Posted on 07/03/2009 12:27:11 PM PDT by lewisglad
I admire Charles Krauthammer and usually agree with his take on the issues of the day, but I disagree with his recent dismissal of Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for 2012. It’s far too early in the game to declare anyone either out of the running or inevitable… well, except for you-know-who. As Allahpundit aptly noted, Krauthammer’s statement that “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency” is so powerfully contradicted by recent history as to be surreal. It would be a more defensible statement if he’d clarified it by adding “… without the enthusiastic support of the entire mainstream media apparatus, which Palin is definitely not going to have.” I don’t think that’s what he meant to say, however… and there lies the key to understanding his views on Palin.
Charles Krauthammer is a brilliant writer, and a very perceptive analyst. He’s also a denizen of the Beltway, which inevitably alters his perceptions. He lives and works at the very heart of the machinery of the superstate. If you’ve never been to Washington D.C., I highly recommend making the trip someday. Besides the wonderful sightseeing opportunities and museums, you’ll also gain a sense of how much pure power hums in the air, radiating from the massive government buildings, and refined by the monuments to great moments in our nation’s history. Washington has a sense of both age and modernity. You can see both the past and the future from the Mall.
Some would say that living inside the Beltway tends to make one turn into a liberal, but it’s more accurate to say that the Beltway lifestyle brings a greater appreciation of the power of government. Every Beltway pundit, including Krauthammer, sees the ideal political candidate as a brilliant technocrat, combining charisma with a vast knowledge of history, economics, and the minute workings of Washington. The ideal leader has the intelligence and vision to steer the nation into the best of all possible futures, and Washington is the helm of the American ship, with the ship’s wheel planted firmly in the Oval Office. The primary point of disagreement among Beltway pundits is the precise course we should be setting for the mighty central government. Few of them agree with the conservatives out in flyover country, who think we should be heading for the lifeboats.
If the ideal candidate for mastering the U.S.S. Federal Leviathan is not available, the Washington and New York elite will happily manufacture him, provided they can find someone who gives them suitable raw material… and flatters their intellectual vanity. The liberal dominance of the Beltway media grants liberal candidates the proper credentials, merely by virtue of their being liberal. All that is necessary is for the candidate to have attended a few of the right schools, to allow the pundits to proclaim him a gifted intellectual. Thus, an undistinguished junior senator from Chicago, with a wafer-thin resume, mediocre academic career, spotty attendance in the Senate, and shadowy past associations was magically transformed into a “brilliant community organizer” and awarded presidential stature. In fact, the award was most loudly bestowed by his putative opponent, John McCain. Meanwhile, the equally young and charismatic governor of Alaska is dismissed with a snort and wave of the hand, because she didn’t go the right schools, and doesn’t have a stack of detailed five-year plans for the U.S. Economy.
Krauthammer is no liberal, but he shares the common Beltway vision of the President as a super-genius micro-manager, the CEO of America, Inc. He doesn’t see Sarah Palin as a serious candidate, because if she does decide to run, she won’t be applying for the position he has in mind for her. He parts company with red-state conservatives, because we don’t think our President should be expected to be a human super-computer, with every aspect of a three trillion dollar economy routed through her sleepless intellect. Searching for such candidates is a fool’s game, and building a gigantic centralized government that can only function with such a person at the helm is a recipe for unending disaster. The desperate longing for such a Technocrat-In-Chief makes the media elite highly vulnerable to being conned by anyone who can brandish the right diploma and make it clear he has big plans for the office. He doesn’t even need to present any detailed plans – Obama certainly did not. He only has to convince the elite that he has those plans rattling around in his gigantic, policy-wonk brain. Add a dash of heroic narrative, and you’re all set: Obama is the First! Black! President! John Kerry was a super soldier in Vietnam! Bill Clinton was The Man From Hope! Even the most ridiculous fraud of a candidate can be taken seriously, if he pretends to be what the Beltway elite are looking for.
I think the unfolding events of the Obama presidency will continue to validate the views of we who write from flyover country. The Beltway romance with the Wilsonian ideal of the professor President, acting as an elected philosopher-king to solve all of the nation’s problems from his Washington palace, is increasingly divorced from reality. Like all romances, this one tends to blind the smitten party from seeing the unpleasant truth. America does not need kings, and they are no more acceptable because their palace is granted with the consent of the voters, with a maximum lease of eight years. The colossal failure of a titan with Big Ideas may be a thrilling narrative for Beltway pundits to chronicle, but those of us who have to live through the fiery carnage are tired of clutching our wallets and waiting for the next titan to take center stage.
