Thursday, November 06, 2008 - Posts
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In all the idle chatter I picked up today about which private school the Obama girls might attend (see this New York Times story for the first guesses), one thing was absent: any hint of the gossipy, snarky tone that usually descends on a first family as soon as they step foot in this insular town (especially when discussing something so ripe with humor as progressive private schools jockeying for their attention).
It's not surpising, I suppose, given the general goodwill toward them. But it does make me wonder exactly what political species they will fall into. Messiah implies eventual disappointment. He is more like a benevolent king. He has an almost old-fashioned, regal gift of making the nation's destiny seem in line with his own. Usually, when politicians give us all the credit, we see this as faux humility padding their own ambition. But when Obama repeats, over and over, "this is your victory," or "this victory belongs to you," we believe him.
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I don't believe for a second that Sarah Palin wasn't aware of the fact that Africa is a continent, not a single country. If there's even a grain of truth to this rumor, I suspect it's that she referred to South Africa as a "region," and that led her aides—who already had a low opinion of her—to assume the worst. I'd also like to point out that none other than George W. Bush once referred to Africa as a "nation." After meeting with E.U. leaders in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2001, he said: "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease."
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Thank you, Melinda and Lauren, for saying what I wanted to say but was avoiding since I've largely been our lone Sarah Palin defender. Saying that Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent sounds like something you'd say about your ex after a bitter breakup (which is perhaps what this is). It sounds far more sarcastic and bitter than serious, and it says more about the speaker than the target.
John McCain might not have been able to win even if he'd put God himself on the ticket, given the standing of the Republican Party right now. And Palin surely didn't help him pull in as many women as he'd hoped. But still, as Chris Beam points out in Slate, he didn't have a lot of good choices (or rather, left himself with few good choices because of his rumored stubborn insistence on Joe Lieberman). I kind of wish in hindsight that it had been Mitt Romney, because he'd have brought credibility on the economic front. But the narrative would have been about their contentious primary. And I liked Tim Pawlenty, once I'd heard of him, but Chris is right that you would have been able to hear crickets chirping at rallies. And Joe Lieberman? Worse than crickets. The networks would have had to find a way to silence the echoes in the convention center during the acceptance speeches while the conventioneers were out at bars drowning their sorrows. Heck, I would have voted for Obama if he picked Lieberman. (No offense, Joe.) So, it seems a little unfair for all the blame to fall on Sarah Palin. McCain was trailing, he threw a Hail Mary, and it fell short. It's not like he was leading by 10 points and then she brought down the whole campaign.
Like Anne says, whether Palin is that dumb or not, this says something bad about the McCain campaign. The candidate himself gave a gracious concession speech Tuesday night. It's too bad his staffers don't have the same amount of class.
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Jodi Kantor has a piece in the Times today examining our first family-elect's "acute awareness" that everything they do "will brim with symbolic value." She's mainly talking about what they will represent racially, of course. But that's not the whole story: I can't stop thinking about Michelle Obama's declaration last week that her plan was to become "mom in chief." I get that ensuring her kids have a semi-normal life inside the White House will be consuming. And I have no issue with her decision to leave her job, saying that all the attention paid and access granted to a first lady can help her accomplish more than her job could. She's right, though I did love the idea of a first lady with a full-time job—but, I admit, only for its "symbolic value." What I don't get is why, if she's aware of what she represents, and if her chief interest is helping working parents, this mom-in-chief title is acceptable.
The accepted wisdom that she had to soften her career-dynamo image to reach voters angered me. I don't think for a moment that Michelle's high-powered-working-mother story would have broken this election. Furthermore, these sorts of political trade-offs perpetuate the perception that this nation can't handle the notion of women whose work has major value, just as their parenting does. Now that Obama has won, will Michelle, aware of all she represents, choose to portray her successful career as something to celebrate, or as a dirty secret? She can be so much more than just a fashion icon if she gives up the "Mom" label and instead chooses to be the woman I fell for before the primary season stripped her of the identity. "When people ask Michelle Obama to describe herself, she doesn't hesitate. First and foremost, she is Malia and Sasha's mom," the campaign Web site says. Now that this election is over, I hope once again we'll get to see her as so much more.
