To think, one year ago today we didn’t know whether her name was pronounced PAH-lin or PAY-lin and now, she is the most sensationalized, scrutinized, and targeted politician since…well, since Hillary Clinton. As a matter of fact Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have a lot more in common than most would think; For example, they share similar obstacles. Women in politics today still struggle to reach parity with their male counterparts, and both Clinton’s and Palin’s meteoric rise in their own careers demonstrates a special and intensive media scrutiny most do not face. While Palin’s media maltreatment is still fresh in our minds, Clinton had her fair share of unflattering coverage. Both had to ferociously defend their daughters from line-crossing media opinion, offset exaggerated and politically motivated ethic complaints, and endure habitual comments on their physical appearances –clothes, bodies, hair, etc.
The comparisons don’t end at the seemingly superficial. Take a point of contention for both ladies: being bossed rather than the boss. Palin was first introduced to us as the feisty number two to John McCain’s number one, a departure from her executive roles as mayor and governor. And while McCain constantly gave her a pass for her campaign flubs, the McCain for President staffers were less generous, billing her a diva and Wasila hillbilly because of her unwillingness to be groomed and handled. The best example perhaps was her impromptu request to speak before McCain at the election night concession rally, which was reportedly met with a cold and indifferent “no.”
Clinton herself is feeling the sting of a second stringer these days after decades of being a front row policy maker. Early stories and editorials initially praised the usually high profile Clinton with laying low and deferring to President Obama, especially after the contentious year and a half of campaigning against each other. However as of late, more and more reports continue to surface that Clinton’s State Department is struggling to be heard, jousting for the president’s attention with other departments, and competing, sort of speak, with the White House on foreign policy matters. Many journalists have symbolized her unforeseen struggles with a benign but still pesky elbow injury she sustained several weeks ago, after falling at – where else – the White House.
Still, a canyon-sized gap separates the two – one a spectacular virtuoso in policy and self-discipline, the other just a spunky ringer at retail politics. That is not to say that Palin, with all her imperfections, should be counted out in politics, but it could be stated as fact that Clinton is not only a better statesman than Palin, but among the best in American politics today, all things considered. Palin perhaps should take note from the secretary. Where they most differ and where Palin should learn from Clinton the most is in the execution. Indeed most of their similarities stem from the fact that they both are women, sharing familiar struggles and obstacles in a professional atmosphere dominated by men. But it is exactly each’s response to these struggles that have defined her.
Clinton has earned her power and status in politics because of her triumphs over adversity – personal and professional. Her remarkable resilience has grown her a tough skin and a bullshit detector that affords her political stamina and good judgment. Furthermore, she’s a diligent student, immersing herself in the academics of her job, strengthening her mental grasp, and the subsequent rhetorical authority, on policy issues. But it is her trademark discipline that continues to serve her most, keeping a cool head and gripped patience even under the most extreme situations. Palin, for whatever reason, does not possess these qualities, and it has been painfully obvious.
Whereas Clinton was blunt and concise with her response on the media’s intrusion on her family, Palin was cheeky and winded. Clinton always appears in control and prepared at press conferences, while Palin looks amateurishly spontaneous and off the cuff. Clinton would often mask her frustrations with strong, pointed words, while Palin comes across as whiny. Whereas Clinton conserves her time in the limelight, seeking it out only when needed, Palin over-relishes in it, often looking eager, if not desperate, to be on camera. Simply put, Clinton always looks a step ahead, while Palin looks a step behind, caught between going “rogue” as a not-your-typical-politician and still following a familiar template for achieving national accolades. As frustrating as the soon former governor is to me, I still believe she has an opportunity to remerge as a major political player, or at the very least achieve redemption. To do so, she needs to take heed from Clinton’s examples:
1. Learn to love the phrase “no comment.” Good politics is learning what not to say, and Palin’s loose lips are often the source of her biggest snafus. Like Clinton has, she can earn a lot of respect for taking the high road and offering little to no comments on the most raucous of stories the media often salivates to have her answer. (Read: ignore Levi Johnston.)
