Oh Boy, once again, Frank Rich hits it out of the park. Yesterday, Deoliver47 presented us with a fantastic diary about a Dick Cavett column, Dick Cavett roasts McCain-Palin in the NYT. I roared with laughter at Cavett's new term, B.T.T.Y.R.T. (By the time you read this...):
B.T.T.Y.R.T.: Sarah Palin will doubtless have been outed even further from the witness protection program in which her handlers have kept her secreted since her smasheroo solo performance on That Memorable Night.
There’s no denying that she rocked the place and, as her enthusing boosters said, "She really delivered the goods."
Experience 101
But, Frank Rich takes us further forward in time.
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Rich starts out by skipping past the question of whether or not Palin is qualified to be President, and dives right into wondering, "What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?" As Rich explains,
It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.
No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for "victory," whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
As we learned in another New York Times article yesterday, Palin is ambitious and has a ruthless governing style.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents "haters" — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
And her ambition does not escape Rich.
This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with "a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri" who "followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency," she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, "run our factories" and "fight our wars" and are "always proud" of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didn’t have to name names — who are none of the above.
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
Palin invoked the name of Harry S. Truman, Democrat, in her speech. Was that a deliberate reminder about the man who was sworn in as president just 82 to days after becoming vice president?
He had had very little meaningful communication with Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics after being sworn in as vice president, and was completely uninformed about major initiatives relating to the successful prosecution of the war—notably the top secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb.
Truman Presidency 1945–1953
Who wrote that speech and invoked the name of Truman? If history repeats itself, who will be advising the Palin administration while she learns to be president? Rich enlightens us about the journalist that Palin quoted, but did not name in her speech:
Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented [once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook] Pegler’s too. He decreed America was "done for" after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a "guttersnipe," and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe ("geese," he called them) were all likely Communists.
Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created "a whole new Republican Party," but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
I've probably quoted too much already. Frank Rich hits all the high notes in his op-ed column this morning. He reminds us that the GOP is promoting fear to get McCain elected (think fear of the coming white minority by 2042), explains why immigration was not mentioned at the Republican convention, and gives us a lot to think about. You really owe it to yourself to read the whole article, which closes:
This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.
As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket