Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!

To paraphrase what for some reason is an iconic Brady Bunch line, "Well, all day long in the media I hear how dangerous Sarah Palin is this way or how ignorant Sarah Palin in that way! Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!"

Kay Hymowitz looks at how Sarah Palin embodies the new feminism that drives the old feminists into a fury. Perhaps what we're seeing is just a culture-wide heresy trial.

When Sarah Palin took the podium in St. Paul to accept her nomination for the vice presidency in September 2008, calm and collected feminists might have recalled the old saw: Be careful what you wish for. Here she was, an ambitious political woman with the sort of egalitarian marriage that would put the Swedes to shame. Here she was, a charismatic, working-class heroine who oozed folksy provincialism with the naturalness of Lyndon Johnson in the same breath as she cheered her Hillary Clintonesque assault on the “glass ceiling.” Yes, here she was—clinging to her guns, her religion, and her babies, and saying, and apparently believing, all the wrong things.

Read it at city-journal.org in "Sarah Palin and the Battle for Feminism."

A Second Look at Sarah Palin

As readers of this blog may recall, though Harold and I agree on a lot, we have not seen eye to eye on the worthiness of Sarah Palin to occupy the White House (though we agree she is more worthy than the Wall Street Journal op-ed by Norman Podhoretz (you see, he plays to win), entitled "In Defense of Sarah Palin." It sent me down this road of reflection that WORLD has graciously published under the title, "A Palin Skeptic Takes a Second Look."

The Obamacare victory has changed the presidential race for 2012. The question for Republicans in choosing a candidate to go up against the sitting president is: Who has the skill, the vision, the mettle, and the integrity to drive this Behemoth back into the churning sea of political evils from whence it came?

Sarah Palin, for all her wide-eyed parochial wonderment when asked about anything outside of Alaska (okay, she's getting better; she's been reading up), may have the undiluted patriotism and single-minded determination needed to roll this thing back successfully. Podhoretz provoked me with this:

Take, for example, foreign policy. True, she seems to know very little about international affairs, but expertise in this area is no guarantee of wise leadership. After all, her rival for the vice presidency, who in some sense knows a great deal, was wrong on almost every major issue that arose in the 30 years he spent in the Senate.

What she does know—and in this respect, she does resemble Reagan—is that the United States has been a force for good in the world, which is more than Barack Obama, whose IQ is no doubt higher than hers, has yet to learn. Jimmy Carter also has a high IQ, which did not prevent him from becoming one of the worst presidents in American history, and so does Bill Clinton, which did not prevent him from befouling the presidential nest.

After other reflections that you really must read, I conclude: "if what the country needs to pull us out of our free fall into European social democracy is someone with a solid center in classical republican principles as well as the skill, vision, mettle, and integrity to pull it off politically, Sarah Palin may be the one to do it."

But all I'm doing is taking a fresh look. I'll try not to forget, however, that she has woefully little experience actually governing, and bailed out of the job she did have.

The Terminatrix Peace Prize Theory

The end of the year is busy for professors, so things have been slow on the blog.

But I ran across this interesting reflection:

Slowpoke Comics by Jen Sorensen

This theory makes sense of Barack Obama's Nobel prize, but the Terminatrix part doesn't seem to fit the data.

It may be most interesting as an expression of liberal discomfort with the Nobel Committee's 2009 choice for the peace prize.

We Have Seen the Future--and it's Oregon

Sarah Palin coined the phrase "death panels" that is sticking like death to the ObamaCare health care debate. We note that it is Sarah Palin, mindless gun toting hillbilly, ONE, Barack Obama, brilliant constitutional lawyer and auto and health care industry expert, ZIP. Due to the whistle blowing by the ex-governor, the Senate was shamed into removing the provision they said did not exist. They lost this round to Palin because there were just too many eyes on the thing for their denials to hold up--even the Washington Post's Charles Lane admits the slippery-slopiness of the provision requiring end of life counseling. Eugene Robinson, one of the president's staunchest supporters, agrees that the import of the provision is to shorten lives, and thus curtail the medical spending that supports the waning years of people's lives.

Nat Hentoff, an Old Left colleague of Christopher Hitchens at the Nation magazine two decades ago, weighs in with his characteristic bluntness in his piece "I'm Finally Scared of a White House Administration" . As a constitutional scholar and ardent critic of government power (mostly Republican government power), he validates and then some Palin's concerns over where this is going.

Despite media reports, Palin's Facebook post responding to Obama is a model of successful refutation--clear, concise, and heavily footnoted. I don't know if she wrote it--she may still have staff working for her--but no fair minded person would associate such successful argumentation with the cartoon character the media has invented to represent her.

But it is not just the logical points that immediately follow from the language in the bill that show the likelihood of the death panel charges. The actual implementation of the laws Congress writes falls to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats whose only means of administering such massive programs is to shuffle individual cases into the nearest category and get on to the next case. Or go to lunch, Whatever. It is they who decide what the categories are, and what the criteria for judging which cases fit which category. And they will never see a single patient whose life outcome they are deciding. There is also the inconvenient fact that in several government-run health care systems the advice given to old patients turns out to be euthanasia (Sweden and Holland both give a lot of weight to government doctors to make the decision to pull the plug, even against the patient or the family's wishes, often outside official guidelines).

