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Authors, sign in!I do not believe that Sarah Palin really wants to be President, and that is why I think she will run in 2012.
Palin feeds on the lucre of celebrity, and her Facebook page and Twitter account form a kind of peanut gallery from which she can transmit tiny encyclicals without having to be right or even informed on the subject of her pronouncements. Her genius is the ability to remain unaccountable for behavior and utterances that would fatally wound anyone else in public life. Like a student who gets caught looking at the work of another during an exam, only to explain that her learning style just looks like cheating, Palin supplies her own rules.
Sarah Palin will run in 2012 because she is beyond politics yet addicted to our attentions.
The daily ticker reports that her popularity in Iowa is dropping and that people in New Hampshire are annoyed because she opted for a paying gig in India rather than some weightless freebie in Nashua. Even the Tea Party, the klavern that should be her base, prefers a pizza magnate to any known GOP candidate, with Palin finishing fourth.
And here is another recent newsflash that supposedly means that Sarah won’t run: according to an unpublished manuscript currently shopped by some of her former aides in Alaska, Palin does not like the actual work of governance. Seriously. These insiders are going to make a lot of money telling us something we all understood the day she quit her government job, which had served its purpose of making her famous. Raise your hand if you believe that anything involving duty and study made Palin’s Briggs-Myers personality test score. Now raise your hand if you think her aptitude more closely relates to getting paid a lot to wear great clothes, speak to adoring crowds, and have somebody else do your homework.
If your imagination is limited to a conventional view, then you won’t be able to see it. You’re just reading bad news as it comes over the wire. That is not information that matters when it comes to Palinology.
What matters is what she generates, the Sarah Feedback Loop.
Aggregate and analyze it like you would for anybody else, and there is no way she runs. But see it through Sarah-colored glasses, and the logic looks different.
All the bad news about Palin’s sagging poll numbers and the ominous gathering crowds of people who don’t want her to be President only matter if Palin actually wants to be President. But it’s all good if what Palin wants is to remain the center of attention.
And that is why I believe Sarah Palin will run. Because unless she is in the race, when the center of media attention shifts to those who actually are running, Palin would be pushed to the side, irrelevant. That is exactly what she cannot risk, because irrelevance – being yesterday’s news – jeopardizes the earning power and influence of her feedback loop celebrity.
Running and losing won’t hurt Palin, although it could doom the GOP all the way down the ballot. The only thing that will unplug Palin, psychologically and financially, is a public that forgets about her. She cannot afford for the media to turn away to cover a campaign without her.
Let the other guys run around hiring the top advisors and organizers. Let them worry about endorsements. Let them sweat about money. Palin won’t need any of it because she doesn’t want to win anyway. She can get whatever she needs in $25 internet donations; Barack Obama proved that. Palin can just show up and keep talking all the way to the convention, where she will get to make a prime time speech. The ones on the ticket are the ones who have to worry about making sure she shows up during the fall campaign to jazz the crowds like Marilyn Monroe in Korea.
Obama is not going to be a cakewalk. The progressive base will be energized, and the race will be close. No Republican nominee will have the wontons to diss Sarah.
Palin does not want to be President, because that would involve duty and competence, not the strong cards in her deck. What she wants is to stay rich and famous. For that she needs the media to help hold our interest in her. Since the media will ignore her if she is not running in 2012, she must run. The Palin business model demands it.
Palin will seek the presidency because she isn’t worried about winning it. Thus she won’t have to do the work of governance, but she will get lots of attention with a distinctive and recklessly interesting voice that speaks to her celebrity audience without having to be accountable to any political audience.
And if she does run and somehow manage to win, then she will get something else she wants – a reality show on television that can’t be canceled for at least four years.
Published March 1, 2011 by Darrell Hamlin |
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Campaigns
Elections
Republican Party
Sarah Palin
Tea Party
Comments (6)
Did you really just slide in "klavern" as a descriptive word for the Tea Party? Really?
I like Palin, but I'm not sure she would really be the best next President. In fact, I think much of what you said sounds reasonable in leu of the argument you offer. However, when you throw in such a slap in the face as calling the Tea Party a klavern, that kind of throws a wrench in your argument. No longer are you a concerned citizen, attempting to educate your fellow citizens, you are simply against Palin and the Tea Party. The rest is just a bunch of gobbeldygook that you came up with a a reason to voice your distaste.
Now, do I really believe that? No. I think you sincerely mean what you're saying, but that one little word was enough to find the rest suspect. ...Just something to think about before your next post.
I think we could all get a lot further if we stayed focus on the issues and not the extremist group name-calling. The Tea Party is a far cry from the Ku Klux Klan.
I do look forward to hearing what else you have to say, though. You offered a very interesting viewpoint that I had not considered.
