Bennett on Palin
My Chicago Boyz colleague James Bennett has a great op-ed piece on Gov. Sarah Palin in the UK Telegraph (hat tip Lexington Green). It’s one of the best concise pieces on Palin’s strengths – which most of the American press is desperately trying to ignore, either to help the Obama campaign with their scattergun negative personal attacks or in dumbing down their political coverage of Palin with warm-fuzzy topics to an intellectual level somewhere below that of People Magazine:
Sarah Palin is not such a Small Town Girl After All
…The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry, where holding on to a licence requires considerable nous and networking skills.
….Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. Alaska had been in hock to oil companies since major production began in the mid-1970s.
As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table. Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.
This agenda, pursued throughout Palin’s commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.
With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.
Read the rest here.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Zen, I’m a regular reader, and usually way out of my league in regards to your splendid military talk. However – as a McCain supporter – I don’t like the framing of Sen. Obama’s comments as negative personal attacks. I agree that the media has done a horrible job framing Gov. Palin’s strengths and accomplishments. In fact, the praise lavished and spike in interest (or enthusiasm) in her is not unlike the Senator’s a few years ago. The MSM is absolutely awful in telling any actual facts or news.
Rant aside, I just wanted to call you out on that. I find a lot of the things the Senator says are misleading, but the McCain campaign blew this up, making something out of nothing, and I’m surprised someone as astute as you bought it. My opinions aside, I just hope they don’t end up with pie on their face for too long, or that the pie is too damaging. We need McCain, now more than ever.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:59 am
ZP thanks for posting this. No one is perfect however Sarah Palin is GOOD PEOPLE in my book.
I watched and rewatched Obama remembering his lines as he delivered the "lipstick on a pig" comment and it was CRYSTAL CLEAR from his smirk and the audience’s whooping and guffawing EXACTLY what he was referencing.
The MainStreamMedia in the USA is biased, flat out, not even a chance of fair coverage.
They dig up ANYTHING on SP, yet SERIOUS PROBLEMS with Obama do not get ANY coverage. One has to rely on the Blogosphere for documented acts of the most disturbing type that Obama has engaged in, but Brian Williams, Charley Gibson, and Katie Couric WILL NOT TOUCH IT.
His ties to Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers, and a host of others, his fighting for the "Black Farmers" Billion Dollar Scam and on and on and yet NO COVERAGE.
The more I think about it the more disturbing that is.
September 11th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Hi PleasurePrincipal,
The McCain campaign did accept Obama’s maladroit statement as a gift to exploit, true enough. If they did not, I’d be surprised and I think either side will use whatever they can from this point forward that they think they can get away with without causing a backlash.
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I had some email today along the same lines as the views that you have expressed and I agree with you that media coverage of politics in general – set aside Palin/Obama etc. – is a disgrace, even compared with 20 years ago ( where it was no great shakes).
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I have to say though, intentional or no, Obama’s partisan audience in the video clip took his remarks to be a reference to Palin and at this stage, gaffes are going to be seized upon (in any event, going negative isn’t Obama’s strong suit & it clashes with the narrative he’s built about himself for the last 15 months and he should leave that to Biden or another surrogate. Obama was clearly ill at ease in the video and not at all at his best). The negative hits ( a "Borking" process) began on the Left the moment Palin was named but the wild and irresponsible nature of the rumors indicate real fear and a lack of an actual strategy to deal with the changed electoral dynamic and the flailing around you see is the result.
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Trust me, no one is more surprised than I to see the GOP pull anything together in this campaign.
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Hi FRANK,
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Could you elaborate on the Farmer point ? I’m not sure to what you are referring.