So Sarah had her moment in the spotlight last night, and call me crazy but I don’t think “snide” tops the list of qualties most Americans look for in a leader.
After that speech, if this audio of Palin giggling along as two anchorage shock jocks call her poltical opponent the AK Speaker of the House “a bitch” and “a Cancer” (she is a cancer surivivor) and then insult her kids and make fun of her weight) (new window) gets wider play, the combination is really going to affect her image.
She’s going to go from being seen as a cute little hockey mom and instead be seen as that one uptight shrill lady that every town has who walks up to you and asks you why you support baby-killers and sodomites when she spots an Obama bumper sticker on your car in the supermarket parking lot
watching her performance through my protective ethanol haze I wondered again how John McCain could have ever seen a potential president of the US in Palin. That’s when I made the connection:McCain was under the influence of the political equivalent of “Beer Goggles” when he made the pick…let’s call them “Fear Goggles”
This completely explains everything:
Now for those you who are teetotalers or have otherwise lead a morally exemplary life , a brief definition of the phrase “beer goggles” may be in order: It refers to that well defined effect that excess consumption of ethanol and desperation has on the optic nerve and brain. Specifically, it lessen the visual acuity and discrimination of the viewer such that a person they would normally find undesirable or even unacceptable as a partner, suddenly appears to be a shining exemplar of the ideal of the opposite sex.
Now I’m not suggesting McCain was blind drunk when he picked Palin, (though that might be a better excuse) Instead on that fateful night he was suffering the same sort of judgmental impairment due to an intoxicant far more powerful than alcohol: Flopsweat.
Picture the mood in the McCain war room on Thursday night as Obama was lighting up the thin Denver air with his fire and eloquence.
For his supporters, Obama’s Star turn at Invesco and his heady offering of hope, fire, and rhetoric was a an intoxicating (in a good way) and invigorating brew. But to his political opponents, they guys running against him? Yikes! that had to hurt . Watching that brilliant performance had to have caused nigh-clinical depression among Team McCain. And how much worse must it have been for McCain himself? Put yourself in his shoes:
He’s just seen the political equivalent of the resurrected/reunited Beatles jam with Jimi Hendrix, and he’s scheduled to go on stage next with his shadow puppet show. As the speech wear on he realizes that there is simply NO way he can match much less top what he’s seeing. Clearly he’s gonna need some major wattage star power to help him out. Unfortunately for him his short list ain’t exactly long on high-octane talent.
Should he go with Mayor 9-11?-eh a one hit wonder if ever there was one , The Hayseed?-I said STAR goddamnit! not “complete unknown” or the Liberal Mormon? _well if he could get all his relatives to vote for him, Utah’d be a lock anyway...then Suddenly SHE pops into view!
Just look at her! Why She’s a former beauty queen and she’s a governor and a mayor! Perfect! his fear-addled brain says. After all his Buddies Rush and Karl have been trying to get him to date her for months, they can’t say enough good things about her: “She’s smart”, they say; “funny too, with a great personality, and SUCH a conservative!” ” You’ll love her”, they promise, and so will all your fans.
And if she’s s good enough for his good dear friends, she’s good enough for him. So in a moment of political inebriation, he rushes forward throws his arms around her neck, and announces to the world: “This is my GIRL, and I Love her!”.
Unfortunately, in politics as in life, Night Time Beer Goggles, all too often leads to Morning Coyote Syndrome. Which, again, for the virtuous among us is that moment when you find your beloved from the night before sleeping in your arms and you have the sickening realization that he/she wasn’t quite as perfect as you thought, so much so that gnawing your own limb off like a coyote in trap, seems a viable alternative to actually waking your formerly perfect partner.
And that, I think is where Poor John McCain has found himself in the last week. Put yourself inside his shoes in the days after the announcement :
Waking up in the harsh light of the political Spotlight after his blockbuster announcement he starts seeing things his goggles made him overlook the night before. Wow! She’s a little younger than he thought, and scrambling for her ID he notices that she’s actually a governor (thank god), but not for as long as he thought. How did he not notice those training wheels on her official limo before?
And…oh Yikes, it seems that in the dim light, the night before he also failed to notice that Alaska Independence Party Button on her jacket. Then his shakes his bleary head and remember her vaguely rambling on and on about that bastard her sister married, a cop or something…and how she fixed his wagon but good when she got to be governor. Uh-oh.
And what was that she was bragging about? All that stuff she got from about her Sugar Daddy Ted Stevens She could POSSIBLY mean the same Ted Stevens he’d spent his entire career attacking. There’s no way she’s been loading up on the very pork he’s made his “reputation” fighting; is it? And her Lobbyist must have worked for a different Jack Abramoff right? Please? No? Oh crap!