And now this story from Oregon's experiment in socialist living surfaces just at the wrong time for the deceiving sponsors of government control of everything. This is exhibit A in what government run health care portends for a large swath of its victims, in its all-caring, all knowing benevolence. I meant to say bureaucratic callousness.

This lady has a form of cancer treatable with a drug deemed too expensive for her case. The letter she received from the Oregon state authority suggested her best option under their wise and noble program is "aid in dying". So thoughtful of them. Listen to the director of the state commission--Oregon's death panel-- skate around the obvious cost basis analysis for the twice-appealed decision.

Thoughtful Conservatism

History will praise this beautiful woman who became one of the most thoughtful leaders of the American conservative movement. Now, what single word in that statement alerts you that I am not talking about Sarah Palin? In fact, I'm speaking of Peggy Noonan who recently wrote an essay on Alaska governor that might just as well have been entitled, "The Emperor Has No Depth" ("A Farewell to Harms," Wall Street Journal, July 11-12, 2009).

She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful....She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough.

The notion that she is going to spend the next few years in research and reflection is naive and an example of tragically pitiful wishful thinking. "But she is a ponder-free zone," says Noonan. "She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan."

Looking more broadly to the genuine leadership needs of the Republican Party, Noonan states the truth for out time: "This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think." This is not only true on account of the great international dangers that surround us, but also because of the overwhelming surge of charming statism that is flooding the nation and suffocating liberty.

William Buckley died in February of last year, just months before John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate and everyone went ga-ga over her cutely stated conservative affirmations. The liberals went apoplectic with indignation and so we reveled in the wisdom of our nomination. But not only is Palin "no Bill Buckley," she is a caricature of the sort of conservative that Buckley managed to discredit within the GOP and replace with principled people devoted to the timeless truths that provide the indispensable intellectual foundation of the great American political experiment.

That is why, now that they have won the election and are vacuuming up power and control from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, liberals are lavishing attention on Sarah Palin with lots of flattering photographs, and celebrating her as the great hope of the Republican Party. (Time ran a cover story, calling her The Renegade.) But they're just baiting the elephant trap. says Noonan, "She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

It is interesting that Sarah Palin is an Evangelical Christian, a group that secular liberals consider stupid and easily manipulated. If conservatives and Evangelicals are going to be helpful to their country, we have to be more than right. We have to be thoughtful. We have to got beyond talking points and zingers, and return once again to a principled and persuasive understanding of the nature and foundations of political, economic, and spiritual liberty.

*********
harold adds:

David, allow me to take the part of the Governor over against the oleaginous and unctuous Peggy Noonan. She was thrown into the imperial snakepit before her time, no question about that. But the only people that have any chance to survive that trial by slander, rumor, and humiliation are those who grew up with the boys and girls in that little club and are thus just like them. The savaging she has endured from the best and the brightest is unprecedented, and she has had zero--ZERO--support from the heroic elected Republicans inside the Beltway. In fact, some of the most outrageous attacks have come from the little backstabbing bedwetters inside the McCain campaign itself. As far as supportive pundits or journalists, I think it reduces to Bill Kristol and a couple of others at the Weekly Standard. (See Victor Davis Hanson's thoughtful reflections in "What is Wisdom? Sarah Palin and her Critics" ) With only support from the great unwashed, she has held her ground. And I don't know where this charge that she doesn't know anything comes from--aside from beltway ambush interviews. While being a mother of five, she dominated multi-party, multi-million dollar negotiations on a giant pipeline deal that had been mired for decades in the corrupt good old boy network and got a deal done. How did that happen? I notice hers is one of the few states in the Union that is in good fiscal condition--a veritable petro state awash in petro dollars, which few politicos would be able to keep their hands off of. She has, and the state of Alaska is positioned to be a leading economic factor when grownups get back in control of the national economy and energy policy. Oh, and as far as not being thoughtful, how about leading a meaningful reassertion of the Tenth Amendment as part of the conservative resurgence of constitutionalism among state legislatures and governors? This is just the first of many moves she will be making. She may not be destined for the presidency, but she will galvanize the conservative movement in ways Noonan never has or ever will, a factor that ought not to be overlooked when judging Noonan's analysis. And lets face it--it doesn't matter whose face is associated with conservatism, he or she is portrayed as either stupid or evil or both--e.g., Gingrich, Reagan, Thatcher. Besides, the left is brimming with really smart people who think they know how to run everyone's lives, and where has that ever worked out? Self organized, bottom up structures such as political self rule and free markets rest more on practical wisdom than the imperial court craftiness and scientific management principles the left prefer for their scheme to rule every last detail of our lives.

I don't think the left's attempts to hang Palin around our necks as some kind talisman of stupid is going to work, despite all of Peggy Noonan's good work. And regarding the Time magazine cover above (I agree with your assessment of what they are attempting), Palin will be around long after Time and Newsweek have died from lack of circulation. George W. Bush, the dumbest president ever, ran circles around them for most of eight years despite their shameless derogation of him. And remember that even Reagan was just an "amiable dunce" to these geniuses. Which leads me to a final thought. What would Noonan's old boss think of Sarah Palin? I'm guessing he would be her biggest supporter, and would be disappointed at Noonan's slide into lust for the cocktail party circuit at the expense of conservatism. I think Peggy Noonan left the reservation long ago, and I never read her anymore--not since she was caught on an open mic disparaging the rank and file of the party--something Ronaldus Magnus would never have done, or accepted.

