The Problems (and Not) of Sarah Palin

Us Dems are all up in arms about how much Sarah Palin spent on her wardrobe. Aha!--we cry--an instant showing of hypocrisy. Sarah and the McCain campaign are pushing the Obama-the-elitist-and-McCain-the-populist angle! And here they are spending lots of money! Proof that they are, in fact, elitists!

Unfortunately, to many people, elitism has much less to do with how much money you make or spend, and much more to do with how you communicate with them. I'm not talking about some intangible, mythical "connection," rather, about the candidates' accents. It's notable that the Republican party has milked this Eliza Doolittle's accent for all it's worth rather than teaching her which syllables to pronounce and how to say her vowels. And that Obama, unlike many successful Democratic (and of course Republican) candidates of the past, has nary a twang amongst his dulcet educated tones.

This all speaks less to how much money a candidate has, and more to how they were educated. And that's really what the Republicans are after: they want someone who was educated like they were. Obama is off-putting because his East-coast education is so foreign to them. Sad as that is, it is frankly a much more realistic basis for liking or disliking a candidate than is the amount of money they spend on clothes, or how many houses they have. I myself like to think I'll vote for the ticket that is the best educated (whether in schools or in practical experience) to lead my country--but for many Republicans, I think, that requisite schooling just looks different. In many cases people are going to vote for the person who is educated most like themselves, instead of someone who is educated for the position they are voting him into.

But I'm not here to argue that identity politics is wrong--I'm here to argue that it is very much at play, no matter how much various Republicans spend on Palin's wardrobe. Our crowing over absurd price tags misses the point: people will like Sarah Palin and think of her as non-elitist because she talks like them--no matter what clothes they dress her in at the ball.

Obama/Bartlet '08

I think many of us have imagined this meeting of the minds, but I do think it kind of falls flat. I thought Bartlet would be more helpful and encouraging of Obama. Sigh.

Barack Obama meets Josiah Bartlet

Firings and Regulation and Lies

OK, so Barack Obama wants to deal with the economic crisis by introducing more regulation of the markets. John McCain is against more regulation. Instead, his solution to the crisis is to fire the SEC chair.

I'm not against firing the guy. It does appear that he missed something about his job in letting all this happen. But I think McCain's approach sends mixed signals: he is trying to appear very dramatically concerned about the crisis (to match Obama's own lashing of the government), but he's sticking to his conservative guns at the same time, without actually proposing any new strategy. Just firing people, Palin-style, isn't going to solve this problem. We clearly do need more regulation--or, if regulation for things like how much of a capital margin you have is already on the books--we need to enforce it more. We need to do more than just fire people. We can't just take the emotional steps and leave off the smart, strategic ones because they're less fun and cathartic.

This Makes Me Happy

I've been jarred a few times in the last day or two by someone using the male-gender-specific pronoun when referring to the presidential candidates. Somewhere along the way I just got very used to assuming that one of the candidates was a woman.

Obama's Speech

If you haven't watched Obama's race speech yet, please do so.

It's noteworthy, I think, that this speech prompted Jon Stewart to a moment of seriousness reminiscent of his brilliant (I mean it) Crossfire diatribe. There was no joking in his eyes (though the serious irony was pointed) when he summed up the speech as "an American politician speaking to Americans about race as though they were adults." In this speech Obama has done what Stewart pleaded with Crossfire to do: he moved beyond easy partisanship, told some uneasy truths, and has therefore gotten us somewhere* new. In Obama we'd have a president who not only understands and acknowledges the anger on both sides of a major issue, but makes bold to explain each side to the other, and proposes a solution.

But please, whoever your candidate of choice may be, just watch this--for its historical value, if for nothing else.


(It's just under 40 minutes, in 10-minute segments here)










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* Yes, I am aware that the term "somewhere" is vague. I am aware that in general Obama gives us hope and visions and inspiration...about something vague. But I think in this race he has to. First, because Hillary so clearly has him beat on being able to talk all wonky-like. He can't hope to compete. Second, because when it comes down to specifics, their platforms are nearly identical. The value-added of Obama, the thing that makes him distinctive, is his ability to inspire and the way in which he does it--through truly thoughtful analysis and the courage to not just "tell truth to power" but to tell truth about power while in a powerful position himself.

I'm Not With Stupid

When you're a fan of something, you run the risk of people assuming you believe all the same things as every other fan out there. Fan stereotyping if you will.

To that point, as an Obama fan, I want to make clear that I do NOT believe, support, or even fathom this article in the Times. It argues, of all things, that Hillary's ubiquitous red-phone ad is racist.

I just don't get it at all. How do you get from "innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger" (which I grant you is super hypey but whatever) to "The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man"?

The only concrete piece of supporting evidence in the piece is that there are no black people in the ad and that the mother is a blonde. And then the author makes the leap that OBVIOUSLY the undefined terror outside the house is therefore BLACK PEOPLE = OBAMA.

It's people like this that give the Obama campaign a bad name.

So Ready For the Primaries to Be Over

Barack Obama plans to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton’s contention that she has been more thoroughly scrutinized.

- NYT, 3/5/08

The irony here is killing.

Killing my interest in and commitment to politics, that is.