Like Ilya, I’ve been reading Sarah Palin’s book and following her media appearances. It’s difficult to say anything original about a polarizing figure such as Palin. And no matter what you say, around half of the VC readership will be convinced you are a complete idiot (which half depending on which side you take). But that aside, I wanted to add in a few thoughts of my own to the mix.
What I find most striking about Palin is that she seems to have no real interest in governance. She has charisma and oodles of attitude, and they are like catnip to a significant part of the GOP base. But she doesn’t seem genuinely interested in the job of governing or the issues most relevant to it. I think that lack of interest explains some of the more surprising aspects of her career, ranging from her decision to quit her job as Alaska Governor before she finished her first Term to her flubbed answer when asked to name newspapers or magazines she read before being tapped as McCain’s nominee. Of course, Palin is a strong conservative when asked for her views. But she just doesn’t seem to have a real interest in the job of governance.
What Palin does have is oodles of attitude, and her attitude is just perfect to energize a chunk of the post-Bush GOP base. To see why, remember that Bush’s second term demoralized a lot of Republicans. W.‘s approval ratings dropped to Nixon-in-Watergate levels by around 2006 and stayed there for most of the second term. Palin is the perfect antidote for those Republicans who continued to support Bush. She identifies with them, and she never hesitates to fight back at their common enemies. In her book, Palin presents herself as just an average patriotic American who was mistreated by the press, mistreated by professional “handlers,” and mistreated by the insider Beltway culture. That is, she was mistreated by the same groups that Bush supporters believe mistreated Bush and helped ruin his second Term.
But while Bush never seemed concerned with the criticism of him, and therefore did not generally fight back at it, Palin rarely hesitates to say that she was treated unfairly. She fights back and defends herself, readily laying the blame for her perceived weaknesses at the feet of others. It’s “going rogue,” and it’s catnip for former Bush supporters who were frustrated that Bush didn’t go on the offense. I suspect that has a lot to do with some of the enthusiasm for her.
LN says:
Orin, if Bush had been more on the “offense” during his second term, how would the reaction to Palin been any different?
I mean, I couldn’t stand Bush, but blaming him for Palin’s ascendancy seems very unfair.
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November 22, 2009, 10:47 pmbyomtov says:
What I find most striking about Palin is that she seems to have no real interest in governance.
I think this was true of Bush also. He hardly seemed like someone who thought very deeply or carefully about policy matters.
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November 22, 2009, 10:48 pmOrin Kerr says:
LN,
I don’t understand your comment. Who blamed Bush for Palin’s ascendancy? Fair to whom?
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November 22, 2009, 10:49 pmRandy says:
Let’s see. A little over a year ago, Sarah Palin was governor of a minor state and completely known to anyone outside of that state.
Today, she is famous, paling around with celebrities of all kinds, appears on national tv shows for interviews, rakes in millions from her book deals, speeches and other appearances. She speaks at rallies that draw thousands, and has a fantastic new wardrobe paid for by the GOP.
But, as she reminds us, we are supposed to feel sorry for her. ” Palin rarely hesitates to say that she was treated unfairly.”
I don’t know, but I think there are tons of Americans who would love to be treated this unfairly.
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November 22, 2009, 10:50 pmOrin Kerr says:
Randy,
Can you explain how your comment was responsive to the thread? If you’re just expressing your personal dislike of Palin, rather than responding to the thread, I will delete your comment on relevance grounds.
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November 22, 2009, 10:52 pmjimM47 says:
In other words, the office for which she was running was uniquely suited to her. :-p
More seriously, I suspect that the reasons OK cites for pro-Bush GOPers liking Palin extend further to GOPers who feel culturally disconnected from elite critics in general, not just over Bush specifically.
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November 22, 2009, 11:02 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Jim’s right. Remember Bush 41? “I’m George Bush. You die, I fly.”
(...ETA, quote from when he was Reagan’s VP, of course.)
...Orin, if Palin were a male, would you say that he had “oodles” of attitude? Just asking.
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November 22, 2009, 11:06 pmLegalCookie says:
This post made me want oodles of catnip.
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November 22, 2009, 11:25 pmCornellian says:
What I find most striking about Palin is that she seems to have no real interest in governance. She has charisma and oodles of attitude, and they are like catnip to a significant part of the GOP base. But she doesn’t seem genuinely interested in the job of governing or the issues most relevant to it. . . . Of course, Palin is a strong conservative when asked for her views. But she just doesn’t seem to have a real interest in the job of governance.
I have the same view — she’s not interested in governance. Interesting that you refer to her as “a strong conservative when asked for her views.” I’d put that a little bit differently and say that she knows the points that the base wants to hear, but has little or no interest in thinking about how any of those general principles (small government, free markets etc.) might translate into actual policies for dealing with actual problems.
I actually don’t blame her for wanting to be an extremely well paid celebrity pundit, a la Glenn Beck, rather than a politician. A politician’s job sucks in so many ways, lots of people would make the same choice, given the opportunity.
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November 22, 2009, 11:29 pmbyomtov says:
Palin is the perfect antidote for those Republicans who continued to support Bush.
This is puzzling. For quite some time self-described conservatives have been running away from Bush, arguing that his administration ought not be considered an example of what conservative government looks like. It seems to me that Palin appeals precisely to these people, or at least a subset. That doesn’t mesh with the idea that Palin supporters were diehard Bushies.
My impression is that Palinites were generally unhappy with Bush — from the right.
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November 22, 2009, 11:32 pmAnatid says:
Her gender is one of her major selling points — it’s the reason why she was chosen as VP candidate in the first place. She’s young, attractive, female, has a regional accent, and milks these for all they’re worth.
For example. She wore a red dress and open-toed shoes when she delivered her official speech for the candidacy. Would you wear a red dress and open-toed shoes to a job interview?
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November 22, 2009, 11:45 pmpc says:
Possibly, but my legs are quite hairy and I’ve never been good at walking in heels.
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November 22, 2009, 11:51 pmtheobromophile says:
I don’t want to take Orin’s perfectly sane thread — a rare treat for Palin (or political) posts — and turn it into a train wreck, but I’ll say this: sane humans would have left the governorship. Only a professional politician would have stayed.
Palin had spent a half-million dollars in her own money — plus millions in state money — fighting ethics complaints. Do the math — she would have been bankrupt by 2010 (and with no way to raise money, given that even her legal fundraising efforts were the subject of ethics complaints). Human beings would also not really like to see their families dragged through the mud. Human beings, no matter how thick or thin their skin, would probably also want to have a legal and ethical basis to fight back. (While Palin may have been able to bring, and win, a defamation suit while sitting in office, there’s a moral issue with politicians bringing lawsuits against the press, no matter how justified. Maybe I’m just a crazy libertarian, but I do not like the idea of a prominent and powerful member of the government using the court systems against private citizens.)
Obviously, people differ among what they want from politicians, not just in ideology but also in background and temperament. We also have a wide range of views on what constitutes acceptable treatment of politician’s families. Personally, I would be furious if the press were to report negatively on Malia and Sasha, even if Obama gets a second term and even if one or both of them are legal adults by that point. I just think that the reporting on families — especially children of any age — should resemble something out of a 1950s-era sitcom.
In light of that, Palin’s resignation makes perfect sense to me; it does not show that she lacks any interest in governing, as per Prof. Kerr’s analysis, but that governing is not her top priority.
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November 22, 2009, 11:54 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Yeah, but “oodles”?
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November 22, 2009, 11:56 pmAnatid says:
Maybe not oodles. But definitely more than a smidge.
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November 23, 2009, 12:00 amOrin Kerr says:
Laura,
It seems to me that I mostly used words that are traditionally considered masculine when describing Palin: “She fights back and defends herself,” “she never hesitates to fight back,” she “has charisma,” etc.
If Palin were a male, would you comment to point that out?
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November 23, 2009, 12:00 amJohnF says:
I think she comes across as very much the Un-politician, despite her own political career. She seems to have principles, and they resonate with a huge number of Americans. I think because she is not overtly seeking any office she will be a big hit for a long time and will be of great help to conservative or even libertarian politicians.
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November 23, 2009, 12:11 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t consider those to be male actions and attributes. Charisma is traditionally considered masculine, really? It’s a male thing, to defend and to fight back? In other words, women are typically meek and just take whatever is handed out? Not my experience.
