Overthinking Palin: Still Very Easy
July 4th, 2009 by Nick SaintWhen John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin was announced, there was only one sensible response: this is a joke and, barring a DGLB situation, this election is over. Of course, very few people actually responded this way. There are four reasons for this, three of which aren’t that interesting, namely:
- There are, obviously, a lot of people who are insane, stupid, and approve of Palin’s rhetoric when they can understand it. Naturally, these people don’t recognize that running one of their own is a mistake - just about everyone thinks that doing what they themselves approve of is also, conveniently enough, a cunning and effective strategy. Over at the Daily Kos, a lot of people think running Michael Moore would be a stroke of political genius.
- People too sane to approve of Palin but who wanted McCain to win had an obvious incentive to pretend the Empress had clothes, or at least to refrain from gawking at her.
- A lot of liberals were desperate to find reasons to panic and despair at a time when empirical evidence was not on their side. For whatever reason, Democrats are like fans of an ill-fated sports franchise, always waiting for their guys to blow it so they can get back to grumbling.
As I said, none of these are interesting, because none of them explain why people are still debating Palin and various Palin activities. The problem is that people who think and write about politics can only agree about counterfactuals. No one will disagree with me now if I say that it’s a good thing Obama didn’t choose Jesse Jackson as his running mate, but if he had actually chosen Jackson, you’d start to see the argument that his hymie town rhetoric might help Obama’s problems in Appalachia.
Consensus is boring, and it’s more fun to be thought-provoking than it is to be right. But sometimes things happen that really aren’t that interesting or difficult to pin down. Sarah Palin is a crazy person and there is nothing fox-like about it. She is incapable of telling the truth. She is perpetually mired in scandal. All of this was clear within a few hours of her selection. Since then, there really hasn’t been anything interesting to add to that analysis.