"Palintology"

Gerard Baker, in his own inimitable style, gets it right once again.

So, the Palinphobia is so shot through with condescension and ideological incomprehension on the media's part that trying to cut through to the reality of her political message is not easy. Her performance on the campaign trail has been shaky, it's true, though it has significantly improved of late (she is now talking directly to reporters more frequently than any of the other candidates). But in the absence of much hard experience of national politics it does seem as though she and her Republican handlers fell back on the Sarah Palin Story as a substitute for a political argument.

This has harmed her and distorted what she could bring to a Republican Party inrenewal. There's still a better story to be told about her record as politician inAlaska, where she has achieved more of substance than Barack Obama has in Washington.

As for the anti-intellectualism she seems to represent, this is a favourite old saw not only of the Left but also of the whole Establishment crowd. There's an unshakeable view among the coastal elites that real wisdom is acquired only by circulating between the ivy-encrusted walls of scholarship and the Manhattan and Hollywood cocktail set. But there's real wisdom among those derided Americans who have never even ventured to the coasts, but whose steady consistent voice and values have been truly responsible for America's many successes.

Say hello, Joe.

The Implosion of the American Conservative Mind

David Brooks has stirred a lot of discussion with his column lamenting Sarah Palin's candidacy for vice-president as the "conservative" pick ("The Class War Before Palin," New York Times, October 10, 2008).

He looks back to the conservative movement that Bill Buckley started, and that liberated American conservatism from the lunatic fringe. "Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals."

Lately, it has become increasingly an anti-intellectual, populist movement. "What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole."

Here is Sarah Palin trying not to let on to Katie Couric that she has never read a newspaper or serious opinion magazine in her life, i.e. that politically she receives no intellectual input in any form. Warning: this is painful to watch.




Brooks does not mention it, but the takeover of academia by the New Left has played an important role in this anti-intellectual conservative reaction. In the 1970s, university departments welcomed into their ranks the graduating Ph.D.s who were formed academically in the intellectual and political upheavals of the 1960s. These established academics understood that this generation of scholars represented a school of thought that would take its place in the larger conversation. Once in, however, the New Left shut everyone else out. That has produced the leftward skew of colleges and universities that we suffer today. As the New Left sees it, academia is not a conversation, but a revolution. It's not the power of ideas. It's just power. As a result, Brooks can say, "The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment." So Republicans have been positioning themselves not only against pointy-headed northeastern liberals and Marxists, but against the life of the mind and the finer strains of human culture generally.

Recently, other professions have been abandoning the GOP too. Brooks cites some arresting figures. "The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community."

I wonder how much of this stems from the party's embrace of stupid populism, how much of it is a widespread reaction to the current president's utter failure to lead in his second term (the surge in Iraq notwithstanding), and how much is traceable to the party's association with Evangelical Christians, especially under this Evangelical president. If it is in any way the latter, how much is attributable to the scandal of the cross, how much to what Mark Noll calls "the scandal of the Evangelical mind" (read the book here), and how much to the Evangelical tin ear for how they appear to people outside their subculture. (How can people who are so expert at contextualizing their evangelism be so inept at presenting themselves politically in the public square?)

These reflections on the new Republican anti-intellectualism come a couple of weeks after an equally provocative column on the role of prudence, and the experience it requires, in political leadership, especially the presidency ("Why Experience Matters," New York Times, Sept. 16, 2008). I recommend it to all of my students as a glimpse into the issue.

Prudence, says Brooks, is "the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight." Prudence stands in contrast to both ideology and mere textbook learning which are doctrinaire and inflexible.

Of course, it requires intelligence of some sort, but it is not a calculation so much as it is a mental grasp or the right course of action, an intuiting of the answer. But that prudent judgment must be informed, and so it is impossible without experience, both personal and vicarious, by reading history. "The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t."

This experience is especially important in the executive branch. Though a president may avail himself of many counselors, responsibility for executive decisions, unlike in Congress, is concentrated in one man. His most consequential decisions, moreover, pertain to international affairs and war, where events are the most unpredictable and the cost of mistaken judgment is most catastrophic.


Some conservatives have been calling Brooks an "elitist." Does that simply charge him with wanting to be governed by wisdom and with recognizing that most people are not wise? We live in a democratic country. We look to ordinary people without distinction for the selection of our leaders. But we do not select our leaders by lot. We elect those whom we think are most wise in public affairs. "Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared" ("Why Experience Matters"). We elect what we hope is an elite. Sarah Palin offers herself not as someone who is wise, but as someone who is ordinary, someone who is just like me. That is at best how the House of Representatives was intended to function, if that. But the genius of the American Founding is far more than that. We expect liberals to forget that. Conservatives should know better.

Footnote: The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is has been doing marvelous work cultivating a high and thoughtful regard for the Founding on college campuses. Along with ISI, Liberty Fund has been in the forefront of disseminating classic literature on "the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals." Further resources for cultivating an active, conservative mind...

Acton Institute - to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) - to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare.

