I just watched Sarah Palin's stump speech in Missouri today on C-Span and had a few quick impressions. She's very attractive, no one can deny this. She's fun to watch, she's got spark and zest. McCain stands by watching like a proud father, a little grin of triumph on his face. A friend compares her to Annie Oakley from the old western shows. She's got that kind of star appeal. The crowd shouts Sarah, Sarah. At last McCain is bridging the charisma gap that Obama's had over him for so long. And it's girlish. You see the high school beauty queen. People cry "you go girl" when she says she wants to end "self-dealing" in government. She obviously has some intelligence. The ethics and lobbyists and oil company stuff doesn't come out of nowhere.
All my other impressions are negative. Her world view is a small town worldview.
I love a smalltown worldview, not in the White House. She speaks of people pulling together to combat Gustav's impact, she speaks repeatedly of prayer and heart. Simple words. She speaks of "fundamentals," of "heroic kindness," of charity, and volunteers. There's a religious undercurrent to her words, words like grief and crisis come naturally to her. Her view of government is simple and western. Government has basic obligations, the people have much larger ones. She speaks of governing with "a servant's heart."
It's scary how non-intellectual she is, how foreign ideas are to her. She doesn't voice one real idea in her whole speech. The one idea she seems to have, about the importance of taking risks, is framed in a way that scares me. "A ship in harbor is safe. But that's not why the ship is built." It's a big crowdpleasing line, but how does it apply to government? It doesn't. She is a woman of action, I don't think she knows how to think, has ever had an idea.I wonder if McCain knows how to think, that he would choose someone so intellectually unsophisticated as his top political appointment.
She has such great populist appeal, and she's so unthoughtful, it's easy to see her becoming a demagogue. She asks the audience to join a cause with her, to elect "a great man." That feels vaguely proto-fascist. By November 5, we will begin forgetting about her forever. This I pray.