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November 23, 2009, 12:17 amGainesvilleGuest says:
I disagree that Palin draws her support from Bush supporters who wished Bush would fight back. Palin’s support is deepest in the conservative grassroots. Bush alienated these groups with increased spending and other statist policies. He received intense criticism from the right for these policies, and those critics are now Palin’s supporters.
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November 23, 2009, 12:34 amRicardo says:
Well, I don’t consider “oodles” to be of or pertaining to female actions or attributes.
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November 23, 2009, 12:34 amneurodoc says:
Who said/wrote what that you imagine Palin might have successfully sued them for slander/libel?
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November 23, 2009, 12:47 amtheobromophile says:
Palin’s attorney wrote of a possible lawsuit; many people — pundits, bloggers, blawgers, etc — have speculated as to the potential success of such a lawsuit.
(Incidentally, “success” is not necessarily defined as “winning huge damages in court” in this context. In these circumstances, “success” could be simply the cessation of claims about how Trig is really Bristol’s baby.)
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November 23, 2009, 12:59 amOrin Kerr says:
Laura,
You seem to have misinterpreted “traditionally considered” as being “what I personally think right now.” But “traditionally considered” means “traditionally considered.” If it makes you feel better, it never occurred to me that the word “oodle” is somehow feminine. Further, if you really think men can’t oodle, I would take great offense at that suggestion.
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November 23, 2009, 1:21 amloki13 says:
For those of complaining of “oodles” how about Orin just write that instead of her oodles of attitude (which is a turn of phrase I’d love to have applied to me), she has cajones the size of her state? Better?
Should we apply that phrase (cajones the size of . . .) to female candidates, because to apply them to men wwould be demeaning, but then only apply male terms to female candidates? And since when did English become a gendered language. I know that some words have contexts and subtexts (had the post referred to the dainty little flower overcome with hysteria at the accusations, I would rightfully cringe).... but oodles?
Or, as the French would it, “la oodles (l’oodles)”? No.... les oodles. Unless you’re talking about legal french. Darn, I just confused myself.
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November 23, 2009, 1:23 amloki13 says:
As for the substance of OK’s post, I think it’s about the same wavelength I’m on. I think Palin is neither the idiot her detractors make her out to be nor the conservative savant her supporters believe her to be. I just think she’s really interested in, well, Palin. This doesn’t really make her different from most politicians (they have an ego– really?), but it does make her different from, say, Ronald Reagan. I don’t think RR was that great of a President, but I’ll give him this– from the good ol’ days (medicare is socialism!) to his governorship of California, to his appearances in public, he had ideas that he wanted implemented. He wanted to govern. It wasn’t about RR. I don’t get the same vibe from Palin. YMMV.
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November 23, 2009, 1:28 amFlash Gordon says:
After eight years of George W. Bush not fighting back and defending himself it seemed to conservatives that this man was losing his dignity. It is no wonder that they like Sarah Palin standing up for her dignity and defending herself. But there is a larger reason for her popularity among conservatives. She drives liberals bonkers and causes them to make fools of themselves. What’s not to love about that?
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November 23, 2009, 1:29 amfreshlegacy says:
I think a great deal of Sarah Palin’s appeal derives from the perception she might well run for president in 2012 (or at least 2016). If and when it becomes apparent she will not run for president, she may well lose her current level of attention on the national scene, having rendered herself a “lame duck.” Nothing enhances one’s power like the threat of acquiring power or holding onto the power you already have. Nothing diminishes one’s power like the certainty of losing it, as 2nd term presidents typically discover.
It’s also possible she is aware of this and just seeks to feather her nest while the feathering is good.
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November 23, 2009, 1:35 amDesiderius says:
Palin is about more than politics at this stage. At least, as OK notes, governmental politics. Sexual politics is what is driving the fascination with her.
She is the Napoleon of the Sexual Revolution.
As with the little corporal, she talks the Revolutionary talk (in this case feminist), while offering an appealing alternative to the Robespierres that plague our family courts and Victimology Studies departments of academedia/government/corporateHR.
Here’s hoping that that alternative is more substantive, and true to the principles of that revolution, than Napoleon’s was.
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November 23, 2009, 2:12 amsubpatre says:
Orin writes, “Of course, Palin is a strong conservative when asked for her views. But she just doesn’t seem to have a real interest in the job of governance.”
Yet one has to wonder if Orin actually did read her book, when the first chapters are sprinkled with examples of her interest —and political philosophy— of governance. Pages 64–65 on property versus sales tax, p62 supporting private action against Exxon Valdez, p70-71 free enterprise, etcetera.
The primary response to Palin has been rooted in sexism, from talk-show host Oprah to professor Orin; neither can break loose from
obsessionconcern over trivia while discounting plain facts about her governance, governing ‘style’, and concrete accomplishments.During the interview, Winfrey hammered on the ‘having it all’ myth that a primary caregiver cannot govern at the same time; pointing out that American women are still children’s primary caregivers. Yet the Palins’ are not a statistical family, and when Sarah politely pointed that out, it went in one of Oprah’s ears and flew out the other.
The MSM and Orin’s take on Palin is about her beliefs; not about what she has done, what she tried to do, and what she wants to do in governing. An example is Palin’s opposition to easy abortion, yet she never tried to legislate on that belief. More to the point, no interviewer ever asked Palin about legislating on the issue. Orin continues this studied sleight between the personal and professional.
Orin belittles Palin’s use of the word ‘rogue’ by inferring it is about press criticisms; yet ignores the plain, stark facts (pages 93–99) that Palin took on a corrupt establishment and tore holes in the Republican Party’s top ranks when she got their leaders fined and imprisoned. That is what ‘rogue’ is.
The book sure isn’t a policy tome, but missing the policies and governance embedded in the narrative can only be deliberate, or —more likely— entrenched cultural expectations, aka sexism.
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November 23, 2009, 2:17 amD.O. says:
Prof. Kerr, you might want to analize Palin’s career as a governor of Alaska more fully than just her “quit”. I think she was reasonably competent and not overly ideological. She did take on “corrupt bastards” (as we know that ethics reform backfiered), she did move through an alternative plan for the gas pipeline just to keep big players on their toes (two previous Alaska governors were just in bed with them), she did build or at least used a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats for her adgenda. Of course, Palin is over her head in national issues, but that’s another story.
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November 23, 2009, 2:25 amNickM says:
So tell us, how often do you oodle?
FWIW, I don’t consider it a feminine term either.
Nick
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November 23, 2009, 2:25 amOrin Kerr says:
Subpatre,
Palin’s book is 413 pages long, and the three discussions you mention of policy issues amount to a total of about a half of one page. In fact, some of the “discussions” are just several words long.
For example, the section on Palin’s views of free enterprise that you tout as proof of her interest in governance is the following sentence on page 71, when she is reflecting on her campaign themes when she ran for Mayor of Wasilla: “I also wanted to speed things up in our little town, to keep us growing and prospering by embracing laissez-faire principles and promoting Wasilla as a pro-free-enterprise kind of town.”
Maybe I’m missing something, but what you suggest was a reflection of her interest in governing was really just a one-sentence recollection of a campaign theme. In fact, most of page 71 is about the debate for mayor, and a story about how after the debate, three guys approached her and told her they didn’t think she would win because she’s a mom. And yet she showed them by winning.
Of course, you suggest that my overt sexism is leading me to “miss[] the policies and governance embedded in the narrative,” so maybe the story about the three guys approaching her after the debate is some sort of parable for the flat tax?
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November 23, 2009, 2:45 amLeo Marvin says:
Laura, I could see where “oodles of attitude” may have a slightly feminine connotation, but do you think it’s negative? If I had to guess, I’d expect Palin would consider it a compliment. Does it offend you, and if so, why?
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November 23, 2009, 2:49 amanon says:
While I agree that she doesn’t seem to be interested in governance, I think she thinks that she is. During the campaign (and I think during some of the book tour interviews), she talked about how she had executive experience running a state and Obama did not. During her talk at the Republican Governor’s meeting (or conference; the one that took place right after last year’s election), she talked about how she had warned people that governors know best because they have executive experience governing. And she keeps talking about how she didn’t quit but rather, is “reloading.” Reloading to do what? Most people think to run for public office.