The Claremont Institute - to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.

Ethics and Public Policy Center - to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.

Heritage Foundation - to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

Institute on Religion and Public Life - to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.
_____________________________________
Harold adds:

I feel compelled to point out a couple of things. David Brooks would be on the fringes of any gathering sponsored by any of the six sterling conservative groups listed above, and probably considers all of them within the orbit, or near it, of the conservative philistinism he is so worried about. Who would the members of any of these groups meet an address by with more interest and enthusiasm--Sarah Palin or David Brooks?


Second, Ronald Reagan--the humble-origins conservative that actually did stand athwart history, was no intellectual in the David Brooks style, but rather a member of Jefferson's "natural aristocracy" of talent and intelligence that occasionally bubbles up from below. Sarah Palin may need to catch up on her reading, and the populist strain--partly forced on her by the geniuses in the McCain campaign--is obscuring the essentially wholesome conservative inclinations and intuitions that have caught the attention of the base looking for the next Reagan. Is Sarah Palin a Ronald Reagan? Probably not, but then again, no one is. But I'll stand with Bill Buckley and declare categorically that I would rather be ruled by the first 2000 names in any phone book than the faculty of any college, the editorial board of any newspaper, or the curation staff of any museum. Taste and intelligence are fine qualities--but they don't trump character, humility, common sense--and a connectedness with the vastness of middle America.

In a rare divergence, my sense of this is at variance with my friend, the good Dr Innes. From my perch in deepest, darkest New Jersey, Brooks looks like a Bourgeois Bohemian in taste and temperament, the house republican at the liberal plantation there in NYC. His conservative instincts have been enervated.

Palin Relaunches Herself

For anyone who hangs on my every word and listens to no one else (Hi Mom!), you should know that no one whom I consider wise or a shrewd observer agrees with me on the veep debate. Sure, these are conservatives, but so am I. Conservatives tend to be self-critical, so I take this widespread praise to be well-considered. Palin has apparently relaunched herself into shining stardom. Perhaps she will push ugly economic news off the front page.

Deborah Saunders at The San Francisco Chronicle, "The Palin-Biden Verdict."

Peggy Noonan, "Palin and Populism."

David Brooks, "The Palin Rebound."

Rich Lowry, "The Veep Debate: She's Back!"

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, "Palin Wins Big With Reagan-Like Flair."

Fred Barnes, "Palin's Comeback."

Even Hillary Clinton gave her praise: "It's amazing. She's been thrust into the national spotlight with very little preparation and I think, all things considered, you saw a very composed and effective debater last night."

Barack Obama thinks Biden won. So there.

What Running Mates Do Joe Did

Last night, watching the Veep Debate, even I felt an urge to vote for Obama-Biden. Then I shook myself, and said, "No, David! It's all an illusion!"

Biden played his running mate attack dog role effectively. He tore into McCain and made the Arizona Senator look like a slug. According to Biden, McCain voted to cut money for the troops, voted twenty times against alternative fuels, voted against health coverage for kids, voted against the Violence Against Women Act, proposes to tax health care benefits, and would give $4 billion to oil companies that are already making $600 billion in profits. On top of all that, he opposed the regulation of Wall Street as he has opposed all regulation. (You see? The financial crisis is John McCain's fault!) And he wants to make the same mess of our health care system by getting the government out of that too!

Who would vote for a beast like that? Whereas, according to Biden, Barack Obama anticipated every major problem that we face today, including the credit crisis, and urged the right actions for each one. The guy's amazing! And he loves the middle class too.

Biden actually got angry at McCain's record, but there was no such alarm and outrage from the other side of the stage. He is not a Maverick, Biden said, then made a list of charges.

Palin took a few jabs at Obama. But whereas there is a mountain of dirt she could have dumped on him, she only kicked some dust on his shoes.

She spent a lot of her boasting of how ordinary she is and how well she relates to ordinary people. Biden buried that with his own testimony, ending with an almost tearful remembrance of sitting at the bedside of his child who was hovering between life and death. Furthermore, Palin struck me as too ordinary. She seemed like a nice lady you'd meet at the bowling alley. People expect a certain amount of polish in their Presidents and prospective Presidents.

McCain-Palin will not win simply with their boasts of being Mavericks and just like us. They need to expose the Obama illusion. The debates are the big opportunity because they get no free airtime with the press. Palin's job last night was to do the heavy lifting on that. She did not.

Campaign Videos and Humor

When I was a kid, like in the Clinton years when I was in my thirties, campaign ads ran on television. Where else would they run? And only the candidates, the parties, and well funded organizations like the NRA and AFL-CIO could afford to make them.

Today, anyone can make a campaign ad and run it on YouTube or some other Internet website. Those who see it have viewed it voluntarily. As the good ones get passed around, the size of the viewership is in some way a measure of the message. Also, the ad is not limited to 30 seconds, so you can develop an argument and say more.

Here are two exceptional videos running on YouTube. (I still have not figured out how to make a video screen image appear in my blog post like everyone else can do.)

"Dear Mr. Obama" runs 1:56, has had over 5 million viewers (that's a lot) and features a young veteran respectfully defending our military commitment to Iraq. It features a moving and unexpected twist at the end.