2. Be informed. I, like many, do not believe Palin is unintelligent, but rather uninformed. The Republican Party in general seems to be snubbing high IQs, equating intellect with arrogance; Palin included. She, like the other subscribers to this belief, are forgetting that connecting with the “common folk” is not the same as being among the common folk – unqualified and all. Hit the library and study. Clinton has achieved the success she has, even while being the most hated liberal at times, because people could not dispute her smarts. It is often overlooked, but what people most look for in their government representatives is the undoubted assurance that they know what the hell they are doing. Should Palin brush up on her books, she can emerge as the rare politician who is academic and approachable. Look how it worked for Bill Clinton.
3. Always be prepared. This may go against her nature, but preparedness is key to impressing in Washington. Palin’s M.O., demonstrative by her press conferences, interviews, remarks, and other simple political tasks, is in fact shunning any semblance of preparation or rehearsed execution – or so it looks. Again, Palin seems to confuse speaking from the heart or gut and speaking with a complete lack of direction and focus. Sure, a verbatim recitation of what the teleprompter reads may not give the desired flexibility to appear genuine and natural, but as is with everything in life, practice makes perfect – and Palin needs the practice.
4. Lay low. I will go on the record in saying that by executing this suggestion, Palin might just shock the pundits and pastors by making a comeback. Laying low, as Clinton did after winning her Senate seat and as she may have been doing in her first months as secretary of state, Palin gets the chance to start over. It is the closest thing she will get to a clean slate, and she desperately needs one. Even being the governor of the farthest and most politically irrelevant state in the union was getting her enough media scrutiny to inhibit her political rehabilitation after a damaging campaign for vice president. She was certainly guilty of fanning the flames, but nonetheless, the media under no circumstance was not about to drop her as a person of interest. After Clinton was elected a New York senator, she weathered critics by keeping a low profile – learning the ins and outs of her new legislative job, but just as important – denying her dissenters any fodder or talking points to attack her with. If Palin follows suit, she can develop the skills she need while providing the media and her critics time to forget about her so that she may have a chance at reintroducing herself to the public. Voters are myopic enough to give her a second chance if she truly works on herself.
To be the best you have to learn from the best. Palin is enough like Clinton to follow in her footsteps, but different enough to not appear like an imitator. I am under the impression that Palin still has time to make a comeback because much like Clinton, we’ve never quite seen anyone like her. I almost feel criminal for comparing the two, but Clinton is transcendent enough to cross the aisle. Oh yeah, and another thing Palin needs to work on…
If you’ve ever been annoyed by liberals’ holier-than-thou snootiness about race…if you’ve ever been disgusted when some Democrat baselessly accuses a Republican of being a bigot…if you can’t stand the politically correct double standard that progressives apply to racial issues…behold your beautiful, beautiful revenge:
To be fair to Babs, I don’t think she was condescending to Alford because of his race. She’s generally condescending to everyone, regardless of their skin color. I’m just amazed she didn’t demand that Alford call her “Senator”. It’s a title she’s worked very hard for, dontcha know.
There may be nothing worse in this world than trying to explain a simple concept to someone. No matter how obvious and easy the words may be, it’s almost as if after spoken, those words literally traverse the brain from one ear to the other, flying to a far away vacuum. The Michael Jackson saga’s epilogue – his untimely death – illustrates this frustration in more ways than one, from the sensationalized confusion of his hero-dom, to the bourgeois scoffing of the media attention. With so many points of contention, I am finding it difficult picking a point to begin with, but the beginning is as good any place to start.
There is nothing more ignorant than denying Michael Jackson’s due honor and accolades because of the allegations of pedophilia. Indeed it may be difficult to disassociate Jackson with child molestation, but as law-abiding (and politically minded) Americans, we must have enough faith or deference in our legal system to reach lawfully reasoned conclusions – so if the state of California found no conclusive evidence of foul play, more than a good chance stands that nothing ever really occurred. We may forever have our doubts, and some of us may remain unconvinced even after a jury’s not guilty rendering, but that sounds like a personal problem. Texas Rep. Shirley Jackson Lee said it best during Jackson’s memorial that in this country, we are innocent until proven otherwise, so by the standards of the document we all purport to love and honor, Michael Jackson did nothing wrong. So why all the noise? It is my conclusion that several people (of whom would place themselves in the conservative corner of the political spectrum) have succumbed to the whims and passions of mere opinion instead of researched facts and reasoned reflection. It is so much easier to just hate the man, pointing to his odd physical characteristics and cloud of tragic suspicion, rather than striving for a more enlightened conclusion on such a complex person. The Peter Kings and Bill O’Reillys and Elizabeth Hasselbacks of the world have signaled this is the route they are taking and yes, it is their right to protest, but they do so at their own misguided and perilous prerogative.
