They’re two of the oldest jokes in the American political lexicon. Will Rogers said, "I don’t belong to an organized political party-- I’m a Democrat." Arizona Democrat Mo Udall is credited with remarking that when Democrats form a firing squad they line up in a circle. And with everything pointing to a huge Democratic year in 2008, we’re proving them right yet again.
Our party has a fantastic nominee in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. He’s overcome some very long odds to achieve a record of phenomenal success—as a community organizer, as President of the Law Review at Harvard Law School, in the Illinois State Senate, as a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, as an author, as an orator, as a U.S. Senator from the nation’s most representative state, and as a Presidential candidate that defeated a crowded field of better-known, better-connected, and more conventional nominees.
But when the GOP threw a decent curveball with the nomination of Right Wing Distraction Sarah Palin of Alaska as their Vice Presidential nominee, too many of us allowed a sleight of hand to distract us from the proper focus—the failure of Republican governmental philosophy and John McCain’s complicity in it. John McCain is the Republican opponent, not Sarah Palin.
Twenty years ago, the Democratic Party nominated a very smart above-average governor that beat a crowded field of candidates. But once an underwhelming, inexperienced deer-in-the-headlights U.S. Senator named Dan Quayle was nominated to be George H.W. Bush’s Vice President, large segments of the Democratic Party couldn’t help but chase after what they saw as an easy target. After all, the thought went, OUR VP nominee is SO much better, how could ANYONE vote for the Republicans? He’s a Draft Dodger, a lightweight, inexperienced, a child of privilege, an insult to the process, a joke, a cynical attempt to shore up the base, without any serious record, a travesty!
The Democrats gleefully went after Dan Quayle in 1988. In the Vice Presidential debate between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, Bentsen pwn3d Quayle so bad that he was visibly shaken on national television. It was the biggest ever rout in American political debate. The late night comics made Dan Quayle an easy punch line-- he was ridiculed, mocked, laughed at, lampooned, disgraced, and belittled. But the first George Bush and the Republicans won the election by an enormous landslide—426 to 111 in the electoral college vote and 53% to 45.6% in the popular vote—after the Democrats had been ahead by 17 points in polls immediately following the Democratic Convention.
Oh, I won’t deny that Sarah Palin and her despicable record of actively courting earmarks, leaving her small town in millions of dollars of debt, lying about her accomplishments, and punishing her political enemies like the Bush administration isn’t an easy or alluring target. It certainly is. But that’s why she’s on the ticket-- like Dan Quayle, and Spiro Agnew.
Come on Democrats—let’s prove to Will Rogers and Mo Udall that we really do have some sense after all. Let’s prove that we can learn from our mistakes, resist temptation, and not keep falling for every trap laid in our path. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.
John McCain and the Republican Party are our opponents, not outrageous distractions like Sarah Palin, the insults against community organizers, or the bias of the corporate media. When people simply stop tuning into soap operas and car chases, they go away.