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November 23, 2009, 2:52 amanon says:
Sorry for the typos in my comment (at 2:52 am). I thought I edited them, but I guess not. It’s the first time I comment with the new format.
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November 23, 2009, 2:59 amLeo Marvin says:
Orin,
From where I sit (i.e., the other side), Palin’s appeal seems more about her willingness to attack her opponents on populist and ideological grounds than defending herself personally from their attacks, though I assume there’s also some of that. You may consider that a distinction without a difference, or I may even be reading your post too narrowly, and you don’t intend the distinction at all. Anyway, I agree at least with the broad proposition that a big part of her appeal is her combativeness.
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November 23, 2009, 3:14 amGuy says:
The book uses laissez-faire approvingly? I had the impression that term is only ever applied (in recent times) by critics of what it describes, like politically correct or the gay lifestyle.
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November 23, 2009, 3:18 amD.O. says:
Palin’s real actions in Alaska were decidedly non-partisan. She probably does not want to advertise it now. When prices of heating oil went up she responded by ... giving out more cash to people (Alaska pays people to leave here). How’s that for laissez-faire?
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November 23, 2009, 3:27 amPeter B says:
For what it’s worth Willie Brown, who ought to know, says Palin has some of the best political instincts he’s ever seen. He was talking about her resignation from the governorship. On the other hand, it’s Willie Brown. Does he mean it, or is he playing rope-a-dope with Republicans again? I always feel like I need to count my fingers after just reading about the guy in the newspaper.
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November 23, 2009, 3:34 amLeo Marvin says:
This seems like a very crude, unsympathetic version of Orin’s take.
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November 23, 2009, 4:00 amBrian says:
I don’t know how long it is before a post expires and comments are no longer read, but your statement that Palin “seems to have no real interest in governance” has no basis in the pages of her book, which makes it unsurprising that you never attempt to so ground it.
Like about 800,000 people right now, I have book before me. I’m tired now, but later today, I’ll give both the page-spans (if that’s a word) and specific citations to both her actions and her governing philosophy as a City Councilwoman, Mayor, oil & gas regulator & Governor. All of this comprises a significant part of the book.
It seems to me that...you use the locution “seems to” in order to avoid instant falsification of your claim that Palin has no real interest in governance. For no matter how many citations I come up with, referring to her actually governing, and explaining her interest in and philosophy of governance, you can always retort with some psychological speculation as to why, nevertheless, Palin has “no real interest in governance.”
I’ll expand on all this later, if only for the record, as this thread might be dead by then.
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November 23, 2009, 4:01 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Why should Palin’s book be centered on governance? The flyover-American sensibility is that life is mostly individual and family, and that government has only a limited role in it. Palin and Palin’s book reflect that sensibility.
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November 23, 2009, 6:39 amBT says:
When Palin was first introduced as the VP candidate and watching the ensuing overwhelmingly positive reaction from the GOP base to her, it struck me how similar the reaction to her was to the reaction to Obama by his supporters. It was as if they both had descended from heaven.
Obama has certainly come down to earth (thankfully), Palin will no doubt soon follow. What we have found in Obama is a guy who rode a wave of positive sentiment and a perfect storm of media support, Bush hatred, Republican incompetency, etc., to the White House. He was a great campaigner; he has turned out to be a moribund leader. My guess is that Palin, if elected president, would have a similar trajectory.
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November 23, 2009, 6:52 amJaynie59 says:
I, too, have to wonder if we’ve read the same book. My impression of Palin is that she has a huge interest in governing but very little interest in politics.
It’s always been the desire to make a difference that has propelled her to be in politics and it’s the politics aspect of it that she has the hardest time with. She’s been dealing with political enemies since the beginning and she seems (from what she writes in the book) to have always taken it as part of the price to pay to get things done. If she has to take phones calls at night at her kitchen table and listen to some constituent go on and on about some issue, she always did that.
I think Palin’s biggest problem is that nobody is willing to give her the same benefit that other VP candidates have always gotten. I think her biggest mistake in the 2008 election was that her respect and admiration for John McCain’s history and service to this country overshadowed everything else and accepting the VP nomination was a mistake she shouldn’t have made.
Sarah Palin will never say a bad word about John McCain. Ever. But the simple truth is that by accepting the slot on his ticket she put herself in a position where she could never be herself or say what she truly believed in. She was a true team player, as all VP’s are supposed to be and are expected to be, but the fact is she was running with a man whose policies she never would have supported if she herself were not on the ticket.
I don’t think she will run for office again. But if she does, it will be the desire to govern which makes her run.
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November 23, 2009, 7:14 ammls says:
The only interesting thing about Palin (apart from how she looks) is explaining the intense reactions, pro and con, that people seem to have to her. Professor Kerr’s explanation of the former may not be exactly on target, but it seems reasonable. More importantly, he is clearly correct in noting her apparent lack of interest (to put it kindly) in anything related to national government or policy.
One thing that conservatives should have learned from the experience with Bush is the danger of failing to criticize an alleged conservative leader simply because doing so will give aid and comfort to ideological opponents. Should have learned, but apparently have not . . .
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November 23, 2009, 7:33 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Do you guys not ever go to bed?
Per “oodles”: It’s just that the word jumped out at me, and it jumped out twice. The post has a colloquial tone, and even so the word seemed a bit jarring to me. So I asked.
FWIW, this:
feels to me more than a bit jarring. However, I am coming from my experiences, and you are not, so I’ll let you quote Tiny Tim here, “things that bother you never bother me!”
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November 23, 2009, 7:41 amRichard Aubrey says:
neurodoc.
In the context, what on earth makes you want to know what a “succesful” lawsuit by Palin is necessary?
You don’t sue to be “successful”. You sue to punish. Winning is a bonus, but hardly the reason to start.
i.e. See the suits against Palin.
There is a blog called “Reclusive Leftist”, which Lenin might find a bit extreme. It’s also extremely feminist, which you can tell because they use the eff word a whole lot.
A couple of months ago, however, there were a couple of almost entirely reasonable posts on Palin, Palin politics, and Palin-hate.
They put it down to misogyny, including the huge numbers of women who went along with it.
Of course, they were livid that the dems dumped Hillary, which might have fueled some of their outrage.
Interesting points.
I think it would be useful to find out if Palin wrote the book to explain her interest in politics and governance. If not, the fact that it isn’t there is meaningless but useful for folks who have nothing else to go on.
By the way, careful criticizing any sentences somebody tells you are from her book.
Slate’s already pulled that one, but you never know where the next will turn up.
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November 23, 2009, 7:57 amArkady says:
Quite right. My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that while she has no real interest in governance, she does have an interest in making money. But for this last, she’ll need to sustain her political celebrity. So I expect a kinda, sorta run for the presidency to maintain that celebrity.
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November 23, 2009, 8:21 amegd says:
What do you mean by “an interest in governance”?
Do you mean “aspirations for political office?” If so, I think that the issue is well settled. She was a mayor, governor, VP candidate, and appears to be setting herself up for a run at the presidency. Therefore, that statement is demonstrably false.
Or do you mean “interest in controlling people’s lives through the machinations of the government?” If so, then I think that would be a true, and refreshing, statement. It would be nice to have a politician whose first thought wasn’t “how can the government solve this problem.”
Or do you mean “no interest in running an executive branch?” Again, I think this is false. She left political office in Alaska because of her inability to run the executive branch due to frivolous complaints sponsored by DNC allies. Before her candidacy for VP, however, she did run Alaska successfully, showing at least an aptitude for the position. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe someone would become governor of a state if they didn’t have any interest in running it.
Or do you mean “no concept of how to get policy ideas from conception to implementation?” If so, I think this is an issue symptomatic of our current president as well. President Obama didn’t have much input on the bailout, health care, or cap & trade bills, these were all almost entirely written by Congress. He came out with a general policy statement — “spend money to fix the economy,” “fix health care,” “reduce carbon” — and left it to Congress to write the bills. On issues requiring his direct action — troop increase in Afghanistan; don’t ask, don’t tell; closing Gitmo — he punts, despite promises to get these things done. Would you say that President Obama has no interest in governance? I certainly wouldn’t.
Maybe you should be more clear about what aspects of “governing” Sarah Palin doesn’t seem interested in. From my perspective, she clearly has interest in the job and changing national policy, enough to at least clear the “interest” threshold.