I too was taken aback by the outpour of sorrow and reverence for the king of pop, thinking to myself “He’s a pedophile! Why are we mourning a pedophile?!” I was among the angry and cynical people yelling at their television sets as that seemingly crazy woman released a white dove for every “not guilty” verdict at Jackson’s trial four years ago. I admit I was rooting for the prosecution, my own opinion of Jackson molded by the mainstream media’s indictment of Jackson by way of stand-up comedy, late night punch lines, and parody. This was not uncommon for most of us, finding ourselves hating the man with little evidence but a popular notion to go on: we loved his music, but hated him. Yet, if anyone takes the time to read any literature on the trial, they would find that the defense was sterling to say the least. Cynics may bark that money can buy freedom and Jackson’s innocence was fabricated by the tongue of a gifted (and expensive) lawyer and even today that may be the prevailing logic. However, I don’t buy it. First, I refuse to believe that our legal system can be degraded and boxed into such a characterization, even with all of its imperfections. And where Jackson’s lead counsel can be described as gifted and obtainable to mostly the privileged, the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office (i.e. the prosecution) is a hotbed of political ambition, standing to gain on a guilty verdict. Furthermore, unlike trials of most accused Americans, Michael Jackson was hindered with such a renowned name and personality; I am willing to be the jury had a hard time dissociating the celebrity and the defendant. Ultimately, I fully understand now why he was so mourned and so wonderfully remembered: people are willing to forget or cast aside the child molestation accusations to accommodate quite comfortably Jackson’s larger than life achievements and influence in the music and pop culture world. They gave him the benefit of the doubt, undeniably because he was, by law, not guilty.
Now, speaking of media malfeasance, people were so outraged and puzzled by how epic the media coverage was on Jackson’s death and legacy. These people are idiots: liars or idiots. For as long as pop culture has been keeping tabs (circa early 1970s), Michael Jackson has been a force. It was the smooth and agile preteen Michael of the Jackson 5 that captured the hearts and minds of millions long before he was moon walking or crooning about an illegitimate child. As any pop culture expert will tell you, the truest test of your fame is a time-spanning career, appealing to multiple generations of people. And given that asking any eight or eighty year old to sing you the chorus of “Thriller” will result in an accurate rendition, shoulder shifting and all, he passes that test quite remarkably. Therefore you have an epically famous celebrity, who dies relatively young under as-of-yet-undetermined and suspicious circumstances – by applying a little Jon Stewartesque algebra, you will come to find that media coverage will be wall-to-wall if not greater. The politicos can still gawk about Sonia Sotomayor and empathy, but they’d have to readily admit that it holds much less bearing on their own individual lives than their memories of moon walking to Billie Jean or crotch-grabbing to Beat It – unless you happen to be Sonia Sotomayor. What is most head-scratching is that the same people who were whining about the Jackson media blitz were giddy as wind-up dolls at the Sarah Palin fiasco – the consummate example of “much ado…”
Understanding why people are fascinated at the news of a Palin fart begins to explain why people were so intensely focused on the Jackson news. For better or worse, it is the world we live in and the rules we live by, guided by public interests and passions (media that is). I pray that the next time something like this happens, people will show wiser judgment and more prudent words when characterizing what dismays them and why it dismays them, remembering well that ignorance – like the king of pop – is not easily forgotten.
