Sarah Palin, Still Hiding from the Press

After the American Century

With just two weeks until election day, Sarah Palin still has not held a press conference, and she has permitted almost no interviews. Joe Biden has been interviewed more than 90 times since becoming the Democratic VP nominee, and he has held countless press conferences in his career as Senator.

The closest thing to an actual vetting by the press was a parody on Saturday Night Live, where Ms Palin appeared briefly. Even there she did not take questions, however. Meanwhile, she runs around the US asking "Who is Obama?" as if anyone knew anything about her, or had even heard of her before late August. In fact, she apparently has not released anything like complete medical records either.

There is no precedent for a candidate remaining so remote from the press. The possible conclusions are:
A) Palin is afraid to meet the press without a script to read.
B) The McCain campaign is afraid that she will reveal egregious deficiencies in her knowledge of national policies and world events.
C) Palin and McCain think that a press conference is really not important.
D) All of the above. (This is likely the correct answer.)

Until she stands up and proves otherwise, it seems thatMs. Palin knows incredibly little . I doubt that she has ever read a complex book in her life, and do not think she could analyze a complex situation. She may smile nicely, but she appears to be a vindictive, self-centered person and an inveterate prevaricator. She also appears contemptuous of those who do not share her limited views. Nuance is not her forte.

Colin Powell was correct when he said that Palin is not ready for high office. By putting her on the ticket, McCain has made it impossible for a thoughtful fellow Republican and friend to vote for him.

But Palin has done one signal service to the world, giving us accurate polling statistics about the size of the brainless vote. It appears that the feeble-minded remain a large constituency, as the re-election of George W. Bush already suggested in 2004. An astonishing 37% of those who watched the debate between Joe Biden and a Barbie Doll spouting memorized text that often had nothing to do with the question asked, thought the Barbie Doll won. More than one third of the American public lacks critical judgement, at least when listening to her. Polling statistics further show that people making between $40,000 and $100,000 narrowly favored Palin over Biden, as did those over 65. This is more than sad. Since McCain at best is now polling about 43%, this strongly hints that his base, the Republican base, the base that supports Creationism and is anti-abortion and pro-gun, live in a world befogged by slogans, and that a mere handful of McCain supporters doubt Sarah Palin's ability. With US voters like these, who needs foreign enemies?

Fortunately, more Americans can see the rearview mirror, though this is not really enough when voting on future leaders. More than 70% of the public understands that George W. Bush has done a poor job. Nevertheless, the inescapable conclusion must be that 37% of those who watched the VP debates showed interest in the political process but lack judgement. Such people presumably do not care whether Palin has held any press conferences or not.

Palin remains the least vetted candidate in American history. Dan Quale conceivably could have lost his title as the least qualified vice president. But it appears that he can hang on to that distinction, though Palin most certainly can be crowned the least qualified VP candidate, ever.

Palinitudes, Palinites, Playing the Palin Card

After the American Century

Sarah Palin and Joe Biden have now debated. Based on the substance of the debate, no one could doubt that Palin lost. She continually retreated into a memorized script or gave short vague answers. She endlessly mouthed platitudes about growing the economy and seemed to have only a vague idea about what the problem is at the moment on Wall Street and in the banking system. Take away the folksy rhetoric and the smiles, and there was almost nothing there.

Joe Biden was a huge contrast. He had command of the facts on any issue that came up, and his vast experience repeatedly showed in his answers. He also has the gravitas that Palin forever will lack. Yet, it is entirely possible that after Sarah Palin fades into the obscurity she so richly deserves, the name Palin may remain behind to enrich our political vocabulary. Here are some of the useful possibilities.

Palinesque, loud, brassy and self-assured but without substance.

Palingo, using a grammar so fractured that all meaning disappears, although appropriate buzz words are prominent. Especially useful in debates.

Palinitude, a statement that appears obviously true to fundamentalist Republicans and obviously false to everyone else.

Palinites, white mothers with little education but passionate self-assurance, who embrace moralistic rhetoric, fundamentalist religion, creationism, and blind patriotism.

Palinicity, a word like ethnicity, to refer to this group. Future commentators might say that a certain candidate's palinicity had yet to be tested in the rural slums of the Bible Belt.

Palinize, 1. verb, to put lipstick on an animal, 2. verb, to attempt to distract attention from a bad idea. You can palinize a pig, but it's still a pig.

Palinoscopy an investigative probe to nowhere.