Posted by Jessica
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March 1, 2011 11:57 PM
Posted on March 1, 2011 23:57
Jessica,
Klavern is a provocative word. In this instance I have used it in the sincerity of my concern as a citizen about a movement that generated much of its power by combining the subtext of racial legitimacy in our political system with explicit intimations of violence. Your comments indicate that I succeeded in raising that connection in your mind, and I respect your freedom to consider the implications and decide for yourself whether this is something to be worried about. I appreciate how carefully you read my post and I accept your concerns about political dialogue.
Posted by Darrell Hamlin
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March 2, 2011 5:54 AM
Posted on March 2, 2011 05:54
Darrell, perhaps you should have added some qualifiers to your klavern. —wealthy white klavern—
Of course all of the crowd showing up at their rallies are not wealthy or white. But, for the most part, the agenda of the TeaParty group is aimed at programs that benefit the wealthier segment and the socially powerful.
As for Sarah, well, she fits in nicely with the Limbaughs, Becks, and Hannitys. All smoke with little fire, but a stoker to try stirring the flames.
Posted by Ken Poland
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March 2, 2011 7:01 AM
Posted on March 2, 2011 07:01
Darrell, I would be very interested in a post where you explore the reasons why you feel the Tea Party is "a movement that generated much of its power by combining the subtext of racial legitimacy in our political system with explicit intimations of violence." This is not a challenge (I'm not a member of the Tea Party); I just don't see them as you do, and I am truly interested in how you have come to your opinion.
Where is this subtext of racial legitimacy? I wish I would have saved the link to the blogs, but I have read many discussions where members of the Tea Party lament not being able to have the choice to vote for a non-white Republican. I have not heard in passing, nor in any blogs, where members of the Tea Party see whites as the legitimate "heirs to the throne" of the government.
It seems to me that they intimate the musings of Thomas Jefferson, and back then we weren't so careful not to step on one another's toes, I think. So, what may appear to be a desire for violence is truly just a call away from apathy. I can understand why they're trying to shake this big tree we call America to some degree. We're not a true democracy, but in order for our gov't to function "of The People," those people can't just walk around trancelike, as if our government were a Kingdom, rather than one elected (and appointed, depending upon the position) to represent the People.
Maybe that's where we're all really getting bunched up. Some of us believe the government is supposed to represent us by employing our desires as citizens. While there are others of us who believe we elect representatives to make those choices for us. Did we elect them to represent us as agents or guardians?
Like I said, I would truly like you to explore your statements a little further. I don't think I'm so biased that I would simply glaze over the truth if it's that apparent, but maybe I'm just not looking for what I think I've already found.
Thanks for putting up with my comments, by the way. :)
Posted by Jessica
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March 2, 2011 8:28 AM
Posted on March 2, 2011 08:28
Jessica,
I think your comments are important. If I used one word for a reason, but that word undermines the value of the overall analysis for a reader, then I think it's important for me to clarify my reasoning and also bear it in mind for any future posts. I appreciate both the letter and the spirit of your comments.
Perhaps I will explore this at length in a future post. For now, however, I will simply clarify that I was referring to several elements of Tea Party energy. First, the birther movement, which has been debunked repeatedly and thoroughly, is alive and well among many Tea Partiers. At the core of this invideous "question" about the President's origin of birth is a subtextual assertion that our government is illegitmately under the control of one who is racially unqualified for his position. That the person in question is our first African American president underscores the racial element of the obnoxious birther assertions which are clearly designed to stir anxiety about a black man in the White House. All you have to do is look at the charicatures of the President on the signs at their rallies to see how personally it is aimed at one man as the source of their dread.
The other element to consider is the obsession with 2nd amendment rights when this administration has signaled little interest in curtailing those rights. Yet tea partiers insist on showing up with loaded weapons at their rallies -- even rallies where the President is scheduled to speak. It is not surprising, however, because leaders like Palin and Sharon Angle ramp the rhetoric with references to "reloading" and "2nd amendment remedies" and continue to push the hot button. The congresswoman from Tuscon, of course, once had her own place in public life placed under crosshairs on a Palin website.
Thus the connection, for me at least, is about stoking racially charged dread, mixing it with questions of political legitimacy, and energizing the entire movement with the possibility of direct violence and physical intimidation. This is what I am worried about, and these elements of Tea Party energy in our political life are what I was referring to.
Although I am not certain I will explore these concerns any further than simply articulating my own connections and concern, one article that does explore the Tea Party much more in depth is linked here, originally published by Matt Tiabbi in Rolling Stone. I do hope this gives you a more adequate understanding of what I see happening here.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-on-the-tea-party-20100928
Posted by Darrell Hamlin
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March 2, 2011 9:08 AM
Posted on March 2, 2011 09:08
Very well articulated. I now see where you are coming from, and I see why those are legitimate concerns. I truly appreciate you taking the time to clarify them more fully for me. :)
I'll check out the article you linked to, although I truly doubt the author could do more justice to the subject than you just did. (That's not just lip-service, by the way.)
Posted by Jessica
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March 2, 2011 1:43 PM
Posted on March 2, 2011 13:43