Correction on Sarah Palin

Correction on Sarah Palin
Glenn Greenwald
Sep 25, 2008

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/25/palin/

Sarah Palin isn't Dan Quayle. She is extremely smart -- much smarter than the average media star who will eventually be interviewing her -- and she is very politically skilled as well. She didn't go from obscure small-town city council member to Governor to Vice Presidential nominee by accident. She'll be more than adequately prepared for the shallow, 30-second, rote exchanges that pass for political interviews in our Serious mainstream discourse. Anyone expecting her to fall on her face or be exposed as some drooling simpleton is going to be extremely disappointed. That might (or might not) happen with real questioning, but she's not going to face that.

I still think Palin is probably perfectly smart. And in this age of dynastic and nepotistic political power centers in both parties, I admire the fact that she created her political career out of nothing, with no parental connections or vast family wealth assisting her (the fact that Barack Obama did the same thing was, in my view, one of the very few meaningful differences between him and Hillary Clinton). I still think her selection was a very politically shrewd move by the McCain campaign. And I remain largely unbothered by her so-called "lack of experience" for the same reason that this has never bothered me about Obama -- someone's judgment, intellect and views are infinitely more important than how long they've held various political posts, and the fact that someone largely exists outside the Washington establishment is, in my view, a positive -- the further away the better. In fact, one of the most disappointing (though not surprising) aspects of Obama's candidacy is how quickly and completely he's morphed into a standard Washington establishment candidate.

But Sarah Palin's performance in the tiny vignettes of unscripted dialogue in which we've been allowed to see her has been nothing short of frightening -- really, as I said, pity-inducing. And I say that as someone who has thought from the start that the criticisms of her abilities -- as opposed to her ideology -- were much too extreme. One of two things is absolutely clear at this point: she is either (a) completely ignorant about the most basic political issues -- a vacant, ill-informed, incurious know-nothing, or (b) aggressively concealing her actual beliefs about these matters because she's petrified of deviating from the simple-minded campaign talking points she's been fed and/or because her actual beliefs are so politically unpalatable, even when taking into account the right-wing extremism that is permitted, even rewarded, in our mainstream. I'm not really sure which is worse, but it doesn't really matter, because with 40 days left before the election, both options are heinous.

What seems most likely is that she's perfectly conversant in the exceedingly narrow and parochial range of issues she's concerned herself with as Wasilla Mayor and Alaska Governor -- oil drilling on the North Slope, specific local budget items, corruption issues inside the Alaskan State GOP, and evangelical and religious matters. She really doesn't seem to have any thoughts about anything outside of that -- or if she does, she is suppressing them -- and is thus capable of spouting little more than empty right-wing slogans. That's what makes all the issues raised by the excellent on-scene reporting by Salon's David Talbot more significant than it otherwise might be -- she could be a religious fanatic with an extremist agenda, or a power-crazed, vendetta-fueled, secrecy-obsessed Cheney-ite, or something else altogether. She may not even know what she is, and we're clearly not going to find out.