Do not conclude from the fact that I am about to mention Sarah Palin that my blog traffic numbers are down and I am trying to juice them. Not at all. I am just being a dispassionate observer of the Republic here. The fact that some folks will not be able to discuss her without working up a major wedgie for themselves should simply be taken for what it is — a side benefit.
I do want to point to a striking fact about the recent health care debate, one that involves Sarah Palin. Or at least what appears to be a striking fact to those of us here in the cheap seats. The health care debate was going badly for Obama from the gitgo, but the difficulties were largely fiscal. The country was still reeling from the staggering numbers involved in the stimulus package, and the hinterland folks were largely unprepared to believe that a monster program like universal health care could possibly be “deficit neutral.” This was the boondoggle argument, and it is still a fine one, and fully operative. This would be a boondoggle that would put all other boondoggles into the mirkwood shade.
Enter Sarah Palin, who appears to have radically altered the terms and terrain of the debate. She brought up the “death panels,” and made the simple and clear moral observation that what was being proposed was “evil.” The point I am making is that her observation “took,” in that it was received seriously by a large number of people. It quickly became an important part of the debate, and the president then had to respond to it. And Sarah Palin has responded to that here.
Now I happen to agree with her take on this, completely, fully, and without reserve. But that is not my point. My point is that Sarah Palin is important. She doesn’t need to “read some books,” or “go home and study” in order to become important. She is already there; she is already in a position of influence and leadership, and that fact can either be acknowledged or ignored.
The Left will oppose you by one of two means — they will demonize you or they will patronize you. They did the former with the previous vice-president, Richard, the Lord of Darkness. They did the latter with George W., the well-known buffoon. Bush was, in his own words, misunderestimated by them. I am not saying this as a particular fan of George Bush, for whom I never voted. But you don’t usually get where he got by being stupid or uneducated. During his time in office, Bush had a running contest with Karl Rove on how many books they would read. Rove consistently won, but Bush still read about a book a week while he was in office. Some of his policies indicate to me that they were the wrong books, but my point here is not wisdom but rather smarts and competence.
I have lost count of how many times pundits and talking heads have expressed their disappointment with Sarah Palin, shaking their heads like an English teacher grading a sub par spelling test by some kid with a dirty face named Wayne. They think she should spend some time hitting the books, and they have done everything but pat her cute little head. The East Coast elites have been very busy trying out the option of patronizing her — because it is clear she would not make a very good Duchess of Darkness. They can put her in a Transylvanian castle, and vividly describe a bad lightning storm, and give her a black dress, and have you sit down with her for tea with some spooky organ music in the background, and then she would say, “That tea hot enough for ya?”
But at the same time, the Left recognizes how important she is because of how much energy has gone into that patronizing of her. So these disparaging evaluations of her abilities and education are not at all the detached punditry that they appear to be. There is a subtext, and that subtext has a great deal to do with their deep need to attach a particular meme to her — “that girl needs an education.” They have been laboring industriously at this, trying to get it to stick for month after month. The sweat on their foreheads is pretty visible now that much of the viewing public has HD. How long did it take her to attach the meme “death panels” to Obama’s health program? It took her five minutes.