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November 23, 2009, 8:44 amrbj says:
I think that it is less that Sarah Palin has no interest in governing, and more that she has no interest in running other people’s lives, unlike President Obama. She seems to be more of the Goldwater/Reagan wing of the GOP rather than the Rockefeller/Nixon wing — which is where George W. Bush is (and H.W. is more part of as well.)
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November 23, 2009, 8:49 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
I dunno; if that’s the case it seems odd that she quit the former in order to do the latter.
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November 23, 2009, 9:32 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
Perhaps nothing, but it’s not sufficient. Or, rather, it’s sufficient to be a talk-show host, perhaps a pundit, maybe even a candidate — but not to be an officeholder. (As Obama is finding out from the opposite direction; you can’t just mouth platitudes about how bad Guantanamo is. If you want to close it; you need ideas, plans. You need to govern, not just infuriate your opponents.)
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November 23, 2009, 9:37 amBart DePalma says:
Orin:
Going Rogue was never meant as a treatise on governance. Rather, Palin’s book very much resembles Obama’s Dreams of My Father, which was meant simply to introduce Obama to the American people as a likable fellow. In Palin’s case,Going Rogue is meant to reintroduce to the American people a politician successfully savaged by a blatantly partisan press. Given the latest Fox polling showing that Palin’s approval has bounced back to her plurality September 2008 levels and that nearly 2/3 of voters think the press has been unfair to her, Going Rogue appears to be achieving its goal.
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November 23, 2009, 9:46 amrpt says:
The assertion that GWB and his administration did nothing to defend themselves or attack their critics is pretty amazing. They were all very aggressive. Fleischer-Snow-Perino. Cheney. Delay-McConnell. Fox News, and so on.
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November 23, 2009, 9:48 amneurodoc says:
It’s demeans a man to say he has “big balls” or “real cajones”? It might convey a sense of brashness, even recklessness, which would recommend them for certain positions, but I think that would usually be counted a positive. (In Colombia, it is an insult to call a man a “huevon,” but that’s another culture and another matter.)
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November 23, 2009, 10:12 amFlash Gordon says:
No interest in governance? That’s a good sign in a politician. We need more like that.
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November 23, 2009, 10:29 amR Gould-Saltman says:
” Given the latest Fox polling showing that Palin’s approval has bounced back to her plurality September 2008 levels and that nearly 2/3 of voters think the press has been unfair to her, Going Rogue appears to be achieving its goal.”
. . . of changing Fox polling results? OK, makes sense to me.
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November 23, 2009, 10:30 amyankee says:
Also: Plamegate.
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November 23, 2009, 10:36 ampc says:
She does play the good victim. The liberal media is out to get her; Steve Schmidt is out to get her; Nicole Wallace made her do things she didn’t want to do; she was being unfairly hounded by ethics complaints. Palin is never responsible for what happens to her, the problem is the world conspiring against her.
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November 23, 2009, 10:36 amAnderson says:
What I find most striking about Palin is that she seems to have no real interest in governance.
That makes her ideal for those voters who don’t think there’s supposed to be much of a government in the first place.
Going Rogue was never meant as a treatise on governance.
That will be her next book, no doubt. In which we’ll learn that Palin’s favorite Federalist paper is “all of them.”
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November 23, 2009, 10:36 amOrin Kerr says:
Brian writes:
Brian, we’re ready whenever you are.
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November 23, 2009, 10:43 amneurodoc says:
Defining “success” as prevailing in court, I think her chances would be between slim and none. (I suppose Carol Burnett’s win against The National Inquirer years ago might mean it wasn’t an impossibility.) And filing a lawsuit (against whom?) would be as likely to put a stop to claims about how Trig is really Bristol’s baby as would pouring gas on a fire would be to put it out. Finally, it would be an extraordinarily bad move from the standpoint of her “brand.”
Kinda funny that OK went through her book looking for substance. Did he really expect to find any? And is saying that she shows no signs of interest in governance a slightly less direct way of saying that she lacks substance and may be suited for a job with Fox, but not for higher political office, because for that one should be very much interested in governance?
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November 23, 2009, 10:45 amAnderson says:
Kinda funny that OK went through her book looking for substance. Did he really expect to find any?
Prof. Kerr strikes me as the kinda guy who would hesitate to say Palin lacks substance without first having looked for some.
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November 23, 2009, 10:50 amyankee says:
Why should it be focused on governance? Perhaps because she wants to hold high office and this is a book designed to sell her to the American people?
You can’t just say you want to cut “government.” What programs are to be cut, and how much? Which regulations are “good” regulations that should be kept? If you want to make regulation of some area less intrusive, should government stop dealing with the issue entirely, or should it be replaced with a smaller, less-intrusive program designed to deal with the same issue?
There are a lot of different policies you can pursue under the framework of reducing government, and which one you pick makes a world of difference.
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November 23, 2009, 10:51 amjosh says:
“And no matter what you say, around half of the VC readership will be convinced you are a complete idiot (which half depending on which side you take).”
If true, that statistic depresses me.
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November 23, 2009, 11:03 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think it’s more like 30%, Josh.
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November 23, 2009, 11:05 amAnon321 says:
What I find most depressing about the Palin phenomenon (by which I mean the whole cultural frenzy surrounding her, both pro and con) is that it really illustrates the extent to which our cultural and political discourse is affected by essentially tribal, us-versus-them thinking. I don’t mean to suggest that all of the passion for or against her is meritless. But it just seems to me that a huge portion of it basically boils down to a vicious cycle of: “people that I hate, hate her; therefore I love her, and their hatred just stokes my support,” on one hand, and “people that I hate love her; therefore I hate her, and their love for her just stokes my hatred,” on the other. I suspect that if people evaluated her without knowing anything about how she was perceived by others, most people come up with a more nuanced and more tepid view than they currently hold.
If, as it sometimes seems, our positions on issues and our evaluations of people are largely determined by (1) knowing on an intuitive level who we hate, (2) seeing what positions those people take and what public figures they support or hate, and (3) then doing the opposite ... well, it makes me very pessimistic about the future of our society. I do hope I’m wrong about this, though.
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November 23, 2009, 11:09 amJeanna says:
Sarah Palin is a good leader. i can say that because she did some projects in alaska that helped lots of people .
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November 23, 2009, 11:22 amRichard Aubrey says:
Jeanna.
Yeah, but she opposed The Won. Bad Sarah.
I think her royalties might help her fund endless nuisance suits against those who sued her. Ruin them.
We can see who complains about that being unfair.
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November 23, 2009, 11:26 amAnderson says:
But it just seems to me that a huge portion of it basically boils down to a vicious cycle of: “people that I hate, hate her; therefore I love her, and their hatred just stokes my support,” on one hand, and “people that I hate love her; therefore I hate her, and their love for her just stokes my hatred,” on the other.
This is what I call disjunctive politics, i.e., politics in which choices are made by the disjunctive syllogism: A or B; not A; therefore, B.
It seems to me that’s how most people vote, which means that the qualities of B never need be examined; B simply has the advantage of not being A.
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November 23, 2009, 11:34 amgeokstr says:
This is really getting sickening.
First, we do every sleazy, despicable thing we can do to destroy her and her entire family. Then, we marshall every leftwing dirtbag in Alaska to file totally frivolous ethics complaints against her to bankrupt her.
Then she resigns to be get out from under that barrage of leftist slime and make enough to pay her legal fees and we get to call her a “quitter”.
The left is absolutely disgusting.
This is classic Cloward-Piven strategy. First, create a crisis, then exploit it for all it’s worth. The ends justify any means to help the Collective.
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November 23, 2009, 11:41 amJRL says:
Palin was my favorite of the 4 candidates. When I tell people why, they always laugh condescendingly–I liked Palin because she knows she’s not smarter than everyone else. The others were unaware that they shared the same limitation. In the VP debate, though, she actually did show herself to be a lot smarter than Biden, and the media who reported on all her “errors”. It turned out, of course, that she was right and they were wrong.
That said, I don’t believe that Palin has any intention of running for President. She would be crucified. She had to resign because it’s time to get paid. If she does not run for office she can continue her popularity, and paydays, and influence matters from the outside. No matter how many books she writes she can’t undo all the damage that has been done. She can’t win a general election.