Well, at least she was the mayor of town, that has….how many people? Really? Is that possible? I think I have more housekeepers than that…okay whatever, at least she was a really great and beloved Mayor who dazzled everyone with her competence right? NO? Oh. Well, at least she showed her hallmark fiscal conservatism as mayor right? No? She left them HOW much in debt? $20 Million? (after getting $23 million from uncle Ted?) doesn’t that work out to about $4,000 per resident?
You know what else I just remembered? I always HATED Karl and Rush, they aren’t my buddies at all! Why would I take advice from them? What the hell was I thinking?
But Unfortunately for McCain, he’s already done the public announcement, so he doesn’t even have the Coyote’s way out; so all that’s left is putting a brave face on the incredible mess he’s made. The Republican party knows they’re screwed unless they can lull you into putting on a pair of rose colored glasses your ownself. TO that end we’ve heard some of the most astonishing nonsense pouring out of the mouths of Republican surrogates in the last couple of days, apparently hoping that if they repeat it often enough your brain will soften and become vulnerable.
Thus we had the spectacle of Fred Thompson proudly proclaiming that Palin is the only VP nominee since Roosevelt who can field dress a moose
Well, that’s certainly significant and impressive. Wait. No It isn’t. I mean if civilization had collapsed and we’d all been reduced to bands of hunter gatherers roaming a post-apocalyptic wasteland, then I can certainly see how that would be relevant in the election for Headman.
As it is though, I really can’t see two high-level diplomats in some far-flung corner corner of the world saying to themselves “well I question president Palin’s economic benefit analysis in this new bilateral trade deal” Yes, but she CAN dress a moose, so I saw we go for it.”
Yet Newt Gingrich was on tv today telling people how incredibly important that line would be to regular folk by which he clearly (and utterly condescendingly) meant
“people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons. “
But even the republicans recognize the limitations of the “she’s pretty handy with a gut ripper” strategy so they’re also pushing the “executive experience” canard. So many republicans have utter the Phrase “EXECUTIVE Experience” in the last few days That I want executive transvestite Eddie Izzard to sue for copyright infringement.
Over and over again today I heard Republicans fiercely proclaim the incredible executive experience Palin gained as mayor of the tiny hamlet of Wasilla, AK (where she was elected after receiving slightly more than 300 of the 600 votes cast that year). Time and again they compared her sterling Mayoral experience with Obama’s time as (derisive sniff) a community organizer (never bothering to mention the State and US Senate positions for some reason). Again and again they echoed Gingrich’s question “what did Obama accomplish as a community organizer? (you mean ASIDE from organizing the largest and most successful voter turn out operation ever? One that probably swung Illinois for Clinton in 1992 and thereby secured him the presidency? OTHER than that you mean?)
Never once did they turn that question around an tell you what PALIN accomplished, proabably because that gets a touch..messy for them. Still
the Republicans are so invested in this one that I fully expect to see these poster behind McCain and Palin at all future rallies:
Of course the hilarious thing about this particular line of argument is that, as they define it. the top of their ticket has none of this vaunted “executive experience whatever. Oops
So that then leave them the “defining competency down” gambit: This is where the surrogates invest every mundane part of her life with incredible significance (my Personal favorite was John Voight telling POTUS 08 that since Palin has been a mom, and we all know that being a mom is “the toughest job in the world” clearly she’s qualified for some lesser position like a mere president of the US.) This has worked fairly well, but the press is catching on. Scott Walterman of POTUS 08 (the wonderful XM news channel) stumped Duncan Hunter’s kid (running for dad’s seat in CA) with a simple question “Okay , but her life story sounds like nearly every other middle class mom, what makes her stand out? What makes her uniquely accomplished?” There was some sputtering and then he tried valiantly to redirect the question into a paean about how her utter ordinariness makes her uniquely qualified to relate to the problem of ordinary Americans. But when the host asked him again, he was forced to basically admit he had nuthin’
But it really isn’t his fault because there really IS no good answer for that. If Palin is qualified to be President, then so are you, and so is they guy who fixes your car and the one who greets you at the door of the Piggly-Wiggly And while this is a deeply flattering notion, we all know at it core it isn’t true. As the Republicans used to say, (up until last Friday) this is a dangerous and complex world, and America needs proven leadership. As John Stewart said “Not only do I want an elite president,I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me.”
Does Anyone feel Sara Palin is “embarrassingly superior” to them? Does McCain? Of course not. Even he must recognize now that he’s a victim of his “fear goggle” impaired judgment. Which is sad for him, but it’s up to us to see that the nation isn’t the one with hangover in November.