"Dear Mr. Obama II: Economics 101" is an imaginative, economically well-informed, and eloquent explanation of why Sen. Obama's policy proposals would bankrupt the country, or at least would revive the use of the "misery index" that we used under Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency. That one is 4:20 and has had over 45,000 viewers.


Finally...well, this is not an ad, but a Saturday Night Live sketch that is purportedly "A Non-partisan Message from Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton." Tina Fey has you wondering for a second if it is really Palin up there. Amy Poehler does Hillary. Palin: "Tonight we are crossing party lines to address the now very ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign." Clinton: "...an issue which I am frankly surprised to hear people suddenly care about!" They portray Palin as a beautiful ditz, but otherwise sincere and free of partisan animosity. They portray Hillary as an embittered, power hungry shrew. If that isn't a formula for great late night comedy, WHAT IS?

Finally, as if McCain-Palin weren't doing well enough on their own, the Obama-Biden camp seems to be doing everything they can to boost their opponents toward victory in November. In this ad, called "Still," the Obama campaign tries to depict John McCain as "out of touch" with ordinary Americans because he can't email. This recalls George Bush's surprise when he discovered supermarket checkout scanners during the 1992 campaign and how the Clinton campaign used it for the same purpose. But Jonah Goldberg tells us that McCain cannot use a keyboard without great pain on account of the disfigurement he suffered at the hands of his North Vietnamese prison wardens. Perhaps next they'll go after his patriotism for not being able to salute, and paint him as un-American for not being able to throw a baseball.

Palin Fits the American Mold

Maggie Gallagher suggests that Sarah Palin has established a new archetype for modern womanhood: the pioneer, oddly enough ("Sarah Palin's Pioneering Streak").

Generally, powerful female politicians fall into one of two archetypes: They are either Margaret Thatchers or Indira Gandhis.

Indira Ghandis come to power through their female family role, not in spite of it. They rise as daughters or wives in powerful political families to become mother figures -- playing off the "lady bountiful" ideal in traditional societies.

Margaret Thatchers are post-sexual figures. They're tough old biddies whose days as wives and mothers seem well behind them. Schoolmarms, crones -- they are classic female authority figures who can be trusted to exercise power "like men" because their disturbing and complicating female sexual persona has largely dissipated.

Hillary Clinton, as a pathbreaking female presidential candidate, struggled to combine both archetypes, and I think largely successfully. Hillary forged a way for a woman to appear tough and powerful enough to be president without altogether losing her female "brand."

But Gov. Sarah Palin is something completely new. She is still young, still beautiful, still in the middle of all the messy complications that the sexual role of being a woman brings -- a Down syndrome baby, a teenage daughter's pregnancy.

What we need here is a new sexual archetype for female achievement. And I think in Gov. Palin, we have an extraordinary one: pioneer woman.

A pioneer woman is a traditional figure. She stands beside her man -- not at war with him. She takes care of her home and her community. If her man is around, maybe she lets him kill the bear. But if he falls, or fails, she picks up the rifle and gets the job done, whatever the job is that needs to be done.

But Gallagher has it wrong. First, the pioneer wife did not "let" her man kill a bear. She would take charge quite capably if the man disappeared (death, long journey etc.), but while he was in the picture she was not in charge. She supported her husband. Palin's public service has had nothing to do with her husband. That's her husband (a man's man in every respect) standing off to the side holding the baby.

She does present a new model, but it's not the pioneer woman.

Her story certainly fits the classic democratic tale of universal opportunity. Despite your humble origins, perhaps a log cabin, if you work hard and have talent you can become President of the United States. Ronald Reagan was just a kid from Dixon, Illinois, who went off to seek his fortune and made his way to the White House. Bill Clinton was a boy from a broken home in Hope, Arkansas.

Barack Obama tried to package himself as an example of that American dream. It hasn't worked. The story has to start in an ordinary town. Yes, he was born in Kansas, and Hawaii plays a role at some point, but the story can't involve Muslim schooling in Indonesia.

Sarah Palin then steps into our American dream cravings that Obama had stirred but did not satisfy. She grew up in Wassila, Alaska (find that on a map). She married her high school sweetheart. She attended a non-Ivy League university. She has a big family. She started her trek to Washington on the PTA with a concern for reform. Americans can more plausibly look at Palin's life and say, "Her story is my story!" (not that I think that should make any difference, but that's our world).

And there's Barack Obama, standing at the side of the road with his baggage, watching the last bus to Washington leave with Sarah Palin sitting in what he thought was his seat. And all he has is Joe Biden to entertain him.

Note on the photos:

The photograph of the statue is from Flyoverpeople.net. The base of the statue reads: “Dedicated to the Pioneer Women of Kansas.” On the website (Nov.17, 2006), Cheryl Unrah writes concerning this photograph, “A woman, a babe, a boy, a gun and a dog. I thought the dog lying at her feet was a nice touch. I'm sure many pioneer women were often left on their own for days at a time. They were toughened by the danger, by the wind, by Kansas blizzards. This monument is on the grounds of the Kansas Capitol.”

The old photos of gun-toting pioneer women come from the Women of Action Network website, a page on markswomen.

