Smearing Sarah

[Knutey]

Doesnt matter almost everyone knows she is dummeren  dirt.

You don't go from the PTA to Governor being dumber than dirt.

You do in Alaska where the state plant is a rusting car by the roadside.

[Henny]

Essentially, the media, the left and even some from the right decided that Sarah was going to be the victim du jour, a la George Bush. What disturbs me about the whole thing from beginning to end is that she's not a stupid woman - not by a long shot. George Bush is also not a stupid man; his major stumble was not being a strong public speaker. And I don't have to agree with a politician or be a Republican to make these observations.

The further targeting of her on the wardrobe issue ONLY came up because she is a woman - and that bothers me even more. I was glad to see that even some hardcore leftist feminists spoke up on her behalf on this topic.

The long and short of it is that it is one thing to disagree on the issues. But cheap shots from both sides such as these are awful.

Smearing Sarah

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | 11/13/2008

It is an inescapable rule of politics that defeat breeds recrimination, and the bitter aftermath of the 2008 election is no exception. Hardly had Barack Obama swept to a resounding victory on November 4th, than anonymous insiders in the McCain campaign began feeding political reporters a too-convenient-by-half theory to explain the electoral rout. In brief, it was all Sarah Palin’s fault. 

Most sensational in this vein is the claim that Palin’s supposed intellectual deficiencies were one of the downfalls of the campaign. Thus, in the past few weeks alone, McCain aides have accused Palin of being so politically clueless that she could not name the participating nations in the North American free-trade agreement and so geographically unlettered that she did not know that Africa is a continent and not a country. Even Palin’s family has become an object of internecine derision, charmlessly described by one disgruntled McCain advisor as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

Palin’s putative ignorance is but one of the flaws that allegedly undid the McCain campaign. If the mudslingers are to be believed, Palin used her ascendance to the Republican ticket as cynical self-promotion. In the days leading up the election, whispering from McCain aides gave rise to the notion that Palin had “gone rogue” and was seeking the limelight at the expense of John McCain, a narrative that was repeated without scepticism by a press eager to see the worst in the popular Alaska governor. In countless news stories, McCain aides were quoted calling Palin a “diva” out for herself, an ideologue “who takes no advice from anyone,” even a crazed “whack job.” As if this were insufficiently damning, one unnamed McCain aide lamented that Palin “does not have any relationships of trust with any of us.” Given the daily barrage of defamatory leaks against her, this complaint was all too credible.

But the rest was dubious at best. For the record, Palin has said that her comments about NATO and Africa were quoted out of context. The Africa charge turns out to be a hoax. In any case, it’s hard to see why Palin's gaffes merit the significance that has been attached to them. On a campaign stop in Oregon this summer, Barack Obama famously claimed to have visited “fifty seven states” and insisted that he still had “one left to go.” Joseph Biden, a one-man compendium of political faux pas, offered this history of the Great Depression in September: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’” It was an interesting account, all the more so given that Herbert Hoover was president during the Great Depression and televisions were not made available to the mass public until the late 1930s. That the indisputably bright Obama won the election handily suggests that such gaffes are not a reliable indicator of intelligence – let a lone a convincing explanation of why McCain lost.

It is likewise difficult to lend credence to claims that Palin went “rogue.” This charge seems largely based on Palin’s telling a reporter that she disagreed with McCain strategists’ decision to suspend the campaign in Michigan in the first week of October. It may well be that the strategists were right on the merits. McCain ultimately lost the state by 16 percentage points and some 800,000 votes. But if a determination to keep fighting for votes in the face of adversity is now to be considered a sign of a vice presidential candidate’s unfitness, it has to be asked why the running mate exists in the first place.

If McCain aides’ disdain for Palin has garnered such popular notice, the reason seems to have less to do with the substance of their animus than with the fact that it flatters the prejudices of the Palin’s critics on the Democratic Left and anti-populist Right.  For her services to the McCain campaign, Palin has been mocked as an intellectual lightweight and faux-populist, tarred as a religious fanatic and a secessionist, dismissed as a McCarthyite demagogue and declared nothing less than the enemy of reason. In the New York Times, David Brooks wrote that she “represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party,” a charge echoed in the Economist, which accused her of “bringing out the worst in her party.” A marginal but much-noticed chorus of “Obamacons,” including most prominently Christopher Buckley, son of the late William F. Buckley, publically turned against McCain for no other reason than a felt dislike for his vice presidential pick.


No mystery surrounds the Left’s hatred of Palin. She energized a Republican Party that was at best halfhearted about its presidential nominee, attracting thousands to her rallies (a late October rally in Missouri brought out at least 13,000 Palin supporters, numbers rivaled only by Barack Obama himself) and almost single-handedly nullifying Obama’s expected poll bounce following the Democratic National Convention.  It bears remembering that the one and only time that McCain pulled even with Obama in the race was after Palin’s addition to the ticket. One wouldn’t expect Democrats to admire these achievements. Less clear is why the McCain’s campaign operatives should find them so blameworthy.