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November 23, 2009, 11:44 amEric S. says:
Nice try PersonfromPorlock — take a look at this from People magazince:
Q from Samantha Harris, of Boca Raton, Fla., who wrote that the man she’s dating “doesn’t believe in politics because it doesn’t affect him. Do you think this is a deal-breaker?”
A from Palin “The deal-breaker is that he may not be that sharp a cookie. Politics affects every aspect of our lives.”
How in the world does someone with the “sensibilities” you ascribe to Palin make a comment like this?
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November 23, 2009, 11:45 amEricPWJohnson says:
the thing that facinates me about the facination with Palin and overanalysis of her book is that well,
I dont think a President can make much difference except when they say no.
Its when presidents “think” they can say yes — then all the crap starts
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November 23, 2009, 11:45 amB.D. says:
Bush’s reluctance to lash out at his opponents was . . . what’s the word? . . . ah, yes, presidential.
Palin–and the current occupant of the White House–could learn a lot from that.
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November 23, 2009, 11:53 amresh says:
One of the voices above notes how OK employs a healthy dose of psychobabble to draft Palin suppositions re: governance. I read the same thing; non sequiturs atop one another abound, really.
To be clear, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Palin. She’s an empty suit. But making silly comments that her wishy-washy, non-answers to what mags she’s read, or that she quit as governor, are dispositve of a disinterest in governance is nowhere close to truth. I’m surprised we didn’t read that her use of “you-betcha” was an indice.
And how having an “attitude” in any way adds or subtracts from her governance threshold is an entirely new species of academic gibberish, apparently suited to someone who has one of his own.
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November 23, 2009, 11:58 amRandy says:
Orin: “Can you explain how your comment was responsive to the thread?”
Sure can. I was responding to this quote from your note: “In her book, Palin presents herself as just an average patriotic American who was mistreated by the press, mistreated by professional “handlers,” and mistreated by the insider Beltway culture.”
First, she isn’t just an average patriotic American. She was a governor of a state, and therefore a politician. Politicians always complain about unfair treatment from the press and everyone else, so it’s something that she should expect. If she doesn’t want to be mistreated by the press, then the solution is very simple — go back to being a private citizen.
But she has benefited greatly from this perceived mistreatment. It has made her extremely popular with a small group of people within the US, and it has made her very rich and famous. If she thinks this is bad, again, the solution is to not publish books, be interviewed on tv, or go on a book tour.
In other words, you can’t put yourself into the limelight and accept all the benefits thereof and then complain about being in the limelight.
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November 23, 2009, 12:08 pmAnderson says:
First, we do every sleazy, despicable thing we can do to destroy her and her entire family.
I dunno .. have we seen her birth certificate? The REAL one?
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November 23, 2009, 12:17 pmJames T. Carrington says:
She may have written about the media attacks, but she spends as much time beating up on the McCain campaign staff. To me, the only sin of that crowd was shoving her in front of the cameras too soon. At the same time, that error was the decisive one that could not be fixed, no matter how much additional prep time she put in for further camerawork and debating...
I can’t imagine she’s going to do well under the very adversarial relationship with most of the media for a 2012 run. Sure they are mean, sneaky, twisting context and attacking children. But a campaign needs one thing — coverage... If you beat up those who hold most of the tools of media distribution, don’t expect to get a lot of non-infomercial facetime from the media...
McCain, after years of getting mavericky attention from the media, started complaining when they were not covering him enough. And if you look at the camera footage of his later campaigning, there is very little flattering camerawork being done. The debates with Obama? Remember John wandering around the stage looking very lost? You can cover that up with half-decent editing direction — remember how Bush forced the cameramen to change the video angle in order to downplay the height disparity btw himself and Kerry as part of the debate media contract?
She needs to find a way to make nice, not because it’s the right thing or the moral thing, but because they will starve her out of the spotlight if she keeps up the big bad media schtick. Notice that the other “liberal media are mean” people are all media personalities like Limbaugh or Hannity — they have nothing to fear from a loss of media coverage as they are ensured facetime every day/week.
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November 23, 2009, 12:18 pmRandy says:
Porlock: “Why should Palin’s book be centered on governance? The flyover-American sensibility is that life is mostly individual and family, and that government has only a limited role in it.”
Sure. Until the economy tanks, or we have threats from the Japanese or Chinese economy, and then these same people demand that the government do something.
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November 23, 2009, 12:23 pmDangerMouse says:
James: If you beat up those who hold most of the tools of media distribution, don’t expect to get a lot of non-infomercial facetime from the media...
They don’t hold the tools of distribution. Not anymore. The MSM is broken and dying, and I hope Sarah Palin kills it. I can’t wait for the NYT go go bankrupt. How many papers will fold between now and the 2012?
Your point about McCain undercuts your position also. McCain played nice with the MSM, and they treated him like dirt in comparison to their lib favorite. The point is, if McCain — MCCAIN — can’t get good coverage from the libs in the MSM, no one can. Certainly not a Republican who actually tries to win (McCain couldn’t even get good coverage and he was only trying to lose honorably). Do you seriously believe that if Palin, or for that matter any other conservative in the country, plays nice with the MSM, that they’ll be treated fairly? Please.
By the way, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
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November 23, 2009, 12:24 pmDavid Nieporent says:
I think that when people quit, quitter is not an inappropriate descriptor, although it isn’t the one I used.
This is the second time in the past week I’ve been called a lefty in the comments on this site, though.
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November 23, 2009, 12:26 pmAWH says:
agree with subpatre’s post.
I think a lot of what makes her appealing for many people is that she is first and foremost interested in getting the big things right. She is quite clear on her big principles and has a track record of following those things while in office. Perhaps she doesn’t appear wonkish or interested in governance because most politicians try to hide their true principles under a morass of policy details meant to obscure their true intentions.
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November 23, 2009, 12:28 pmDilan Esper says:
to theo and geo:
palin quit the job that she asked the people of alaska gave her. as truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
political attacks are a fact of life that all politicians have to learn to brush off. bush 43 was accused of desertion, and clinton was accused of rape and murder. they didn’t quit and run off to whine about their critics like palin did. they fought back and did their jobs.
of course, palin wouldn’t be qualified to be president even if she hadn’t quit the governorship. but the act of quitting is itself disqualifying.
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November 23, 2009, 12:29 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Pithy, but not really accurate. Non-governing isn’t adequate for those of us who don’t think there’s supposed to be much government in the first place; if an executive doesn’t govern, then the permanent bureaucracy will. To reduce governance requires an affirmative act of dismantling government, and that requires as much effort and attention to detail — if not more — than increasing government does.
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November 23, 2009, 12:32 pmyankee says:
I think it’s more likely that she doesn’t appear wonkish or interested in governance because she has no knowledge or understanding of any actual policy issues, and is trying to obscure that under a morass of talking points and glittering generalities.
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November 23, 2009, 12:41 pmAnderson says:
This is the second time in the past week I’ve been called a lefty in the comments on this site, though.
LOL. Obviously you are a RINO and secretly hate America in your jihadi heart.
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November 23, 2009, 12:45 pmloki13 says:
Last comment on oodles.... I read this on a football blog this morning:
“On both of those deep throws, Manning had oodles of time.”
I would assume this means that either Peyton Manning or time itself is being denigrated for being too feminine. The mind boggles (but is boggling a little, um, gendered?).
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November 23, 2009, 12:47 pmAWH says:
Funny, I take the opposite approach. When I hear the wonkish geniuses like Obama talk, I realize they are only trying to hide what they truly believe, or gloss over the fact that they have no clue about actually implementing anything. Governance to him is fooling the public into believing whatever seems most expedient to his career.
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November 23, 2009, 12:47 pmJohn Moore says:
All this “Palin the quitter” stuff is really absurd.
Is Obama currently holding the Senate seat he got to represent Illinois? How about Biden?
Palin quit for the good reasons stated above — the tsunami of unfounded “ethics” attacks. Note, however, that she left behind here a political ally who could be counted on to take the same positions she had. So it’s not like she ran out and left Alaska adrift.
It’s easy to tell those who reflexively dislike Palin, or aren’t looking closely — they use the “quitter” argument.
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November 23, 2009, 12:51 pmyankee says:
This isn’t actually inconsistent with my theory of Palin’s apparent disinterest in policy.