Palin is Hollywood's Frankenstein

Michelle Ryan in The Bionic Woman

It was not supposed to happen this way. From 2005-2006, Hollywood produced 19 episodes of “Commander in Chief” starring Geena Davis as an accidental President. It was a national prep for a Hillary Clinton Presidency. The storyline was that the party put Geena Davis on the ticket simply to attract female voters, and with this gimmick they won the White House. So when the President suddenly died soon after taking office, they took it as a given that she would step aside, as she was never seriously expected to serve as President. But she got it in her head to be President anyway, and went on to an unexpectedly successful presidency.

Well, it turns out that life has ended up imitating art far more closely than they had planned. Hillary lost the nomination, but the Republicans nominated...Sarah Palin...a beautiful young (relatively) inexperienced governor for the vice-presidency. Let’s hope the parallel ends there (as we wish no ill on Sen. McCain and expect great accomplishments from him).

Then consider the model of womanhood that Hollywood has been serving us for the last 30-35 years, from the bionic woman and Charlie's Angels (1976) to Angelina Jolie. (Of course Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels bridge the entire era, as it turns out.) These women were supposed to be the liberated anti-conservatives. Every film, every episode, every re-run was an assault on traditional sexual categories, a deconstruction of marriage and family as we have always known them.

But it has always been so absurdly fictional, such a daydream of the liberal imagination to which we have been constantly exposed like inmates at a re-education camp for political deviants. In real life, no one is like that except a few rock climbing products of modern technology. Then along comes Sarah Palin, the beautiful, athletic, charming woman who rockets into high office not on her husband’s coattails when he dies or serves his maximum two terms, but by her own extraordinary abilities.

But wait! The story is out of control! She’s not supposed to be a conservative! Add that she’s a social conservative, an economic conservative, a political conservative and an Evangelical Christian all rolled into one, and it’s a liberal cultural engineer’s nightmare, a Room 101 from 1984.

Thus, Sarah Palin has become Hollywood's Frankenstein with an ironic inversion. Of course, in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein was not the monster, but the scientist. So it is Hollywood that is Frankenstein. But who is the monster?

The project of the Hollywood liberal establishment was to reconfigure, construct, and propagate the modern woman, defying nature, for a brave new world. But just as Dr. Frankenstein's "man" turned out a monster and took on a life of his own, Hollywood's monster has turned out to be a real woman, a wholesome human being.

Can Sarah Palin be model for American women? That is a separate matter. Just because Hollywood is horrified doesn't mean that their nightmare should be every man's dream come true. Growing up is hard when your mother is busy in the public sphere. Rather than justify the female juggler of family and career, Palin may refocus attention on this quintessentially modern, democratic problem.

More Evidence the Winds of Change are Shifting Right

In this MSNBC floor interview with Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House overwhelms the reporter with an avalanche (do they have those in Alask?) of evidence that Sarah Palin has lots of experience that suits her for the vice-presidency, whereas Barack Obama actually has none.

Gingrich concludes with, "I don't know of a single thing Obama's done except talk and write."

Where's the Beef in 2008?

Experience has become an important issue in this campaign. The McCain and Obama camps are arguing back and forth over who is the most critically deficient in this regard, Obama or Palin. Does a small town mayor beat a community organizer or does it count for nothing?

We find ourselves in this odd situation because of Barack Obama's self-propelled meteoric rise to the nomination. He has hurried through various vocations and levels of public authority, never settling long enough to accomplish anything significant. Given that he had barely warmed his seat in the U.S. Senate before declaring himself a candidate for the White House, there is a sense in which he went straight from state senator to running for President. For Obama, the Senate was a launching pad, not a task to be completed before moving on. So he is presenting himself to the nation young and unaccomplished, but very charming.

Obama has picked the fruit of his own potential before it is ripe. He should have served at least a full term in the Senate, and perhaps even served as Governor of his state, and only then sought the highest office in his mid to late fifties.

In response, John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. She too is only in her first term in high office. The difference, of course, is that she has great accomplishments. Nonetheless, the fruit of her potential is, like Obama's, not yet ripe. And she's only 44!

Furthermore, weren't people seriously considering Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana for McCain's number two, whether inside the McCain circle or just outside? He is also in his first term as Governor and he is only 37.

I raise these points not to discount the possibility that any one of these people might, in the event of unforeseen circumstances, serve at least as well as...say...Jimmy Carter. I am only pointing out that this is a strange conclusion to a primary season that has been strange from the beginning. Why this youth and inexperience on both sides of the contest at one level or another? Is it simply that Obama has lurched ahead of himself and drawn the Republicans to select a running mate who is competitively young and novel? Is it that after 20 years of two families dominating the two parties, we are seeing a reaction in favor of obscurity? That theory is especially plausible on the Democratic side where the Clintons threatened to return for another eight years.

Regardless of how we got here, here we are, and we have to weigh these tickets and make our choice.

What I'd Like to Hear Sarah Say

In her speech tonight I'd like to hear her paraphrase a line from Pink Floyd's Wall:

Hey, Screachers, Leave those kids alone!

The moral authority of a strict, no nonsense mom is a big part of what got her where she is, and a "look at me when I'm talking to you" from her tonight might shame even the shameless drive-by's into silence.

Recall Barack Obama's straight-on come back to Maureen Dowd, who early on dared the attempt to "toughen him up" by joking about his ears. Heard anything about the taxicab ears of the Light Worker lately?

