Andrew Sullivan has the final word, as far as I'm concerned, on Sarah Palin. It echoes just about everything seen and heard from Palin fans here in the lower Great Plains.
Sullivan is so clear about who she is and what she's doing that I think we need to commit his words to memory. The words and phrases in italics are added here in appreciation for his ability to nail it.
Palin has, he writes, "the psychological appeal of the beautiful female warrior...."
... Palin is not appealing to the Republican super-ego (in so far as one has survived the last ten years); she is directly, umbilically connected to the Republican id (and some other male organs). Her appeal is visceral not rational. And if modern post-Nixon Republicanism has always had a thread of class resentment sustaining it, Palin concentrates it into a heady brew. If Nixon was cocaine for the resentful psyche, Palin is meth.
Secondly, she fuses both Tea-Party anti-government sentiment with neocon conviction about the necessity for American empire. Of course, none of this makes any sense, but Palin, unlike some of her rivals who feel some kind of lingering need to relate their policies to fiscal and global reality, is a thoroughly post-modern creature. She creates her own reality, and that is an incredibly important talent for a party base that desperately wants to live in another reality (a kind of souped-up version of 1950s culture and late nineteenth century economy). Her book - a fictional account of an imagined life - sold well with the GOP base because they too want a fictional account of America's current standing in the world and an imagined set of viable policy positions. She so lives and breathes this magical-realist culture she doesn't need to channel it. She knows we can keep social security and Medicare and global power for ever and balance the budget without any taxes - because that is what she wants to know. And she has never let reality get in her way. Reality is one of those doors she keeps crashing through.
Thirdly, she has a child with Down Syndrome. If you see Trig as a political tool, the near-appalling exposure of him in the campaign and book tour is not so bizarre. For a pro-life base that suspects that all Republican leaders, including even Bush, are phonies on the life issue, Palin has, in their eyes, walked the pro-life walk. Since this issue motivates the base in deeply powerful ways, Palin's ace has always been her youngest son. He proves her political authenticity - or at least seems to.
Who else puts all this together for the GOP? No one.
That's the thing about America now -- sad to say. It's not a great country. It lives its actual life at increasing distance from the dream of the city on the hill, the envy of the world. We're second-rate at best in our health care, our transportation choices, and the accessibility of high-speed communications -- and that's just a start.. The last thing America needs is to move into a dream concocted by right-wing politicians living in a state of acute denial.