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November 23, 2009, 12:54 pmAnderson says:
Is Obama currently holding the Senate seat he got to represent Illinois? How about Biden?
Uh, dude, did you notice who actually *won* the 2008 election?
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November 23, 2009, 12:56 pmjab says:
Palin: And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans.
Strong conservative? Really? If Obama ever let the word “collectively” or the phrase “share the wealth” slip out of his mouth, the right would have gone bonkers calling him a socialist, Marxist, Communist... oh wait... Gee, must be easy to rail against the evils of big government while simultaneously handing out checks for over $3000 to every Alaskan...
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November 23, 2009, 1:00 pmBob from Ohio says:
We do like her attitude but Prof. Kerr is mistaking “no real interest in governance” for what is just lack of “wonkiness”.
Some people in politics (Newt, Al Gore) like to get into all the details of govenment but others (Reagan,George W. Bush)just want to accomplish a few big things and don’t care to know every little detail about everything. They delegate that stuff, for good or bad.
Conservatives don’t care much if you are a “wonk”. In fact, there is a lot of distrust of wonks.
Wonkiness is highly prized among academics, I think, so Prof. Kerr’s dismissal as her having “no real interest in governance” is quite understandable.
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November 23, 2009, 1:00 pmbartman says:
Looking at Palin’s actions during her two terms as an elected official, she appears to view life like most of us did in high-school. She uses her power to reward her buddies, and uses it to punish those who she percieves to have “wronged” her. Her tenures were rife with episodes of petty power-drunk score-settling.
I understand why a lot of Republicans like somebody who wants to unleash a barrage of vendettas on the “enemies”, but is that really in the best intetrests of the nation?
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November 23, 2009, 1:01 pmj says:
Orin,
1) It’s an autobiography. Not a policy book. If she’s serious about running for President, I would expect her to release a book next year, maybe entitled “Going Forward,” to show off her knowledge of policy issues.
2) But YES–she did talk a good deal about her governance. Did you miss the sections about AGIA? ACES? Her changes to the oil taxes? And opening Point Thompson? And what about her discussion of going through the budget, line by line, to remove excess spending. It certainly sounds like she was a hands-on governor to me. Are we reading the same book?
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November 23, 2009, 1:05 pmjab says:
For those of you claiming that Obama “quitting” the Senate to be President is equivalent to Palin quitting the governorship of Alasaka... do you REALLY think that even passes the giggle test?
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November 23, 2009, 1:08 pmEricPWJohnson says:
Dear J
One reads what one wants to read in a book, reading in messages in clear phrases is like those politicians that believe one poll over another
In the end its the great politically unwashed common voters that decide which pundit was the least wrong . Naturally, those pundits who were greatly wrong (and mortally embarassed that 8 to 12 years of university education was essentially wasted), those greatly wrong pundits will espouse that indeed the greatist wrong was committed not by them but by these very same voters that didnt listen to their bloviations.
Better odds in weather forecasting
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November 23, 2009, 1:15 pmj says:
Also Orin, I just noticed that despite your statement that you are reading her book, you cited nothing in her book to back up your claim that she is not interested in governance. Chapters 2 and 3 showed plenty of examples of her governing style.
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November 23, 2009, 1:21 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Thoughts on Sarah Palin and Going Rogue -- Topsy.com says:
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Dilan Esper says:
For those of you claiming that Obama “quitting” the Senate to be President is equivalent to Palin quitting the governorship of Alasaka... do you REALLY think that even passes the giggle test?
Remember, some of these same people advance the argument that Palin is smart and Obama is an idiot because elite credentials such as Ivy League educations are suspect and, at any rate, he supposedly got everything he achieved by way of affirmative action and lowered standards.
So yeah, some of Palin’s supporters believe some pretty weird things.
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November 23, 2009, 1:32 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
By distinguishing “politics does” from “politics should.”
Cites? I suspect that for many Palinistas, government’s ‘doing something’ amounts to its doing nothing except getting out of the way, to the extent that it can; “a limited role” isn’t no role at all. Think Reaganomics.
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November 23, 2009, 1:33 pmRamsey says:
Still waiting Brian.
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November 23, 2009, 2:08 pmegd says:
If you ignore the fact that the Alaska Government owns the land that the oil companies are pulling out of the state, your comment makes perfect sense.
However, Palin was talking about taking government resources and using them for the good of all people in the state. In contrast, President Obama talks about taking private resources and using them for the good of some people.
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November 23, 2009, 2:13 pmJames T. Carrington says:
Romney and Huckabee both got clean coverage that fleshed out their personalities and did not distort as far as I saw. McCain was trying to lose honorably? What a ridiculous statement; you should sell that bridge for more than I would pay...
Again, the point was that McCain HAD FAVORABLE COVERAGE until he started complaining and throwing tirades when his poll numbers were slipping. He made the mistake of speaking aloud the unspoken — he was getting free media coverage and then complained when the free lunch didn’t taste exactly the way he had expected for years...
If you think that Palin had the same media treatment as the other repub candidates, you are quite mistaken.
And back to the MSM meme about the newspapers folding, failing, etc. Where do you think the blogfodder and talk radio rant memos come from? They take journalist output and respin/restate it. They are a parasite of the reporting media. Do you think Rush Limbaugh’s production team chases down a story and interviews sources? They read Drudge Report or a secondary source.
To Palin playing nice? That’s not what I advocated — I said that if she doesn’t get over it, and stop whining about the poor coverage she’ll get even worse coverage this time around. She’ll be forced to either buy a Fox News co-anchor chair or even worse, go the route of the Ross Perot infomericals to get the message out in a timely, non-book fashion. She’s still interesting enough to draw a crowd, and so the media will continue to cover her as a product. But I think you are missing the point here — if she keeps whining and makes it part of her platform, the media will keep switching the camera angles.
If you’ve ever edited content for media production, it becomes an elementary task to make a subject sympathetic or horrific depending on your point of view. You can show closeups of Payton Manning’s open pores and then a slo-mo shot of Tom Brady’s deep pass. You can show shorter cuts of Obama speaking full sentences then cutting out the normal stutters of human speech, and then show John McCain sticking out his tongue when his throat is dry between statements. You can show low angle shots of Palin to show the less-flattering underside of her face and you can close in on her facial tics as she listens to a question.
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November 23, 2009, 2:19 pmjab says:
I would have never guessed from egd’s previous rantings that he is a Communist! LOL
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November 23, 2009, 2:34 pmDangerMouse says:
James: Again, the point was that McCain HAD FAVORABLE COVERAGE until he started complaining and throwing tirades when his poll numbers were slipping. He made the mistake of speaking aloud the unspoken — he was getting free media coverage and then complained when the free lunch didn’t taste exactly the way he had expected for years...
sigh... Look, James: the MSM will never give a Republican good coverage when they’re up against a Democrat. It just won’t happen. If you actually believe that the MSM turned on McCain because he complained and threw tirades, instead of turning on him well in advance of that merely because he was up against a lib, then this debate is meaningless. However, I will point out that the Washington Post beat a dead horse by trying to pin some thesis on the Republican candidate for Virginia governor. I will point out that the NYT was selling Obama campaign stuff and making a tidy profit off of it. I will point out that approximately 90% of the MSM votes or identifies as Democrats, and that all of the libs on TV nowadays were almost all former democratic staffers at some point.
There is nothing wrong with calling out the Media for being the lib whores that they are, now and during a campaign. I think that a lot of things are going to change in the future with regards to how news is delivered and also reported. Look no further than the controverery over the global warming emails: all significant reporting on that is being done by the blogs, the MSM is either covering them up, trying to play catch up, or deliberately misleading the public by trying to frame the story as a hack instead of the debunking of the global warming scam.
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November 23, 2009, 3:04 pmyankee says:
Since when does anything Reagan did constitute “getting out of the way”? He cut some taxes (the top marginal individual income tax rate) but jacked up others (payroll, gas, corporate income tax) and also raised taxes by eliminating a bunch of deductions and loopholes. He jacked up spending and increased the number of federal employees. The C.F.R. got longer, not shorter.