Playing the Palin Card, nominating such a women for an important position, in hopes that the Palinites will vote for the ticket.

The problem with Playing the Palin Card, however, as John McCain has begun to notice, is that while Palinites cheer wildly whenever they hear a Palinitude the same statements simultaneously alienate the rest of the electorate. Furthermore, McCain has begun to appear palinesque because he chose her in the first place.

I interviewed an Alaskan moose recently who told me that palinites are never environmentalists. They hunt from helicopters, take no prisoners, and eat their enemies. Hence the term palinity, which means "genial ferocity." (Do not confuse palinity with palinicity, defined above.)

The last month of the campaign is likely to be increasingly palinesque as McCain palinizes his proposals and spouts palinitudes. The whole painful process might be called palinization.
Should McCain and Palin lose the election, there may follow that investigation into her possible abuse of power in the Alaska trooper-gate investigation. Call it palingate if you must, but it might prove a palinoscopy.

Compared to Biden, Palin Beyond the Pale

After the American Century

Compare Sarah Palin with Joe Biden. He went to the University of Delaware, majoring in history and political science, and then completed a law degree at Syracuse University. He was elected to the Senate when just 29 and now has served there for 35 years. He has been fully vetted by the press, as a result. There is little likelihood that there are any skeletons in his closet.

In contrast, Palin's shorter life remains largely undisclosed. Several blogs back I said that she had attended the University of Idaho for her BA. This was what it said on her official website, and I was silly enough to believe it. In fact, she attended four different schools, moving five times in the space of five years.

Hawaii Pacific University fall, 1982, in business administration
North Idaho College spring and fall, 1983, general studies
(whereabouts unclear) spring of 1984
University of Idaho fall 1984, spring 1985, broadcast journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College fall 1985,
University of Idaho spring 1986 to spring 1987, broacast journalism.

It seems difficult to uncover good reasons for all this moving around. In my more than three decades of teaching, I have found that such peripatetic students are rare, and usually there is something wrong. A student who moves that many times cannot build lasting friendships and usually there is something amiss when someone never settles down for long . It can be problems at home, poor grades, a stalker, a death in the family, pregnancy, or any number of things. College students can have a huge range of problems. Palin studied for nine semesters over a space of five years to get a four year degree. So either she failed some courses or some of them were not deemed transferable. There may be good explanations for this moving around, but it would be nice to know what was going on before election day. Even if the explanations are convincing, her education could not have been particularly coherent, being a mishmash of courses from different curricula.

None of the schools Palin attended is an educational powerhouse. They lie on the outer edges of quality. There is some meaning in the ratings of universities put out by various independent organizations, notably Business Week. None of the places Palin attended is in the top 400 institutions of higher learning in the United States. To bounce around in this educational nether world is not encouraging. At the very least, it suggests merely average intelligence and lack of focus. Her record is quite a contrast to Joe Biden's, who completed both his BA and law degree in the minimum time - 7 years - attending just two universities, both of them well-regarded.

Imagine that you have a job to fill. Not something as exalted as Vice President of the United States, but a mid-level position at a fortune 500 company. Imagine that Biden and Palin applied, and imagine that the selection process was blind. All you have to go on is their educational transcripts, with no idea of whether the candidates are male or female, old or young, experienced or not. Which one of these applicants would set alarm bells ringing, and which one would seem a good prospect? Biden alone stands for stability, rapid execution, and quality. Palin stands for uncertainly, instability, slow execution, and mediocrity. Palin just doesn't measure up.

There is a clear connection between having a second-rate, mishmash of an education and many of the policy positions Palin holds. How many well-educated people think that "creationism" is a valid theory that ought to be taught in the schools? She does. How many well-educated people think that global warming is not a problem and that it is not caused by human activities? She does. How many well-educated people would agree with Palin that there is never a good case for abortion, even when the mother's life is threatened or even when she has been raped? She does. Is there any pattern here?

It seems unlikely that Sarah Palin actually has any ideas beyond what she reads on the teleprompter. She merely has opinions that she has received uncritically from others. She is passionate about unexamined notions, and she has the self-righteous certainty of a poorly-furnished mind. Putting her a heartbeat away from the presidency would be the worst mistake the American electorate ever made. (And I make that statement with a full knowledge of some impressive past mistakes.)