Krauthammer’s practical advice to Sarah Palin is quite reasonable: study up on the issues she felt uncomfortable with last year. He’s not entirely correct when he says “she has to stop speaking in cliches and platitudes… it won’t work.” It would work, if her desire was to seize that huge ship’s wheel in the Oval Office, and tack just a few points to the right. I can only hope that if she does run, she has the kind of bold conservative vision that will make her campaign an epic battle, against the people who think the Presidency is the kind of job Barack Obama is qualified for.
Yes, I still like Sarah Palin!
By Camille Paglia
Nov. 12, 2008 | [excerpts]
“...Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover.
The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma.
So she doesn’t speak the King’s English big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes.
She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.
As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee what navel-gazing hypocrisy!
What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago?
And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s. ..
..The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching.
No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit,.. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is. ...” By Camille Paglia
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/11/12/palin/print.html
Will Sarah Palin challenge David Letterman to fight it out in the ring? Or, will she just beat him to a bloody pulp ala Dan Rather, What the frequency Kenneth?
This is a marvelously perceptive analysis.
Sarah Paling is real.
I am a hardcore conservative, except on a few social issues. I prefer Palin over any other candidate. I agree with Krauthammer about Palin. It is not possible to win a national election with just conservative votes - you have to have some independents along for the ride. The media has successfully demonized Palin such that she can’t win. And that is just the way it is.
It doesn’t take much listening to Charles to relaize that Romney is the type of candidate he prefers: Ivy League, brought up in a political family, won the governorship in an ultra-liberal state. But the fact remains that Romney can’t draw flies compared to either Sarah or Hussein. He could make hash of the Kenyan in a debate but otherwise would not be a very successful campaigner. Sarah can be brought up to speed on the issues very quickly (anybody doubting her ability to master issues should view her video on energy policy online) and will draw tremendous, enthusiastic, but not cultic, crowds. I think she’ll change Krauthammer’s mind (and many others) once she devotes herself to the presidential race 100%.
Whoever runs against Obama has my full support.
But Charles is right, this was not a good move for her. She’s not Obama, not a black candidate running for the dem nomination to compete for an open seat.
All we need to do, then, is find a candidate who cannot be demonized.
In other words, we're in for a long, cold political season.
Sometimes Krauthammer is just an inside the beltway elitist.
Poor guy. Just upset at the beautiful intelligent future president of the US
I remember reading Krauthammers scathing attack on the World War II Memorial in D.C.
Sometimes he just has a brain freeze.
Krauthammer's a brilliant conservative spokesperson - and one of our most clueless - and there's nothing in between. He's never ordinary or mediocre. Brilliant or clueless. Interesting man.
Krauthamer not above looking for publicity.
While I, like Krauthammer, feel she could use a little tutoring on foreign affairs, she has so many intangibles that make her a great prez candidate...and I’m not just talking about her looks. She has an enthisiasm for her country that carries through her speeches. People believe her when she says she loves her country. However underneath those looks, enthusiams, and love of country, she is more of a technocrat than the Hammer realizes. As governor she negotiated a number of top level deals with oil companies and foreign governments. I get the feeling that Chuck and some other beltway bigshots don’t think shes smart enough. She’s smart enough and furthermore she’s tough enough. She’d make a great prez.
Nobody knows everything. While I love The Hammer, he also is a believer in AGW. So don't fall into the trap that just because someone like Krauthammer says something, he's automatically correct. He believes she falls short, a lot more people think she will rise to the occasion.
I doubt it. Until the late September financial crash, she had McCain ahead in the polls. Without the crash, she and McCain might have won. The Great Spreader certainly wouldn't have won by seven million. After four years of the Barack the Disaster, she'll look pretty good.
And with the vast majority of Americans already suspicious of the MSM, the stage is hers to storm.
You do realize that Chuck has NEVER liked Palin nor given even one compliment to her. No matter what Sarah would have said, Chuck would have not liked it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.