While some people’s views of Palin have changed, Peggy Noonan’s have been all over the place

On August 29 the whole country was suddenly thrown into the Sarah Palin mixmaster and had to figure out what this total newcomer was about, even as new things about Palin kept emerging almost every day, so naturally people’s views about her have gone through changes over the last seven weeks.

However, there’s such a thing as modifying one’s opinions in the light of new information and new thoughts, and repeatedly and incoherently reversing oneself. And that is what Peggy Noonan has done, as explained at Powerline (which has changed to a cold, corporate-looking, and harder-to-read format).

As an example of the way people’s opinions about Gov. Palin have altered, Mark Jaws, once a major fan of Palin’s, said today in an e-mail:

Joe the Plumber is an irrelevant flash in the pan, and as such he will be but a footnote. To a lesser extent I feel the same way about Sarah Palin, which is why I sent out the Peggy Noonan excerpt. At this stage, she is obviously not VP material.

I wrote to Mr. Jaws:

Mark, could you do me a favor and retrace the arc of your views re Palin? You were initially very enthusiastic about her. We had a lively debate on this in early September, in which you and others argued that she was a “real person,” and I and others countered that being a “real person” is not a qualification for the vice presidency and that Republicans had embraced a politics of emotionalism. It seems that your views have changed markedly since then and I’ve lost the thread. There’s no criticism implied in this. Everyone was suddenly thrown into the Sarah Palin mixmaster and had to figure out what she was about, even as new things about her kept emerging every day, so naturally people’s ideas of her went through changes.

Mr. Jaws replies:

Sure. Larry, I have rhino skin, and I don’t care what people think about me. Really.

Palin gave an arousing acceptance speech and judged by her record of accomplishment in Alaska, I thought she was the real thing. Well, within a week or two after the convention, I went to the big McCain-Palin rally in northern VA, and she gave a condensed version of “the speech.” Not a word was changed, not a new thought was injected. I thought to myself, “Uh, oh.” It has been all downhill from there. Then came the Charlie Gibson interview, the Katie Couric interview. Larry, you and I may not be presidential material, but we can answer questions and more likely stuff it back into the interviewer’s face. Then when she blamed the mortgage meltdown on “greedy Wall Street bankers” without mentioning the social engineered affirmative action as a catalyst, I thought “light weight.” Furthermore, her voice grates on me….

Gerald M. writes:

Like most others, including (I’m pleased to note) Mark Jaws, my views on Palin have evolved. In September (after instruction from Laura W. and Carol Iannone) I turned against her because of her essentially feminist behavior regarding her family. It was clear her ambitions, her needs, came first, before the needs of her children. To me this belied any claim she had to the title, conservative.

Still, even though her credentials were flawed, I thought Palin was bright and articulate, and had brought the conservative base back into the McCain campaign, making her a brilliant political choice, if nothing else. And, given time, experience, and a lot of reading and study, I believed she might be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Not anymore.

I recall your article describing in detail how she is the least experienced VP candidate in many decades. But at the time, this post made no impression on me. It took all the Palin interviews, and the vice-presidential debate (in which I thought she did OK until I read the transcript), really to open my mind to how ignorant this woman is and how inarticulate and incoherent she is when forced off her teleprompter and talking points. So now I appreciate what you were saying about experience. Furthermore, I don’t see Palin ever being ready to be a serious force; I don’t think she’s capable of it.

Today CNN televised Palin live at a big outdoor rally. Thousands of people cheered as she made her way across the stage, holding her newest baby, Trig (whom she always refers to by the Orwellian term, a “special needs child”). The baby was in a papoose (to celebrate his Inuit heritage, perhaps) and Palin lifted him high above her head, literally brandishing him as a symbol of the whole campaign as the crowd went wild. Then, she leaned down, handed him off to a member of her entourage, and began reciting her usual talking points. I suppose the next gimmick will have Palin breastfeeding him at the lectern.

Finally, tonight Palin was on Saturday Night Live. They didn’t allow her to say anything in rebuttal as Tina Fey savagely parodied her. Fey then refused to even say hello to Palin when they passed each other going off and on camera. Palin briefly appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment where the SNL cast was again rude and disrespectful. I could scarcely believe how one-sided, degrading, and cruel the whole thing was.

And yet, Palin accepted it. She is truly pathetic.

LA replies:

This business of making her infant baby a central feature of her political rallies, if it was as you describe it, is gross beyond belief. I’m appalled.

I’m also amazed that SNL, after inviting her on the show, would be openly rude to her. That’s unheard of.

John Hagan writes:

I still don’t know enough about Palin to make some kind of final assumption about her talents and abilities. The McCain people have her tightly managed, and scripted. I say this because I’ve watched her debates from her prior Alaskan campaigns, and she was in total command of the stage and issues; and buried her more experienced competition. That Sarah Palin I suspect is the real one, not this McCain manufactured enigma.

As for the Saturday Night Live appearance…. she was delightful. It’s funny how people see what they want to see. She was not disrespected in the least IMO. It was a comedy sketch. They were acting. I detected no vile intent by anyone on that set. Those clips can be watched all over the internet, and people can judge them for what they are.

