Will the real Palin please stand up?

Sarah Wildman

Since Thursday's vice presidential debate, the punditry class has filled the airwaves and Web, parsing Sarah Palin's failure to fail. But what is perhaps most striking is what Palin failed to actually say. Amid all the "doggone"s and "there ya go"s and "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider"s, Palin neglected to articulate any difference between the McCain-Palin ticket and the current team in the White House.

Joe Biden, even if restrained at the outset, made a strong, forceful case for how the Obama-Biden ticket would be different "” far better than Barack Obama himself did in his first debate against McCain. Palin, on the other hand, had all the spontaneity of a grown-up version of Small Wonder, that 1980s robot girl from Saturday night television. In the end, Biden looked like a president. And while both candidates (rightly, I think) shied away from answering the macabre "in the event of the death of your running mate" question, only Biden looked like he would actually be able to assume the job of president in such an awful scenario.

Part of the problem is that Palin isn't being marketed as, nor is she expected to be, a politician. That's all well and good for PTA president, or mayor, or maybe even governor in a state without a huge number of people. But when we're talking about the highest executive office, there need to be a few criteria in place beyond relatability. Ironically, though, even on that, Palin falls down. She pretends to be a representative of the American everywoman (whoever that really is, I'd love to know "” though I guess it has something to do with watching a child play club team sports). Yet outside of talk of theoretical football match side conversations, she had nary an argument about what these women actually need or want "” or what women's rights might be in the US circa 2008.

This became particularly glaring when Palin mentioned women's rights in an answering a foreign policy question: "I had a good conversation with [Henry Kissinger] recently. And he shared with me his passion for diplomacy. And that's what John McCain and I would engage in also. But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women's rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do."

What exactly did Palin mean by "our respect for women's rights"? It was a curious moment, especially with the brouhaha over distasteful charges for rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla. Outside of her controversially militant stance on abortion, it's unclear what Palin brings to women specifically. Is it healthcare reform? No. Education reform? Not that either. Is it equal pay for equal work "” something relatively uncontroversial? She says she supports it, but McCain recently failed to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Just being a woman doesn't make Palin the better champion, and I suspect this is why she didn't elaborate further. Biden, on the other hand, briefly mentioned authoring the Violence Against Women Act. Over the course of his career, Biden's done a whole lot more for women than Palin ever would care to. That's partly because what Palin's folksiness exposes is not so much her "real" American self, as her inability to see beyond her own experience.

But what was real? There was no moment more genuine than when Biden had his own real reveal, when his voice broke as he described knowing exactly what it was like to be a single parent, because he had been one, and exactly what it was like not to know whether a child would survive. That catch in his voice caught everyone in the room I was watching the debate with. We all held our breath.

And Sarah Palin? She kept reciting her rehearsed talking points resolutely. She was so programmed, so fixated on keeping her chirpy smile and demeanor and her "can I call you Joe" pep going, that she missed an opening during which she might have actually come across as genuinely empathetic, as opposed to smugly anti-intellectual. Her entire discourse was a laundry list of memorized bullet points. She was completely unable to even have a "lipstick on a pitbull" moment. Her lines about how, oh gee who has time to know all this, the people want change, they want outsiders, fell terribly flat.

Her failure to be the real person she's championed for being made even more egregious her general failings as a leader. Palin completely avoided the conversation on bankruptcy, clearly not having a clue as to McCain's bankruptcy policy. She similarly didn't respond to questions on health care, on her own failings, on Afghanistan.

One of my favorite analyses of the night came from Noam Scheiber over at the New Republic. Scheiber mocked Palin's list of pro-Israel statements, which read like a laundry list of everything she'd ever heard anyone ever say about US-Israel policy (including moving the embassy to Jerusalem, a not-uncontroversial topic) juxtaposed against Biden's pithy analysis of how Hamas came to power in the West Bank and Hezbollah achieved legitimacy in Lebanon and tied it all back to the Bush administration's abysmal Middle East policies.

quote:

Originally posted by Pointblank:
Will the real Palin please stand up?

Sarah Wildman
...What exactly did Palin mean by "our respect for women's rights"? It was a curious moment, especially with the brouhaha over distasteful charges for rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla. .

You liberals need to understand where the woman was coming from, these women were not robbed, so they should be able to pay. She was just being fiscally responsible.

WASHINGTON (AP) - By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

First, Palin's attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.


"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions.


Effective character attacks have come earlier in campaigns. In June 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush criticized Democrat Michael Dukakis over the furlough granted to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who then raped a woman and stabbed her companion. Related TV ads followed in September and October.

The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer.

"The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign," said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. "I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with."

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?


Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

The fact is that when racism creeps into the discussion serves a purpose for McCain. As the fallout from Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.

John McCain occasionally says he looks back on decisions with regret. He has apologized for opposing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. He has apologized for refusing to call for the removal of a Confederate flag from South Carolina's Capitol.

When the 2008 campaign is over will McCain say he regrets appeals such as Palin's? ---