I thought I was done with Governor Palin, but she is the gift that keeps on giving. Herewith some gathered-up thoughts.
1. She undermines the main narrative of the McCain campaign, which is that theirs is a straight-talking, stand-up guy who, as the slogan has it, "puts country first"--with the not very subtle suggestion that their opponent, the black guy with the funny name, is something less than a true-blue American. For in selecting Palin, McCain manifestly did not put America first. She was picked on account of what she could do for the campaign: bring home the base, peel off some Hillary voters. It wasn't about our country. It was about helping McCain realize his ambition. I said it before, here.
2. There's been some chatter about how we members of the reality-based community should resist the urge to indulge in that very human emotion the Germans denote with the term Schadenfreude. I'd put up a better fight if, in the event my ox was being gored, there was even a chance the other side would make the same effort. Can you imagine if the Obamas had a pregnant 17-year-old? And they tried to put the best face on it by piously intoning that she was going to marry the trash-talking punk with the vulgar MySpace page who knocked her up? Give me a break. Bill Bennett would raise his overfed self from his seat at the slots and exit the casino in order to pronounce from on high stentorian jeremiads upon the Democrats. Yes he would--but his would be just one plangent bass in a mass choir.
And, regarding the pregnancy of Palin's daughter, I'm sick of the view that "life happens" and "it makes her more like a real person I can relate to." How come when African-American teens get pregnant the talk is of moral decline, neglectful parents, and the generalized pathology of the culture the Democrats made from their seat on the sidelines? The wingers are so eager to extend to their own the benefit of every doubt while begrudging the same advantage to everyone else.
3. The choice demonstrates that McCain's judgment is horrible. What could he have been thinking? He had to know about the pregnant daughter. "Trooper-gate," too (the report is due just before the election). What about her taste for pork, otherwise known as "earmarks," which McCain rails against? The ingredients of this half-baked cake were ambition, haste, sloth, and recklessness. We've had enough of that.
4. The statement issued by the Palin family emphasized that it was their daughter's "decision" to have the baby. Perhaps they did not want to deploy "choice," a synonym for "decision," but still it seems to me that in a crisis they sound a lot like the other side. Isn't it their policy to deny to girls in their daughter's position any "decision" other than the one they prefer?
5. I have to admit that a few wingers are, as James Wolcott puts it, "entertaining reality." Richard Brookhiser. David Frum. Paul Mirengoff, always the Power Line philosopher most apt to come up for air. Hinderaker, however, is gone, gone, gone. He thinks that, instead of cutting back on Day 1, the Republicans should have undertaken to demonstrate to America that the Bush administration's pathetic response to Katrina is a lie perpetuated by that all-purpose whipping horse, The Liberal Media. And if their convention was a day longer they could re-impeach Clinton! God what a dope.
Hat tip to War Room for inventing the new academic discipline.
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