Terry Morris writes:

It’s understandable to a point that many conservatives were taken in by Palin when she first appeared on stage in this campaign. It is also understandable that a proportion of conservatives are now moving away from Palin. What is not understandable is that proportion of conservatives that continues to tout her as the great white (female) conservative hope, in spite of the fact that she clearly isn’t. Nonetheless one can only hope that more conservatives come to this realization eventually, and the sooner the better.

This Jacksonian (as in Michael) episode that Gerald describes of Palin holding Trig above her head on stage is indeed appalling, not just as it reveals a character deficiency in Sarah Palin herself, but in the larger sense that it shows a complete disregard for genuine conservative principles in the entire McCain campaign. Oh, the act testifies to Sarah Palin’s “family values,” damn right! Is there any conservative left who truly believes Sarah Palin and John McCain aren’t on the exact same page? But really, why should any of us have expected anything different from any element of this thoroughly non-conservative campaign, particularly after Bristol Palin’s boyfriend was paraded on and off stage at the RNC? Had Sarah Palin the conservative instinct that God gave a newborn, she would have never permitted that scene to have occurred.

This whole farce of a Republican campaign does little more than add insult to injury.

Paul Nachman writes:

And what are “serious” candidates doing, going on Saturday Night Live, anyway? Presidential campaign as carnival.

LA replies:

Well, that’s something of a tradition. And U.S. presidential campaigns have always been part carnival. That’s part of the fun of them. Don’t you remember Nixon in 1968 going on the Rowan and Martin Laugh-In and saying, “Sock it to me”?

And by the way, prefiguring a certain campaign slogan this year, in 1968 there was a humorous leftist anti-Nixon poster showing a pregnant young black woman with the words, “Nixon’s the One.”

The Editrix writes from Germany:

Your reader Gerald M. writes about Palin: “The baby was in a papoose (to celebrate his Inuit heritage, perhaps) and Palin lifted him high above her head, literally brandishing him as a symbol of the whole campaign as the crowd went wild. Then, she leaned down, handed him off to a member of her entourage, and began reciting her usual talking points. I suppose the next gimmick will have Palin breastfeeding him at the lectern.”

It may be just a silly spontaneous mind-picture, but doesn’t the entire scenario (including the shocking notion of Palin breastfeeding in public) remind of some “New Age” happening? And that said, aren’t there quite a few “New Age” elements in Sarah Palin’s persona and nomination? To mind come first the silly hippie-names of her children, then the rave about her, which reminds one of the passionate rejection of “male dominance” and “patriarchy,” one of the key elements of New Age, which has crept deeply into the mainstream of Western society. Here, it is epitomised by the reduction of the hunky husband to a grinning children-cuddling minion at the fringe of the campaign.

Al R. writes:

And as the Vortex widens and deepens, and all is Whirl, do I detect a certain delicacy at the VFR folkmoot, a dusting of the fingers over Joe and Sarah while truly regretting the defections of Peggy and the rest? Is this now to be the only satisfaction wrung from defeat? Only asking….

LA replies:

Don’t just ask. Feel free to make a point. What is the attitude you see as questionable?

Al R. replies:

Thanks for the reply. Let’s see—a man under fire, a rain of lead and his platoon leader crawls over and says,” Button your tunic, you schmuck, where do you think you are?” That attitude. There are times when the watchmen are not to our taste. Would I dine with Sarah Palin on moose and squirrel? Is [Whitaker?] Chambers a mind-meld with me? Would I love having Tailgunner Joe over for drinks? Best of all, McCain. McCain, say it again—whatever it is you say, say it again. Distasteful man, small, disfigured, old, nitwit on immigration, lousy pilot, did his first wife dirty—I’d like to smack his face. I once had a Marine as a neighbor here on the upper west side of Manhattan. Boorish drunk married to a nice Jewish woman. Everybody wondered what she saw in him. He liked dogs. Wife died. He’d fall down in the street every so often. He died. Nobody mourned. The point is, (if I may) Larry. He once took a bullet for me and for you.

LA replies:

I’m still not sure I get your main point. However, Gen. Patton required his men to shave. Elsewhere in the U.S. army in Europe in the war, our men looked like unshaven bums. I guess Patton was too delicate?

LA continues:

However, if your main point is that McCain-Palin with their neocon ideology of universal democracy and open borders really represent the defense of America, and that I and others by criticizing them over mere secondary issues of articulateness, demeanor, family matters, etc., are missing the main issue, I would respectfully reply that you are missing the main issue. McCain does not represent the defense of America. His mission is to universalize, diversify, and dissolve America. This is called patriotism. Sacrificing our nation’s wealth and blood in an unending utopian quest to stabilize and democratize Muslim countries that will never be our friends is called “Country First.” We just forgot to ask which country.

It’s not just the supposedly secondary flaws of McCain and Palin I object to, but their primary flaws.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 18, 2008 06:53 PM | Send