Nor is “getting out of the way” a trivial process. You have to decide what to cut, and how much, and which regulations to eliminate, and which regulations to reform with something less intrusive, and so on. Are you going to eliminate the “intrusions” of Social Security and Medicare? Repeal the Securities and Exchange Acts? Close our bases in South Korea? Cut taxes (which ones?) These are real choices with real consequences.
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November 23, 2009, 3:22 pmBill says:
“But she just doesn’t seem to have a real interest in the job of governance.”
Oh my I do belive that Kerr has it.
And doesn’t this describe Obama’s career before he got the job? He voted present a lot, not taking his legislative role that seriously. He really didn’t accrue any executive experience (indeed, Palin has more) before taking the job at the top to which he felt entitled — much like congressional herd animal Kerry who had no clue what it’s like to be “the one man out there” before he decided to go big or .. go back to the senate and thankfully disappear back into the herd). Like Palin he talked a good game but hit me as frighteningly naive. He pretty much ran as the “It Girl” — and won as the It Girl.
No wonder why they hate Palin and have such hissy fits over her (I’m not her biggest fan and share many of Orin’s concerns but I like the dame — especially the Turkey incident and how it made certain people have conniptions). Palin is Obama in a dress.
Pailin’ purdier though (at least I think so.)
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November 23, 2009, 3:24 pmChrisTS says:
David Nieporent:
I guess that settles it.
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November 23, 2009, 3:35 pmRichard Aubrey says:
The NYT put together a bogus story hinting at a McCain affair. Even Keller admitted they “didn’t have it.”
Is this the sort of thing the media do when a previous darling gets annoyed with them?
Or were they going to do it because McCain was a republican candidate?
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November 23, 2009, 3:40 pmLeo Marvin says:
I don’t hear any denials.
Anyway, I’m not sure whether he’s calling you a lefty or a Borg.
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November 23, 2009, 4:10 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
All true, but are you suggesting that it’s just too big a job? Or that government programs are Holy? I think flyover-America hopes Palin will reduce unnecessary government interference with its daily life, something that neither Establishment Republicans nor Establishment Democrats have shown any interest in doing.
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November 23, 2009, 4:50 pmLeo Marvin says:
Maybe you’re referring to humility, which is very admirable, but it’s not what I see in Palin. I see her pandering to an anti-intellectual populism which apparently appeals to some Tea Party conservatives. It implies nobody is smarter than anyone else. The people who disagree with you are just dumber (or dishonest, or both). The logical gymnastics behind that sort of patronizing makes it pretty ironic, among other things. For example, you get stuff like this:
In other words, if someone you disagree with sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, he must be a clueless liar pretending to be smarter than you.
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November 23, 2009, 5:11 pmyankee says:
I’m not suggesting it’s too big a job for anyone, I’m suggesting it’s too big a job for Palin, because she clearly has no understanding of the issues involved.
I’m pretty sure everyone is against “unnecessary” government interference, the question is what’s unnecessary. But “flyover-America,” as you term it, likes their Social Security and their Medicare and their highways and their financial markets regulation and their laws against selling contaminated beef...
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November 23, 2009, 5:26 pmRandy says:
Flyover America also wants more regulation of Wall Street, since they are to blame for the economic mess we are in, and they want government to somehow stop sending their jobs over to Mexico and China. They also want extended unemployment benefits when they do lose their job, and they want the government to do something to stop spiraling health care costs. They want government to help them out of their bad mortgages, and they also want cheap flood insurance if they live on the coast. Most Americans want government to be very much in the way with regards to food and drug testing and many other forms of consumer protection. They want government to build roads (lots of them!) and build airports and seaports. In many flyover cities, you often see people clammoring for their local and state governments to subsidize a new football or baseball stadium (or else our team might leave!) and all sorts of private enterprise.
I’m not saying that I agree with any or all of this, or that these are the proper functions of government. I’m just saying that people expect a lot from their government, and I don’t see vast numbers of people saying that we have too many people checking up on the safety of our food supply.
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November 23, 2009, 5:48 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Those who look at the Dividend program and proclaim it “collectivist” are correct, but only as much as any corporate entity is collectivist.
Per Alaska’s Constitution (the rule of law) Alaska is an “Owner State”; the resources of Alaska (timber, wildlife, oil etc) belong to the people of Alaska (not the government of Alaska) as a group. The state government is required to manage those assets on behalf of the people and for their collective benefit.
Think of it as the Board of Directors of a corporation. They manage the assets, pay the bills, invest for the future and are regularly elected by and responsible to the citizens of Alaska.
The Permanent Fund (the state’s investment account) pays “shareholder” dividends from the investment dividends received (after operating costs and inflation-proofing are taken care of) to the people of Alaska.
That may be “socialism” by definition but it isn’t authoritarian statism.
Palin’s embrace of the process shows allegiance to the rule of law, not hypocrisy. There’s a lot of things to disagree with her on, hypocrisy on this particular topic isn’t one of them.
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November 23, 2009, 6:03 pmOrin Kerr says:
I have already offered one VC drinking game today, but if you want a second one, here it is: Every time a commenter defends a perceived weakness in Sarah Palin by arguing that Barack Obama has the same weakness — drink.
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November 23, 2009, 6:06 pmloki13 says:
OK–
C’mon.... I have to get work done today. I’ll be blott inside of thirty minutes with these two games in effect.
Heck, I’ve seen three motivations for liking Palin:
1. But..... Obama!
2. She’s really just like Reagan. Really.
3. She pisses off liberals. Because the best way to gauge the effectiveness of a leader is by how much they go out of their way to make large portions of the population angry.
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November 23, 2009, 6:15 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Hypocrisy is also the charge leveled at the Tea Party folks and others who, for example, “claim to not want “government healthcare” but like VA benefits”, or who “are against government but like the highways”.
These charges of hypocrisy are asinine in many cases.
Perhaps, just perhaps, these fly-over folks can distinguish between federal, state and local governments and what their appropriate (per the various controlling Constitutions) levels of involvement in daily life are.
The VA, for example, rather squarely falls under Congress’ enumerated powers to manage the military in all its aspects. Conversely, health care for civilians rests on an expansive reading of the interstate commerce clause or an even more abstract reading of “promoting general welfare”. The interstate highway system can be said to have a logical relationship to both Congress’ military powers (probably its strongest basis) AND a collateral benefit of enabling the freedom of travel and commerce nationwide simply by improving access and efficiency for all citizens.
Those are distinctions that don’t fit well on signs or soundbites but are very real. The snarky hypocrisy charges, which are trotted out as game winners, are trite and simplistic reponses to very real fundamental Constitutional issues.
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November 23, 2009, 6:16 pmLN says:
Well, instead of talking about the VA benefits we could talk about getting the government’s hands off my Medicare.
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November 23, 2009, 8:02 pmAWH says:
hardly, one of the advantages of coming from a rural background where my father had is own farming business and then going to a top school is that I gained the ability to fairly judge both arenas. It’s given me the ability and experience to see when either side isn’t what they appear. The problem with many “wonkish” types is that they want to closely define the boundaries and terms of their debates — even if those terms and boundaries have nothing to do with reality.
One funny part of the past election was that Brooks was entranced by Obama’s ability to talk about Niebuhr. Big deal, on my undergrad campus there were probably at least a thousand people who could have discussed Niebuhr in more depth than Obama,and of that group there was probably only a handful I’d trust to manage a local McDonalds.
Of course, you keep a straight face while writing this — even as you dismiss Palin as someone who appeals to “anti-intellectual populism”. The problem is that the people who support Palin don’t think that “nobody is smarter than anyone else”. Indeed, they think they are smarter than the people who are on the other side (or at least who were on the other side last fall) — and the reality is that they have generally been proven to be correct given the current presidency.
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November 23, 2009, 8:20 pmloki13 says:
Guys in my high school used to discuss Niebuhr all the time. No big deal. Most of them are not only manager at Mickey Dees, but also much more knowledgeable than Obama.
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November 23, 2009, 8:36 pmAndrew L says:
Orin Kerr says:
I hear you. But as someone who is highly critical of Sarah Palin, I think it’s legitimate to criticize BOTH the people defending her as some sort of wonk-in-disguise, AND the people deriding her sparse credentials notwithstanding their having voted for now-President Obama. Might you at least agree to that?
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November 23, 2009, 9:34 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
As someone who is not highly critical of Sarah Palin, I certainly agree.