Of course, she is going up against the Old Girl's Network, and they are not happy about some upstart Annie Oakley pushing into the room. But perhaps, with a whip and chair in hand, she can back the ill-tempered cats back onto their stools and take control of the Big Tent tonight. And that I think will be key: she needs to let the media know in no uncertain terms that she knows the game they are playing, and that she can beat them at it.

She can take care of herself. She answered concerns about her preparedness from the McCain professionals with this quip: Know what the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is?

Lipstick.

The Two Strains of Feminism

Christina Hoff Sommers, always worth reading, has an interesting history of feminism at the American Enterprise Institute's website. It turns out the divide we have watched develop in 20th century feminism, between the radical, women's study kind of feminism--ie, the "approved" version--and the sort ordinary women have in the main taken up in the last decades, stretches back to the dawn of feminist stirrings. I knew of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) as a student of Locke and Enlightenment liberalism, and knew that she traveled in cutting edge circles (read libertine) during her time. Her thought, as developed along the lines of other feminist icons you have heard of--Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony--is the approved doctrine that forms the official history of the feminist struggle for recognition.

But as with the rest of cultural and political history, the progressive Left has airbrushed out inconvenient parts and instead given us the politically correct narrative that is meant to raise our consciousness. And again, as with the rest of the progressive left's agenda, it is an ill fit with the way normal people see the world and live their lives. So it is not too surprising to find another strand of feminism buried in the archives, purposely ignored by the radicals in charge of education. (Reflect here that William Ayers, to maximize his radicalizing intentions, chose a roost in a school of education, where education theory is taught--teaching teachers how to teach). Along side the Rationalist Enlightenment liberalism of Wollstonecraft taken up by the radicals, there was--and Hoff Sommers argues remains--another sort of feminism, one she labels conservative feminism. It seems another influential woman was at work contemporaneously with Wollstonecraft: a woman named Hannah More.

A couple of paragraphs from Hoff Sommers piece:

At the time Wollstonecraft was writing, Hannah More (1745-1833)--novelist, poet, pamphleteer, political activist, evangelical reformer, and abolitionist--was waging a very different campaign to improve the status of women. More is well known to scholars who specialize in eighteenth-century culture. The late UCLA literary historian Mitzi Myers called her a "female crusader infinitely more successful than Wollstonecraft or any other competitor," but More is rarely given the credit she deserves. The story of what she initiated and how she did it is integral to the story of women's quest for freedom. But few contemporary feminist historians have wanted that story to be told.

If Wollstonecraft was the founder of egalitarian feminism, More was the founder of conservative feminism. Like Wollstonecraft, More was a religiously inspired, self-made woman who became an intellectual peer of several of the most accomplished men of her age. But whereas Wollstonecraft befriended Paine and debated Burke, More was a friend and admirer of Burke; a close friend of Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole; and an indispensable ally and confidante to William Wilberforce, a father of British abolitionism.

Concerning the French Revolution, which Wollstonecraft initially championed, More wrote, "From liberty, equality, and the rights of man, good Lord deliver us." And she was surely the most prominent woman of her age. As one biographer notes, "In her time she was better known than Mary Wollstonecraft and her books outsold Jane Austen's many times over." Her various pamphlets sold in the millions and her tract against the French Revolution enjoyed a greater circulation than Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France or Paine's Rights of Man. Some historians credit her political writings with saving England from the kind of brutal revolutionary upheaval that traumatized France.

All this as prologue to what we see playing out before us in the media savaging of Sarah Palin. The NOW gang, with its implanted sisterhood in the media and other elite institutions, regard the conservative feminism of Sarah Palin--and by extension the many millions of women like her--as no feminism at all. As Kathryne Jean Lopez at NRO presents it, the sisterhood sneers, "We're not sisters with her."

Radical ideologists can never let anything come before the idea, not even, and perhaps especially, the real world. The women's studies sisterhood will never relinquish their stranglehold on the orthodoxy, and in doing so will alienate even further the conservative women who have long since settled into the freedom to be themselves and who find the hard edged, elitist, "sanctimonious sermonizers" Camille Paglia speaks of to be overbearing and leading a parade from the past. They will find in Sarah Palin the heroic public figure the gatekeepers have prevented before now, and I suspect the anger we see building is going to be expressed electorally.

Hell hath no fury...

The Confidence of Authenticity

Newt Gingrich has sent an email to Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard that is destined for fame, and is going to resonate around the web for some time. In it, Gingrich says he was struck by the comments of people coming up to him in non-political venues expressing their excitement about Sarah Palin.

It comes down to one word: authenticity. Sarah Palin is the real deal; there is no spinning or myth-making to do to present her story to the public, unlike the literally unbelievable "biographies" of Biden and Obama that are so insultingly served up. Sarah Palin, by contrast, has her feet on the ground, so to speak, and has the look of one who is completely comfortable in her skin.

One's apparel, especially a woman's, is all important in the audience's discovery of who this person is. Hillary and Nancy Pelosi use pantsuits to strike the pose they calculate makes the best presentation. Sarah Palin, in a black skirt and jacket, and these fabulous open-toed Dorothy pumps threw down a gauntlet of sorts to those who think they have locked down the definition of what it means for a woman to be a power player.

