Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
The Sideshow
By Joan McCarter, 10-03-08
One pundit declared after the debate that Sarah Palin won by not losing. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. But after the slow dribble of increasingly horrifying Katie Couric interviews (she couldn’t even blurt out the name of her home town newspaper when asked about her regular news sources?), the fact that Palin stood in front of the nation and “answered” questions is really all it took.
So her answers didn’t really relate to the actual questions…
PALIN: I’m still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also..
and weren’t necessarily always coherent, but there were answers. Answers that fit as many of the words in from her notecards as she could cram in. Those words, apparently, were “energy,” “Afghanistan,” “people,” and, oddly, “going” and “also.” She really likes that “also.”
One got the sense watching this debate that all of the extreme focus on Palin meant that her handlers and debate coaches drilled into her to play into her strengths, her ability to relate to “folks,” and her ability to spin out so much word salad wrapped around those key words for the base: taxes, America, freedom.
I watched the debate on CNN, where I could see the reaction of a group of undecided voters in Ohio to the debate using their dial test. In this case, they insultingly divided the group between men and women; a political division would have been far more instructive and interesting. Nonetheless, it was interesting to watch where that dial spiked and plummeted, and with this crowd, folksy fell flat. There was a marked lack of enthusiasm for every utterance from Palin of the “team of mavericks” she kept pulling out to define her ticket. Perhaps those viewers have just become so cynical after the past eight years that they’re not going to believe any politician who tries to tell them that they’re a maverick, particularly when one of them has been such a staunch supporter of the worst of the policies of the last eight years.
But Palin succeeded in not coming across as inept. There were none of the deer-in-the-headlight moments that have punctuated the Couric interviews. None of the awkward silences and long strings of non-sequitors that have made Tina Fey’s job of late so easy. The problem for the McCain/Palin ticket, however, is that Palin did well for herself, but she didn’t do well for John McCain. In coming into this debate with a focus on not screwing up, she couldn’t be an effective attack dog on the Obama/Biden ticket. All of her attacks were easily parried away by Biden.
In complete contrast, Biden did very well for Obama. Biden loves an audience, and has a reputation as a bit of a showoff. It would have been really easy for Biden to blow Palin out of the water with much superior experience and knowledge of policy, particularly foreign policy. He didn’t do that, but did precisely what he needed to do--focus entirely on McCain.
Here he was particularly effective, his best moment being this:
BIDEN: Look, past is prologue, Gwen. The issue is, how different is John McCain’s policy going to be than George Bush’s? I haven’t heard anything yet.
I haven’t heard how his policy is going to be different on Iran than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy is going to be different with Israel than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy in Afghanistan is going to be different than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy in Pakistan is going to be different than George Bush’s.
It may be. But so far, it is the same as George Bush’s. And you know where that policy has taken us.
We will make significant change so, once again, we’re the most respected nation in the world. That’s what we’re going to do.
That’s the kind of contrast that voters want this cycle. For all the talk about “change,” what voters desperately want is a change from George W. Bush. McCain’s steadfast support for Bush policies and Palin’s folksy Bush-like persona just aren’t resonating. With the nation facing a serious financial crisis and the ongoing quagmire in Iraq, voters seem to want someone who’s going to talk to them like grown-ups.
In the end, it’s hard to disagree with the CNN and CBS instant poll responders. Biden “won,” though Palin exceeded expectations. She’s not likely to have done well enough, however, to put a halt to McCain’s slide in the polls. And now that the only vice presidential debate this cycle is over, the Palin sideshow will recede, and the focus is going to be back entirely on McCain and Obama.
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If we are tolerant of a diverse American population, as the pundits remind, scold, and demand we be, and tolerant of other's views, the pundits only have to answer to themselves. And that was fun to watch on the tube last night, and even more fun to read in the papers this morning. So mocking, so self important, so learned, those talking heads, those all-knowing prognosticators. "Smarty pants" was the word on the playground, and if you got too "smarty pants," you got your snot locker re-aligned. On the playground this morning, the pundits would have been fighting for their pants to not be run up the flag pole. Both Palin and Biden are capable of trench warfare, and did well last night. You have to like them both. But, Biden is a lawyer. Palin is not. Enough said.
I especially liked seeing those bottle blonde tight faced Stepford representatives of white middle American feminism looking like they were caught getting depilated in a department store window. They had just watched a red necked woman hold her own with the man of their pre-wattle dreams. The pursed lips, the tight smiles, the barely hidden disgust of "that woman" holding "their" torch to light the way for women was there for all to see. Five kids, fresh faced, down home, bulldog tenacity: Sarah Palin was NOT the woman they wanted to lead their cause for national office. Nancy Pelosi she ain't. Thank God.
