September 15, 2008--USA, USA, USA

One would think, among other things, that after Sarah Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson that there would be some decline in support for the McCain-Palin ticket.

It was obvious from that that whatever her other qualities she knows virtually nothing about the world beyond Alaska—except that she feels she understands Russia because one can see it from her home state by looking across the Bering Straits. In a dangerous world it should have been unsettling to voters that she admittedly knows nothing about the Bush Doctrine which calls for preemptive military strikes and has under girded our foreign policy for more than seven year and led to the endless quagmire in the Middle East.

Other views of hers suggests that she would seriously consider going to war with her neighbor Russia if the Republic of Georgia was a member of NATO, and she indicated that in a McCain administration the U.S. would not “second guess” Israel if they launched a nuclear attack against Iran. In effect giving them carte blanch to do so, which they might very well undertake now that the Likud super hawk Benjamin Netanyahu is again about to become Prime Minister.

And we learned much more during the past week as reporters descended on Alaska to take a close look at Governor Palin’s record. We learned more about her enthusiastic support for earmarks, including until the last minute the Bridge to Nowhere; we learned about her personal and secretive management style and how she mercilessly fired people to replace them with under-qualified elementary school friends; we learned that she did in fact sell the state airplane but not on eBay as she claimed and at a $600,000 loss; we learned more about how she raised taxes and left her hometown of Wasilla in debt; we learned that she is not a cynical millenialist pandering Bush-like to Evangelical voters but actually believes that God directs her and our country’s daily political and military activities and is poised to bring about the Rapture and Armageddon; and we learned that those videos of her among Alaskan troops in Iraq are in fact of her visiting them in Kuwait, that she lied about being in Iraq, literally only sticking her toe across the Kuwait-Iraq border so she could claim she had the courage to visit the war front.

This daily stream of revelations has caused reporters and editorial writers to sputter almost speechlessly. The New York Times, as just one example, published a lead editorial on Saturday in which they could barely contain their befuddlement and outrage that John McCain, by selecting her, would have done something so self-serving, dangerous, and unpatriotic.

Frank Rich yesterday fulminated that by putting Palin on his ticket McCain, if they are elected, has virtually made her our next president—she is now driving the election and would thus have to be de facto anointed because if he wins in November it will be because of her and, Rich even treads on this unspeakable ground, considering the state of McCain’s health it is likely she will in fact become president before 2012. (Column linked below.)

There is even the beginnings of a Palin backlash among some of the more thoughtful, non-movement conservatives. One would suspect that this chorus of revelations about the “real” Sarah Palin, this sense that she is electorally and physically not much more than a heartbeat away from becoming our president would be having an effect on voter inclinations. Especially when our economy is close to collapse; storms are lashing the country in ways that remind us of the tragic and incompetent Republican response to Katrina; oil companies have resumed open gouging; and we are stuck in two failed wars that have contributed to our insecurity, bankruptcy, and the death and maiming of tens of thousands, one would think that any Democrat, even one with a funny name and of mixed racial background would by now be well in the lead in the national polls.

But what we see is the McCain-Palin ticket surging ahead with a lead that has widened this past week in spite of all the Palin news.

I have been struggling for more than a week here to understand this seemingly self-defeating phenomenon. Yes, it is cultural and largely gender based. Many of the disaffiliated who are hurt the most by national and global conditions—those losing their homes and savings, those whose children and loved ones are disproportionately fighting our wars, those who are living alone and struggling to raise their children, those whose jobs are in jeopardy, those who had to stay behind along the Gulf Coast as hurricane Ike struck because they didn’t have the money to fill up their gas tanks and pay for motel rooms, those who feel ignored or mocked and by the media, and those who are devout Fundamentalists—they represent Sarah Palin’s growing constituency. In their frustrations and subjectivity, they care more about seeing themselves reflected in her than in what she might actually do if she were to become vice president or president. They no longer want leaders who they can “look up to.” They’ve seen what those kinds of experienced and qualified leaders have done. Now they appear to be turning to ones who remind them of themselves.

As life for them becomes more circumscribed and perplexing, their defiant response to any nuanced set of issues that challenge and threaten us are spontaneous chants of “USA, USA, USA.” Or, following the craven lead of Rudy Giuliani, “Drill, baby, drill.” As if any of this can get the job done.

Thus, I worry.