I think the shoes Sarah picked for her biggest moment so far says it all, and in a way that is at once galling to the feminist sisterhood in their various brands, and thrilling to real women all over the country. Not only has she managed being a mother of five while rocketing upward through the political ranks to the top state post in Alaska, but she's still got it goin' on appearance-wise. The beauty queen in her lives on, and with a sprite-like insouciance, she sent a clear message at her national debut that she has no apologies to give for being a woman--and in fact, she likes being a woman, and always has.

This looks to me to be the real symbol of "girl power"; she has walked into committee rooms and faced powerful, connected, domineering Republican men, probably wearing shoes very much like these, and proceeded to kick butt and take names. And as Camille Paglia likes to remind us, symbols matter. Real women are cheering to see a real woman arrive at the Imperial City. She's going to take it to the Wizard in them shoes, just watch.

The Organic Candidate and the Machine Candidate

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist, spoke of “organic intellectuals”, those who are self-taught and make their own way, as opposed to the intellectuals churned out by universities. Eric Hoffer, the “philosopher/longshoreman”, comes to mind. Perhaps only in America can one also speak of “organic politicians”, citizens whose ambitions or desires to get involved find their expression outside the settled political establishments. Such an organic politician is Sarah Palin. And it is in this characteristic that we find the most telling, and most important, distinction between her and both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Both of the latter attended top drawer universities and law schools before being fed into the intake machinery of the political apparatus to which they are still beholden. Both are utterly conventional politicians, despite the gauzy promise-making, dream-weaving shtick of which the Obama campaign mostly consists. Sarah Palin went to a western university little heard of, then returned to the little backwoods berg where she was reared, to marry and rear her own family.

Sarah Palin’s almost inadvertent involvement in civic affairs had its genesis in about as local a concern as it gets—she joined the PTA. Being a person of firm convictions, she found it easy to weigh in on issues and help guide decision-making at the micro-scale of American political society. She exhibits the spirit of the early American “genius” Alexis de Tocqueville pinpointed—the proclivity of Americans to form and join organizations to solve problems. Her rise through the levels of political organizations—PTA, School Board, City Council, the Mayoralty, a seat on an important state commission, and finally the Governorship, was accomplished mostly against the wishes of the party bigs. Her campaigns have always been grass-roots in the most authentic possible meaning of that term, drawing support not from established party bosses but from the broad electorate disgusted at the closed room deal-making that all party establishments tend toward. In other words, her success is in spite of, not because of, the existing party organization. Now, political associations are perhaps the main sort of group de Tocqueville was so impressed by, and they surely form one of the main pillars of political liberty in America. But all human efforts tend toward corruption, and when power is involved, the tendency is all the starker. Thus, the real need for critical outsiders to bring reform.

Obama, by contrast, merely used the political machinery ostensibly in place to work as “community organizer”on neighborhood problems to build his resume for the next rung on the career ladder. His accomplishments are thin because at the attainment of each new level, his sights are shifted to the next step up. Why were millions wasted with no results in those South Chicago neighborhoods? Why did he not publish anything from his coveted perch at the Harvard Law Review? Why all the “present” votes in the Illinois State Senate? Why has he not held a single hearing as Chair of the Veterans Affairs sub-committee in the US Senate? He is more a vehicle for the party apparatus, an empty vessel for them to fill, than a public servant working to actually produce results. Think of it: how antiquated and quaint the term “public servant” seems next to the image of cosmopolitan, jet-setting celebrity he quite consciously cultivates, following the excrescences of the Clinton presidency. The hope and change campaign themes obscure the utterly cynical and conventional Chicago-style ward politics that provide the gears for his machine, while Soros' money provides the grease. Being all about being all about himself, there is no there there when actual policy questions are brought to discussion. Hence the celebrity-lite responses when he has no script.

Sarah Palin knows the ground in a way that Obama never will—she has been a foot soldier at the front, earning her stripes, while he, a connected and elite officer at the rear, has been pinning fabulous ribbons and medals on his dashing uniform, in preparation for his coronation.

Candidates of Life and Death

In light of Barack Obama's voting record, John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate puts the abortion issue squarely in the public eye in a way that could not be more flattering to the respect for innocent, unborn life, and could not be more unflattering to the support for legalized and freely available abortion.

God is the author of life. Knowing him in Christ is fullness of life. Where his presence is, there is life. Where he withdraws, there is death. Hell is the second death.

When people deny God, they deny life. The Soviet Communists killed tens of millions of their own citizens. The Communist Chinese force mothers to abort their unborn children. In America, our cultural and political authorities have been explicitly turning away from God and embracing atheism for the last 40 years. As a consequence of this, we have tolerated and even encouraged 40 million abortions since 1973. It is the equivalent of a self-inflicted nuclear strike.

Whereas Sarah Palin, an Evangelical Christian, has five children and refused to abort that last one when she learned he had Downs Syndrome (it's a disgrace that we think of that as heroic because it implies the acceptability of killing difficult children), Barack Obama as Illinois state senator voted against a bill to protect babies who are born alive despite an abortion procedure. An almost identical bill passed the U.S. Senate at the same time by a vote of 98-0.

This juxtaposition of candidates is an interesting providence.