just like to play up and attack Palin cuz she’s not qualified, McCain’s fault for allowing that to happen, but it’s funny considering how they all voted for the vacuous Obama.
Chris Cillizza calls this Palin data point the “most important number in politics today.”
Chris Cillizza has a weird name and he’s stretching on this one.
The Gallup poll he cites – which says among other things that Sarah Palin has a 72 percent approval rating from “Republicans and Republican-leaning independents” – doesn’t break out how the party identification of its respondents (or at least it doesn’t talk about them), but we might remember that because of the recent unpleasantness (aka the eight years of the Bush administration and the trainwreck of a national campaign that the GOP fielded), the Republican brand ain’t what it used to be. According to most recent numbers on Pollster, though, those numbers are:
Democrats: 35.5%
Independents: 32.7%
Republicans: 25.1%
I couldn’t find a breakout of the “leaners” among independents so I broke them out myself, dividing them according to the overall party affiliation. This yields a very bad spread for Republicans:
Democrats: 54.7%
Republicans: 38.6%
I’m guessing it doesn’t sum to 100 percent because 6 percent or so refuse to declare one way or the other in the Pollster data. This doesn’t change things.
So, among the 38.6% of the electorate who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, 72 percent of them like Sarah Palin. That means that, if the 2012 election were held today, Ms. Palin could count on getting about 25.6 percent of the popular vote plus whatever she can pick up from the oh-so-commonplace category of “Democrats who like Sarah Palin”.
The Obama re-election team can only hope.
- Austin
Whether you want to admit it or not, Sarah Palin has IT. Call it charisma, charm, nice legs..whatever. When she wrinkles her button nose and winks, she turns Republican men on; Republican women think they are JUST LIKE HER (“I wear lipstick! I’m a soccer mom!) and so they like her, too.
From a branding standpoint, what’s not to love? She stands for family, life, freedom (to own guns).
But branding a product is not the same as closing the deal on a sale. Even those 72% who like her will not all vote for her. So I think Austin’s estimate of 25.6% is way too high.
Having said all that..if Sarah Palin could actually dedicate herself to studying, learning, buckling down during the next four years, she could be a serious candidate for something or another.
But she won’t do any of those things. And that’s the loss for the Republicans who like her so much.
She does have it. The guys I’ve talked to who’ve met her have said – to a person – that she’s hot. A couple said it was even more powerful in person than on TV.
I felt the same way about that poster of Cheryl Tiegs in 1977. Somehow, though, that didn’t translate into wanting her to be President.
- Austin
Further, that “it”doesn’t seem to transfer quite so faithfully or universally to television. TV seems to magnify both her attractions and her negatives–making her the polarizing figure that she is.
Actually Cheryl seems to be holding up quite well thirty-two years later in those Cambria TV spots. What do think: Well positioned Key light? Healthy living? A miracle of modern technology? With the proper coaching and training might she become as qualified as Sarah Palin to be President?
“elected is replaceable;Ak WILL progress! + side benefit=10 dys til less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside State site” –Sarah Palin
(via CBS News)
Wow. Apparently her inarticulateness crosses all media boundaries.
Or maybe – just maybe – Sarah Palin is speaking in glyphs and not only is trying to deconstruct such communication unproductive, to try to do actually demonstrates that it’s US who aren’t evolved enough to understand her informationally dense, highly nuanced messages. Glyphs have to be grokked holographically, not in binary.
Could Sarah Palin represent an evolutionary leap forward?
- Austin