The Veep job is role playing. Breaking tie votes in the Senate, and staying up to speed so the President has a replacement if things go to ratshit. Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jerry Ford (ranking Republican in the House when VP Spiro Agnew had resigned, and then Pres. Nixon was impeached/resigned), all have been Veeps who were called quite unexpectedly to serve as POTUS. None were highly thought of political figures, but all served us well in retrospect. Johnson was every bit as folksy as Palin, as witnessed by talking to the press while sitting on the growler for the morning B.M., showing his gall bladder scar, and talking tough. Truman might have been a better President than any who have come after him, given the responsibilities he had to undertake, and his success with repairing the US, Europe and Asia following WWII. They don't get any more folksy than Harry getting pissed at music critics who panned his daughter's recital.
The American voter knows that our Iraq war effort has been misguided from the beginning, but the principle was honorable. Bush ran the war poorly, with help from bad advice in his cabinet. However, the Iraq deal has been on track and working its way to conclusion for the last 18 months, and that has to continue.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, has suffered from benign neglect, as Biden so stated. We have need a ramped up effort to build infrastructure and bring faith in Afghan governance to the people of Afghanistan. Democrats not supporting the effort to have a moderate muslim government in Afghanistan do not help our Nation in the slightest.
I am, frankly, tired of this "middle class" help issue. We never get help. Illegal immigration is not help. No meaningful attempts at gaining access to ALL the energy resources in the US does not help the middle class. Putting corn into ethanol to drive gas mileage down while raising food prices does not help the middle class. Having our country run by people with exclusive access to elite educations does not help the middle class. Public education dumbed down to the lowest common denominator does not help the middle class. Exporting all our manufacturing jobs has not helped the middle class. In the words of Clinton's advisor's "It's the economy, stupid!" and it is.
The economy trumps the war. I know that is not what Democrats want to underline, but they must. And it is they who have gotten the most money from Wall Street. Sen. Schumer has been showered with their largesse. As is has before, and will any time it gets its head, the housing market will overheat, and the last on the merry-go-round will fall off, and take out banks with them. That was the reason for the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which made banking by the numbers the law. And it took the Congress 75 years of lobbying by banks to finally take out all the controls of the Glass-Steagall Act, and we got the predicted result from 75 years ago. Banks competing with banks, with talent going to whoever could pay the most, could produce the most profits, no matter how fundamentally flawed the economics, drove the process. It was do stupid stuff or fail to keep up, and then you got taken out by some BuyOut Fund with public employee pension money driving the process. Keeping up with the Lehman Bros, the Bear Stearns, the CitiBanks...the proverbial houses of banking moved from solid rock foundations to those of monetary sand. So now it is time to save the middle class. From what?
Now, if a government job with full wally medical insurance, a fine pension after a relatively short career span, and a chance to double dip by taking another job in the private sector while drawing retirement is the definition of middle class, we do have a problem, and that is that public employment has created a special class that is often confused with the "middle class." How many of the now unemployed are of the government class? Because how they are doing is lumped in with the loggers, the plumbers, the truck drivers, and they are not doing worth a damn. To give the government class tax relief, in the hope it might help some unemployed factory worker find meaningful employment is to not understand the workings of the economy in these times. The great fear of conservatives is that the Obama-Biden path to middle class rescue is to grow the government class, which they hope they can support by taking all the money the rainmakers can create. That is the fabled perpetual motion machine, and can only be run on deficit spending forever. Not the answer most would want.
What I watched was a pretty good exchange of ideas and claims from two divergent points of view. That is what we wanted. I was not disappointed, and don't feel America would be ill served by either ascending to the Presidency.
Nice column, Joan, especially that "soft bigotry of low expectations." Palin dodge-dodge-dodged her way through, with, regrettably, the help of a strangely cautious, timid and silent moderator (perhaps cowed by the right-wing nutcases who claimed Gwen Ifill couldn't be a fair moderator? Puh-leezzz . . .)
And I'll quibble with only one thing you said -- about not hearing any "long streams of nonsequiturs that have made Tina Fey's job of late so easy . . . "
But check out this tortured passage, verbatim (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, the "Daily Dish" blogger and author who's actually a real conservative but is apoplectic about the farce of McCain's making Palin his running mate):
"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate."
Beyond the syntax, the fractured and fragmented run-on sentences, the faux-folksiness . . . what on EARTH is it with the fake homegirl street patois?
SAY-ruh PAY-lin iz in da HOUSSZ, ya'll, Aaa-aiiiiiT??
Now they seem to be arguing that grading Palin in any way on her fitness for office is somehow "shallow, mean, and elitist". Who knew conservatives were so sensitive?