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COMMENTARY
September 3, 2008
Sarah Palin
As everyone with access to the mainstream media (“MSM”) knows, the Alaskan 17-year-old, Bristol Palin, is pregnant by a high school hockey jock named Levi Johnston, and is going to have the baby and marry him.The august, liberal New York Times carried three big frontpage “analyses” on this yesterday, in which their top correspondents Elisabeth Muller, Adam Nagourney, and Monica Davey, each had a go at performing journalistic “gotchas” on Sarah Palin, John McCain, and the Republican Party. They don’t need to find any example of wrongdoing or irregularity in Mrs Palin’s past. For their purpose is to reduce her candidacy to a soap opera, so that readers will not be tempted to listen to the woman, or form any judgement of their own about her qualifications to be on a presidential ticket. One begins to understand why women other than Hillary Clinton are seldom considered for such positions. For the American liberal media grant themselves a free pass on all traditional principles of decency, and every feminist talking point besides, when they are confronted with a woman not in the feminist stereotype. Similarly, should a black man be put forward for an important office, who is not ideologically one of theirs, he will be received, journalistically, as Judge Clarence Thomas was -- i.e. publicly lynched -- back in 1991. I cannot think of better illustrations of the way women and blacks are reduced to stereotype (and “marginalized”) by the American media, and all the other institutions of “political correctness.” We see the same thing up here in Canada, with respect to women and our “visible minorities.” They must not deviate from a script in which every female role model is a feminist and abortion enthusiast, every “visible” the heroic victim of oppression, demanding societal compensation. How better to cripple the individual aspirations of women and minorities? But there is good news, which comes through Sarah Palin herself, who, from what I can see, is ready for the trial-by-ordeal. She is a woman in the old frontier American mould, whose spirit of independence is pre-feminist. And she is already connecting in a big way with the vast constituency of “Middle America” (or the “vast rightwing conspiracy,” if you prefer), which has almost as much contempt for the MSM, as the MSM has for it. To the people who work hard for a living; who pay taxes instead of collecting food stamps and subsidies; who face the vagaries of life with gratitude for existence, and take their lumps and setbacks in their stride; who raise multiple children instead of perhaps one designer child; who go to church on Sunday, and believe on Jesus; who volunteer for civic tasks, donate money to real charities, help each other materially in distress; who otherwise mind their own private business and expect others to mind theirs; and who, among other quaint customs, love the fresh air, and indulge such pleasures as hunting and fishing, through which they acquire a sense of stewardship over the land -- Sarah Palin is the bee’s knees. To them, the stark facts of Mrs Palin’s reaction to a Down’s syndrome pregnancy, and to her daughter’s unseasonable one, shines as day to night against Mr Obama’s, "If my daughter makes a mistake, I don't want her punished with a baby." There is symbolism (or “personal narrative” as the other side calls it) in a prominent political candidacy, and I have yet to find a single instance, in Mrs Palin’s frontier background and extraordinary career -- rising in politics as an enemy of posturing and corruption -- of where she fails to be a symbol of America’s better angel. But there is also the hard practical calculation, of how well this person will perform under the astounding personal pressures of high office. Once again, what we can know about her suggests she may be another Margaret Thatcher -- very unlikely to whine her way through the rest of the campaign, or a term in Washington. The question of experience then presents itself. As one of my Canadian correspondents wrote, “It is like giving the job to someone who was the mayor of Strathroy two years ago.” To which the reply is, had Barack Obama been mayor of Strathroy two years ago, he could begin to compete with Mrs Palin in management experience. So could McCain and Biden for that matter. She's the only one in that race who has ever run anything (except, McCain once turned around an undistinguished air force training squadron in Florida). Her decade of municipal experience in Wasilla put her intimately in touch with the impact of distant federal policies on actual people. And, given her 80-percent approval rating after a couple of years' running Alaska, I wouldn't write her off. That she could wind up as President, inspires a gulp -- with a Down's syndrome kid in a playpen by the executive desk in the Oval Office. If God were to contrive a pro-life statement, it might look like that.rn David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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