Unless, of course, the idea is to deflect blame from their own missteps, of which there were many.  In a politically unfavorable year for Republicans, McCain’s occasional policy incoherence – in one presidential debate, he unveiled new spending programs within minutes of promising a spending freeze – and his erratic behavior amid the recent financial crisis, when he needlessly suspended his campaign, only complicated the unlikely task of a McCain victory. Indeed, absent the grassroots enthusiasm generated by Sarah Palin, McCain’s margin of defeat may well have been larger than seven points that it was.

The truly strange aspect of the anti-Palin blowback from inside the McCain campaign is not that it has emerged – one wouldn’t expect the architects of an ineptly run campaign to do anything so drastic as accept responsibility – but that it has gone on as long as it has. Whatever the flaws of John McCain the presidential candidate, John McCain the man has never been one to evade responsibility. He could prove it again by standing up for a woman who did far more to make his campaign competitive than the aggrieved strategists now determined to blame her for its failure.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine. His e-mail is jlaksin

• gmail.com.

[Xavier_Onassis]

his major stumble was not being a strong public speaker. And I don't have to agree with a politician or be a Republican to make these observations.

Bad public speaker? Come on! How about warmongerer, liar, phony, stubborn assh*le. His speaking style is due to his trying to repeat the stuff they are sending him on that transponder or whatever it is they implanted in him. Not that he was any sort of good speaker before that. But that is the least of his many flaws.
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The further targeting of her on the wardrobe issue ONLY came up because she is a woman - and that bothers me even more. I was glad to see that even some hardcore leftist feminists spoke up on her behalf on this topic.

No one pays any attention to men's clothes at all, unless they are dirty or frayed. Most men don't pay much attention to women's clothes, either. I have never given one second's thought to whether a woman's shoes "match" her handbag. Clothes are a woman's issue. No party ever laid out thousands of dolars to buy a guy a suit, either.

I agree that Palin's clothes are a silly issue, but laying out all that bread (like $500 for a jacket) in a time of recession for  clothes from fancy stores when one is supposedly trying to get the vote of some single mom trying to find $50 for groceries to make ends meet and feed her family is going to come up.

I don't hate Palin, I just think she is a ditz. I wouldn't vote for her if I were an Alaskan, either.

On the other hand Juniorbush is a felon, and I regret that we will never see him behind bars for all the grief, suffering and death he has caused with his unnecessary and poorly planned war. It will be a relief to see him out of the White House.

 

[sirs]

Thanks for your usual injection of objectivity Miss Henny.  It's so refreshing when we're so often inundated with ditz-like posts, when the topic of Mrs. Palin comes up

[Henny]

his major stumble was not being a strong public speaker. And I don't have to agree with a politician or be a Republican to make these observations.

Bad public speaker? Come on! How about warmongerer, liar, phony, stubborn assh*le. His speaking style is due to his trying to repeat the stuff they are sending him on that transponder or whatever it is they implanted in him. Not that he was any sort of good speaker before that. But that is the least of his many flaws.
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XO, quite specifically I was talking about the 8 years of portraying Bush as a complete moron. And I believe that people latched onto his imperfections in public speaking.

This all quite besides any criticisms of his policies.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Juniorbush was not a complete moron. However, he was a terrible administrator: he chose incompetent people and stubbornly kept them on the job for far too long. He is also a bit of an arrogant assh*le.

The Harvard School of Business had some sort of anniversary and invited whole bunches of grads to honor them.

No one mentioned Juniorbush, not even once.

[MissusDe]

I agree that Palin's clothes are a silly issue, but laying out all that bread (like $500 for a jacket) in a time of recession for  clothes from fancy stores when one is supposedly trying to get the vote of some single mom trying to find $50 for groceries to make ends meet and feed her family is going to come up.

Meanwhile, here is some material from my interview with campaign manager Rick Davis:

On the clothes fiasco: ?We flew her out from Alaska to Arizona to Ohio to introduce her to the world and take control of her life. She didn?t think ?dress for the convention?, because it might have just been a nice day trip to Arizona if she didn?t click with John. Very little prep had been done and if it had, we might have gotten picked off by the press. We were under incredible scrutiny. We got her a gal from New York and we thought, ?Let?s get some clothes for her and the family.? It was a failure of management not to get better control and track of that. The right hand didn?t know what the left hand was doing, what it was worth or where it was going. No one knew how much that stuff was worth. It was more our responsibility than hers.?

[Amianthus]

No one mentioned Juniorbush, not even once.

You have a source for that, or is it from your fevered imagination again?

[Xavier_Onassis]

This was in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago.