Desperately Saving Sarah
20 October 2008 7:50 am by Taylor Marsh
Bill
Kristol is still trying desperately — that being the key word – to rescue
Sarah Palin. He’s peeved at Peggy.
According to the silver-penned Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street
Journal over the weekend, “In the end the Palin candidacy is a
symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics.”
He complains that Palin is simply part of the “old vulgarization.”
Vulgar is vulgar, with Palin’s policy ignorance the biggest part of that “new
vulgarization,” though her willingness to say anything without a connection to standing for anything is certainly another. That Kristol doesn’t see it, embracing “Joe the plumber”
small town elitism, even though Joe isn’t even a real plumber, above the point that all Americans belong is a
new form of divisiveness that faux home spun spin and droppin’ g’s won’t excuse. That real live plumber types like my husband have already voted early for O-Biden is another problem for the Palinites.
The other problem is Peggy Noonan
is right.
.. But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and
there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge
or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of
high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains:
What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For
seven weeks I’ve listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or
Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem
untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by
a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy,
and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism,
and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect
public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.But it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud.
She just . . . says things.
But in the end even Sarah is getting the message. She’s actually attempting to save herself.
