I take a lot of heat for my praising of Sarah Palin - but that's the point, it's amusing how annoyed, almost insulted liberals become if you say you like her - I find that revealing - and the fact is she embodies certain characteristics, some bad, some good, that lie at the center of a realistic understanding of politics and power - so she does tend to fascinate me.
But I still think I'd be shocked and not a little alarmed by her actually running for and winning the presidency - I mean aside from making me look a bit soothsayerish since I did float such a possibility back when most were dismissing her as little more than an ignorant, bumpkin clown - but that brief sense of having one up on the supposedly much wiser punditry would soon recede behind some real concern.
For instance, apparently it was an endorsement from Sarah that pushed Christine O'Donnell to a surprise win in the Delaware republican primary for Biden's senate seat - apparently the GOP had a real shot of taking over this traditionally liberal seat - as long as they didn't nominate Tea Party favourite O'Donnell who, from what I've read, is either an absolute wacko in the far right fundamentalist religious zeal mode or an absolute con artist who sings whatever song she needs to sing in order to advance her 'interests', in this case feeding the Tea Party frenzy to it seems back anyone who doesn't sound, look or smell anything like politics as usual. And now it's thanks to Sarah that we got this girl, a person so vile that apparently even Karl Rove can't stand her.
And so the concern - but on second thought concern only if Sarah made this plunder out of ideological blindness or astounding ignorance or an impoverished sense of judgement - what if she made this 'blunder' as part of some cunning calculation to make herself even more of a hero to the Tea Partiers [but to what practical end if candidates like O'Donnell scare away independents]? Look, they might say, how our Sarah sacrificed her good name and put it all on the line to support the cause and send a clear message to the GOP establishment! What if she's that cunning? You see, that's why the girl fascinates me. [but, c'mon, you don't really think she's that clever - it's just more fun imagining that she might be, no? Could be I've invented a scenario for my own purposes that has very little to do with reality - I still insist that reading from the teleprompter there's few out there better and, like it or not, that's a significant talent to have - but removed from the security of a rehearsed performance she does come across as 90% ambition and self promotion and 10% substance - but then again I could say the same more or less about Obama - sure he has law school smarts in the sense he can remember a lot of details and weave them into circumlocutions that vaguely resemble something a truly eloquent person might say - but have I heard or read anything from him that suggests a profound understanding of the world and the people crawling across it? No - just sounds like another salesman to me, except that the product he's moving just happens to be himself and the self he is selling is the phony promise of a liberal transcendence neatly manifested in his post racial, transnational persona]