VP Picks Reveal Contrasting Election Strategies of McCain and Obama

After the American Century

McCain and Obama have chosen quite different campaign strategies, as their choice of vice-presidential running mates reveals. McCain has adopted the polarizing tactic of going to the Right. Sarah Palin has extreme right-wing positions on most issues. Should Creationist ideas be given credibility? Yes, teach them in schools. Should gays be allowed to marry? Never. Should guns be controlled in any way? No way. Should abortion be permitted in any situations, for example when pregnancy is due to rape or incest? Absolutely not. Is global warming caused by human beings? Certainly not. Should alternative energies be developed? No. Should women's bodies by commodified? She was runner-up in Miss Alaska.

Huckabee supporters are delighted with her selection. So what if she has no law degree, no knowledge of history, no experience in government, and no ideas? She is a religious woman, an athlete, a gunslinger mother, and she wants to drill for every drop of oil that God in his infinite wisdom, as part of his intelligent design of the universe, deposited in American wilderness areas and wildlife reserves. Sarah Palin thus qualifies as the worst imaginable vice-president for the liberals and the best possible one for cultural conservatives. Selecting her is an example of mobilizing the base, or getting a high percentage of your side out to vote. At the same time, McCain's strategy now must be to run negative advertisements about Obama, in order to demotivate his base. Rather than win over opponents, it is just as effective to convince them to stay home. McCain has, in other words, adopted the Karl Rove theory of divisive and negative politics.

Obama has chosen the opposite strategy. He has softened many of this positions, so they are more mainstream. He has chosen Joe Biden, the experienced, moderate insider, who has a history of working with Republicans to get legislation through Congress. Obama is appealing to all Americans, including even the evangelicals, and he has tried to reassure them that he is religious himself. A careful reading of his acceptance speech reveals several passages sprinkled with religious references. He has positioned himself as the champion of the middle class. Almost everyone in the US thinks of themselves as being middle class, so he is promising the middle class a tax cut.About the only people Obama has written off are the big oil companies.

Until the selection of Sarah Palin, the election looked close. But now it is possible it will not be. Conceivably the American voters will become excited by Palin and will lose enthusiasm for Obama after a barrage of negative ads from the Republicans. But the more likely result is that Independents and moderate Republicans will be disenchanged with the McCain-Palin ticket. The Republicans are the smaller party, numerically, and they need the moderates to win.

This choice makes McCain more popular on the Right, but has apparently not been inspiring to his fellow Senators. Of the 49 Republicans from that chamber, it now appears that 10 find their schedules so busy they will not be able to attend the convention in St. Paul. Are ten of the most powerful Republicans treating McCain as a pariah? Are they afraid they might be photographed together, or worse yet, be seen shaking hands with President Bush?

Sarah Palin, Not Qualified

After the American Century

John McCain has selected as his running mate a person who clearly is not qualified to be president. Palin has a BA degree in journalism and mass media from the University of Idaho in Moscow. Danish readers may think a degree in journalism suggests a high quality person who managed to get into a very competitive program. But all state colleges and universities have such departments in the US, and they are not hard to get into. Palin attended not a top school, nor a second rank school, but a mediocre school located in Moscow, Idaho. Anyone spending a few minutes looking at their current faculty will see that there appears to be not a single scholar of distinction among them. Look at the curriculum, and it is evident that history, law, critical thinking, and other vital subjects one might expect of a president are all lacking.

So armed with this light-weight degree from a third-rate institution, Palin returned to Alaska, lived in a small town, had five children, and got involved in politics. All very admirable, but note that Alaskan politics are nothing like politics in the other 49 American Studies. Alaska continually elects Republicans, and is close to being a one-party state. Alaska has no state income tax, because its oil revenues are so large. Indeed, all residents of Alaska get a check each year from the State government, from the oil surplus. The financial problems faced by all other US states are entirely different. Being governor of a state with such a surplus does not prepare one to deal with ordinary economies. Furthermore, Palin has a bit less than two years of experience as governor, being elected as a reformer as part of a protest against extensive corruption in the Republican Party in Alaska. All that oil money washing around gets tempting.

It appears that Ms. Palin is not corrupt, which is something of course, though she is under investigation for abuse of power. She fired a state employee, apparently because he would not dismiss her ex brother-in-law, who seems a nasty piece of work who beat up her sister. One assumes that this heart-warming story of family values in action will be explored mercilessly in the coming weeks.