I can find things to like about Palin. Her being a wonk-in-disguise isn’t one of them.
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November 23, 2009, 10:00 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Wonk, disguised or not, is a good thing for the POTUS to be because....
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November 23, 2009, 10:06 pmAndrew L says:
I never said anything about this one way or another.
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November 23, 2009, 10:29 pmLeo Marvin says:
Because the President’s familiarity with subjects he makes and executes policy about is preferable to his ignorance. The more familiarity the better.
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November 23, 2009, 10:39 pmJohn Moore says:
Those anti-intellectual populists are on to something real: the “intellectuals” and other elites are now loudly lording it over us, telling us how to think and what not to say, controlling our health care, spending our tax money in advance, and avoiding blame for screwing up our economy royally.
Anti-intellectualism is a healthy response to intellectuals who believe that their superior education (read: narrow but privileged) and elite status entitles them to be masters of the universe. It is saying, correctly, that elites who get too full of themselves, start acting entitled, and decide they know better than Joe Six-Pack in flyover country, need to be brought down to earth.
Intellectuals have brought us great things, but they have also brought us such horrors as the French Revolution and Communism.
Learning is good; higher education is good; both are worthless without a grounding in reality and a recognition that neither by itself provides wisdom.
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November 23, 2009, 10:48 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Does “wonk” not have the connotation of being so tightly focused on specifics that one does not get the big picture? Too abstract and not real-world? I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t.
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November 23, 2009, 10:54 pmyankee says:
Wow, so many fallacies wrapped into one paragraph. Straw man, false dichotomy, appeal to imagined majority, mind-reading ...
I will never cease to be baffled by the far right’s pseudo-populism of asserting, without evidence, that ordinary people in what they insist on calling “flyover country” share their views about everything. In reality, the people of “flyover country” are big fans of their Social Security and Medicare and curbs on the ability of Wall Street bankers to destroy the economy.
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November 24, 2009, 12:38 amRichard Aubrey says:
When Carter and Clinton were referred to as wonkish, it wasn’t an unalloyed compliment.
Reagan, it should not have to be said, was never accused of wonkishness. Even if he were read in on something to a great extent, his enemies simply would not acknowledge it. So we don’t know, for sure, if he was.
Or not.
Wonkish always had, for me, the trees/forest thing bassackwards.
Familiarity is not wonkish.
Did you ever try to have a conversation with an engineer who shows signs of Aspergers? They know everything about something but are almost completely incapable of anything but the most literal communication.
Rather not have somebody like that in charge.
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November 24, 2009, 6:35 amRichard Aubrey says:
Further to wonking:
Some of you may be old enough to recall various arms control treaties with the Sovs.
They were characterized by National Review as...the USSR puts an outrageous proposal on the table and waits for the US administration to negotiate about it with the US left. I was involved with some folks who made that look like less of an exaggeration than might be thought from this point of view.
At one point, the Sovs were going to test a new rocket/warhead mix and Carter insisted that we would get the codes to read their telemetry as part of a deal. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out why that would be important. You don’t have to be an engineer, or even a geopolitician.
Carter gave away the telemetry codes piece in order to get a treaty.
BFD.
Point is, Carter was no doubt, due to his widely-advertised brain and his engineering background, more than able to understand the mechanics of telemetry.
He was not smart enough or strong enough to avoid giving it away in return for nothing.
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November 24, 2009, 8:25 amJohn Moore says:
The people of flyover country are indeed scared that they will lose their Social Security and Medicare — things that the government forced upon them. Does that mean they are big fans in the sense they would vote for them today?
The bankers are part of the elite that this reaction is against. Those bankers, btw, vote with the left for the most part. It is the left that seems to believe that capitalists are conservatives or vote conservative, when capitalists tend to vote (or better yet, donate) in their own interests — which in the case of big money/big corporations often means supporting whatever pols will benefit them. Money has no ideology, and money people often leave their ideology at the door when dealing with the policy of on over-present government.
So I guess my question is: if we agree on the only fact related assertions you made, why is my post attacked on “asserting, without evidence, that ordinary people in what they insist on calling “flyover country” share their views about everything” ? Besides, I have lived in flyover country almost my whole life.
Perhaps you have your own pre-conceived notion on what the “far right” (meaning anyone to the right of you, I guess) know or believe about the folks in flyover country.
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November 24, 2009, 11:33 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
I think this is known as ‘begging the question’. Hard as it may be to believe, few liberals support government interference entirely for its own sake. There is at least a nominal purpose. We see over and over again pseudo-conservatives mouth absurd bromides about waste-fraud-and-abuse control paying for tax cuts. When the deficits hit, they wash their hands of all responsibility. I’m not surprised Sarah Palin doesn’t explain which “unnecessary” government programs need to go (the Alaska Permanent Fund might be a good place to start—snicker); she is courting the crowd that literally carries protest signs “Get your Government hands off my Medicare”.
In the book, Palin proclaims what we liberals knew all along, that she is a Biblical Creationist. She comes from a (hopefully shrinking) strain of evangelical America that is downright contemptuous of book l’arnin’. I can’t understand why readers of an intellectual blog, regardless of their political place on the right side of the spectrum, feel some connection to her. Maybe it’s the wink.
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November 24, 2009, 11:45 amLeo Marvin says:
Hillary, Bill, Condi and Newt are all wonks. Neither Aspergers nor big picture deficiencies in any of them.
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November 24, 2009, 1:49 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Couple of people immune to fried chicken charm have talked to Bill and claimed he’s a fake wonk. He knows a lot about something, they say, until he finds out you know more. Then he changes the subject.
Wouldn’t know, myself. I have not been such a sinner as to have to talk to the Big Guy.
Carter was a wonk. So it was claimed.
Wonks have big picture deficiencies by definition.
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November 24, 2009, 3:27 pmLeo Marvin says:
If that were true, maybe the most frequently used subset, “policy-wonks” would be an oxymoron.
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November 24, 2009, 5:39 pmJohn Skookum says:
A poor choice of words for someone who wants to be the darling of the conservative movement, I agree. However, I prefer to judge people by their actions.
Alaska received a major windfall of oil wealth not long after Gov. Palin took power, some of which was due to the general rise in oil prices on the world market.
However, much of it also resulted from a farsighted overhaul of the severance fees the oil companies pay to pump the oil that the people of Alaska do collectively own on their common lands, for better or worse. Fees on established fields were raised, while new exploration and development were incentivized with lower fees, and a crusty accumulation of back-scratching loopholes written by many generations of good ol’ boys of both parties in the Alaska Legislature were abolished.
The person who went nose to nose with some of the biggest multinational corporations and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists, and bent them to her will, was of course Sarah Palin. So much for her taking no interest in governance.
Considering the influence that Big Oil wields in Alaska, I’d like to see one thing President Obama did before taking office that even remotely compares. Hell, he’s completed much less in comparative terms even after being inaugurated. Cash for Clunkers, anyone?
Now, a “true” collectivist of the kind infesting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would have taken that big pot of gold, and squandered every penny and then some on big-government boondoggles.
Gov. Palin realized that this would be foolish and unsustainable when oil prices fell and hard times returned, so instead she socked away something like $10 billion in the rainy day fund, and returned the remainder to the people who own the oil.
Every Alaskan has benefited from her good sense and willingness to defy the special interests. They benefited then, and they are benefiting now, and that is why she had an 88% approval rating when she was just Sarah from Alaska and not the damaged unsuccessful VP candidate she is now.
If she can recapture that magic– and I think she can– and win the nomination on her own merits rather than the token selection of an old has-been... well, the sky’s the limit. She’ll need to bring up her game in interviews, which is already obviously under way, and we’ll need to see more detailed policy proposals. And if I were her I would run as a Goldwater style libertarian conservative, soft pedaling the theo-con stuff, which is indeed the way she governed Alaska. If she does all that, I can surely see the possibility of her winning the nomination.
A female candidate who has achieved that milestone via her own efforts will be seen in a very different light by many of the women who voted against her, perhaps even by some of the nastiest feminist bitches on the far Left who profess to hate her. Those Democrats guffawing about how much they’d like her to win the GOP nod should be careful what they wish for.
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November 24, 2009, 5:54 pmbadlaw says:
It’s a memoir, not a political manifesto.
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November 25, 2009, 12:17 pm