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Sounds like those McCain aides are fast-tracking their guy's return to pariah—I mean, maverick—status by alienating every last conservative who voted for him with their mean, sexist, and derriere-covering hooey about Sarah Palin. I'm sorry, but I do not for one second believe that she did not know Africa was a continent. If she threw those poor foot soldiers for democracy into a panic by appearing at her hotel-room door "essentially ... wrapped in a bathrobe''—grow up, people; it's not the first time a candidate has finished dressing on the run. And from what I saw of the crack McCain-Palin organization, somebody needed to engage in the dreaded "throwing of paperwork and things of that nature.'' I see this as the jump-start of her rehab with women voters: diva, shopaholic, temptress, hmmm. Keep up the women-hating insults, McCainiacs, and it'll be Palin in '12.
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I, too, am fascinated by all of this postgame revelation, Anne and Emily. I'm having a hard time believing, though, that Palin—the governor of an American state surrounded by Canada—did not know what NAFTA was, nor that Africa wasn't a country. She's literate; her parents were teachers. It sounds to me like a sarcastic comment was taken as fact. That said, it's insane that we can even be discussing this; crazier still how O'Reilly leapt to her defense. As if the campaign didn't feel like satire to begin with.
Dahlia, while the diva-branding is surely sexist (like the c-word, there's no male equivalent), I'm not sure that the towel talk is, too. The fact that, as Newsweek has reported, when McCain's top strategists arrived at her hotel room to brief her for for the convention, she appeared wrapped only in a towel—well, that's pretty revelatory about how this woman uses her sex appeal as power in the most egregiously inappropriate circumstances. I admit that I love the idea of such palling around with major governmental figures—if, say, we learned that Angela Merkel hangs with longtime advisers in her bathrobe, I'd feel giddy fondness. But this is another story, and if we're going to looking at a future in which Palin continues to sear our consciousness, I want to know how she plays her game.
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Anne and Emily: I was as riveted as you by Carl Cameron’s breathless dishing—as well as by O’Reilly's almost palpable desire to smash him in the face on live television—but I couldn’t help but balk a little at the substance of the McCain campaign's criticisms: Palin is described as colossally stupid. And a diva (prone to tantrums and throwing things). And someone who opens her hotel room door in just a bathrobe (inappropriately sexual) and also a shopaholic who already had far too many clothes to begin with. Just wondering if the sexism threaded through all that doesn’t make it a little less juicy and a lot more worrisome?
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Agreed, Emily: If it's true that Palin knows less geography than most fifth graders, that says something rather awful about the McCain campaign. If it's not true, and if McCain staffers are spreading that rumor anyway, that says something rather awful about the McCain campaign too...
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I agree, Anne, that the gleeful details being spread by McCain’s staff about Sarah Palin’s Ali G-like geographical bewilderment, her temper tantrums, and refusal to accept interview preparation are particularly juicy. Let's accept all this is true—aren't McCain’s own people making the argument for why McCain deserved to lose? Their guy, who is 72 and has had melanoma almost as many times as Larry King has been married, picked Palin after a couple of brief conversations. The staff's “now it can be told” eviscerating of her actually makes the campaign look as if it was trying to perpetrate a fraud on the public.
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For those who haven’t seen it yet, this clip of Fox News political correspondent Carl Cameron talking to Bill O'Reilly is rather extraordinary, and not only for what it reveals about Sarah Palin. Cameron reports that McCain campaign insiders have told him that Palin was unaware that Africa is a continent, not a single country; that she could not name the three signatories of the North American Free Trade Agreement; and that she had refused point-blank to prepare for those infamous Katie Couric interviews.
But O’Reilly’s reaction is even more gripping than these revelations. Even as Cameron—a Fox reporter!—is talking, he keeps grasping wildly at the “all-criticism-of-Palin-is-snobbery” narrative. “She could be tutored!” he says at one point and gets Cameron agree that the real problem with the Couric interviews was the way the elite liberal media spun them afterward. My prediction: If the Republican Party and its pundits sticks to this interpretation of Palin’s performance, they’ll be out of the White House for the next decade, if not longer.
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