How did McCain come up with this mistaken nomination? We know that he cannot use computers, but perhaps his staff can. Imagine that they put into a data base the names of all Republicans holding state and national offices. Then they selected a running mate based on ideal criterea. The running mate should be under 50 to counter McCain's age, married with children, anti-abortion since his record is a bit weak on that, pro-gun ownership, a Bible-thumper to satisfy the Huckabee fanatics, and a completely unknown woman, to show that McCain really is a maverick. Once all the candidates were sorted with these criterea in mind, there was only one left: Sarah Palin!

I thought George Bush Sr. would always keep the prize for choosing the least qualified person to be president, in Dan Quayle. He was a pretty face behind which yawned a vast empty space where the mind can usually be located. He was the man who made himself immortal by apologizing to a group of Latin American leaders, by saying, "I'm sorry I do not speak Latin." But Sarah Palin looks like such a strong entry in the incompetent-nominee Veepstakes that Bush, Sr. has good reason to be worried. I'll bet, for starters, that Palin doesn't speak Latin either.

John McCain has failed the first important test of his leadership. He has selected a person too provincial. too poorly educated, and too inexperienced to be a plausible replacement for himself. She has no knowledge of the law, no experience operating in a state with normal economic problems, and no foreign policy experience. Compared to Joe Biden, there is no contest at all.

By himself, John McCain is a disquieting, backward-looking candidate, who is out of touch with computer technologies and the problems of ordinary people. I thought that was bad enough. But add Ms. Palin, and the Republicans have a grossly unacceptable team. It is inconceivable that any major European political party would run a person with so few qualifications as their number two candidate. Actually, until Dan Quayle it was inconceivable that the Amercans would.

I want to thank John McCain for this wonderful blunder, which should make the next two months much more entertaining - not least because many Republicans and some of media apparently do not yet see that she is not qualified.

Can Joe Biden Help Obama Regain the Lead?

After the American Century

Obama has chosen Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware since 1972 as his running mate. Biden has long chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (when the Democrats had a majority in that chamber) and his extensive experience there shores up one of Obama's weak points. The choice underscores the historical fact that vice-presidents often are not selected based on their ability to deliver a particular state. Delaware is one of the smallest states in the nation, and with only three electoral votes is not an important prize in itself. More important is Biden's mix of experience, feisty energy, and extensive Washington connections that will make him an engaging contrast to Obama.

Biden can emphasize that he is a Catholic, born in the working-class town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The over-riding question is whether he can inspire working-class voters who have been reluctant to support Obama. During the past month he has fallen in the polls against McCain, who might win a close election were it held today. The many polls tracked by RealClearPolitics collectively show that a month of negative campaigning led by Karl Rove trainees, has taken its toll on the Illinois senator. To some extent McCain has also risen in the polls, but a considerable number of voters, at least 15%, remain undecided. Negative campaigning has created some of that indecision.

In the last week Obama has begun to hit back, with his own negative advertisements. And so the downward spiral accelerates, propelling this campagin, like all others in recent memory, down the low road of attacking character rather than debating policies. McCain has accused Obama of being unpatriotic, inexperienced, and elitist, to make a short list. Obama is now replying that McCain is too wealthy and out of touch to understand the economy or the problems of ordinary Americans. The Arizona Senator provided grist for this mill when he could not tell a reporter how many houses he has. A man who is not certain how many houses he owns (seven) the argument goes, does not deserve to sit in the White House. Certainly, he is in a far different position than 99% of the public.

Obama has tried to keep to the high road in his national campaign advertisements, reserving the negative advertisements for particular state races. There is no need to parade negativity in places where he is comfortably ahead, like California or New York. If his strategy works, it will present him as an idealist who would rather not get down in the mud, but will fight there if that is the ground staked out by McCain's Rove-inspired campaign.

The danger with negative campaigning remains that in the end both candidates will only look bad to the voters. Perhaps the addition of Joe Biden will move Obama in another direction, quite familiar from previous races, where the vice-presidential nominee goes on the attack while the presidential candidate tries to stand above the fray.

Meanwhile, the press seems to agree that McCain has not yet decided on a running-mate, but that he is seriously considering three governors: Tom Pawlenty of Minnesota, Charlie Crist of Florida, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Many other names have been discussed, however, perhaps the most interesting being Condolezza Rice - who could suddenly give him traction with both Black and women voters.

With the race a statistical dead-heat, the coming two weeks of conventions may prove crucial to the public's perception of both candidates, and to the result on election day.