With the first day of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings in the books, I’m starting to wonder if there aren’t two Sonia Sotomayors. One is a moderate circuit court judge who strictly adheres to the law in her rulings, has little sympathy for violent crime, and demonstrates no partiality towards any particular sector of society. The other is a radical legal scholar who has advocated flamboyant judicial activism in law journals and on lecture circuits, contending that judges should take their race into account when ruling, 
rejecting the idea of an objective standard of law, and encouraging courts to consider international law when deliberating. Needless to say, it is imperative that Sotomayor #1 destroys Sotomayor #2 before Sotomayor #2 can put her evil schemes into action and wreak havoc on the world.
Sotomayor the Judge is both moderate and prudent. Great lengths should be gone to by all Americans to make sure they rarely disagree with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on anything, but he summed up Sotomayor’s fairminded record on the bench very well during his opening statement today: “She’s agreed with her Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time. She has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases against the immigration plaintiff. She has ruled for the government in 92 percent of criminal cases. She has denied race claims in 83 percent of the cases and is split evenly on employment cases between employer and employee.” As Rachel Maddow vented a few weeks ago, “I’m the only person in America who’s pointing out that Judge Sotomayor is not all that liberal!”
Here’s Schumer’s entire sharp, albeit ferocious partisan statement:
But Sotomayor the Legal Commentator sounds more like a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge than a former corporate lawyer. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the silver-tongued Senate Republican whip, catalogued some of her more loopy statements and writings in his opening statement. She has stated that a “wise Latina” would be better equipped to make sound rulings because of her ethnicity, called an objective legal standard a mere “aspiration”, and suggested that American judges consider international law in their rulings so that America wouldn’t ”lose influence in the world”.
Watch Kyl’s statement in its entirety here:
To be fair to Sotomayor, her judicial record is a substantially heavier factor than her body of legal speeches and columns when weighing her fitness to serve. Nevertheless, one has to marvel at the expansive gulf between her judicial opinions and off-the-cuff comments. As even Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) admitted today, Sotomayor will be confirmed. We can only hope that the Sotomayor that dons the Supreme Court justice robe is the moderate judge and not the liberal commentator.
I’ve been thumbing through Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father, written in 1995 before he discovered hope and change, and can’t help but be impressed by the president’s literary talent. His book is what every starry-eyed aspiring writer hopes to produce: a beautifully written bit of prose that’s simultaneously deep and touching as well as breezy and enjoyable. The man may devalue the dollar to the point where Americans are trading Mardi Gras beads as currency, but he passed Creative Writing 101 with flying colors.
I’ve only read about a third of the 457-page tome, but judging from the overall theme of Obama’s thoughts, one of his more puzzling decisions to date is starting to come into sharper focus: the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.
Puzzling because those who have examined Sotomayor’s record beyond the perpetually-flogged tidbits that make the headlines (the Ricci case, “wise Latina woman”) will find that she is utterly out of step with Obama. Contrary to the hysterical claims of many conservatives who are stockpiling cyanide pills in Glenn Beck’s doom bunker in the event of her confirmation, Sotomayor’s jurisprudence is not that of a liberal ideologue. Among other examples, she has upheld the Bush administration’s policy to prohibit taxpayer monies from funding abortions overseas, thrown the Clinton administration out of court when they tried to prosecute the Wall Street Journal for obtaining a suicide note written by former White House counsel Vince Foster, and upheld Manhattan’s first death penalty case in 40 years. Even more tantalizingly, she has yet to offer up an opinion, legal or moral, on abortion, an odd omission for a judge of her stature and a source of hope for many pro-lifers who note her Catholic upbringing.
The president would undoubtedly beg to differ with many of her rulings. As recently as 2001, Obama was ruing that the judiciary had not broken free from its constitutional chains and commanded immediate redistribution of wealth. As a constitutional law professor, Obama’s views on the courts and the Constitution were nothing short of radical. Rather than select Sotomayor, he could have just as easily nominated a far-left 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, provided the justice in question cut his hair and kicked the acid habit. But he didn’t. He picked a moderate liberal scarcely to the left of Bush I’s David Souter.
So why Sotomayor?
My theory, gleaned from perusing the memoir, is that Obama identified with Sotomayor because of her insistence that her Hispanic race was a cornerstone of her personhood. Dreams From My Father presents the reader with the prism through which Obama views his personal past and his political future: his African-American heritage. Obama was raised in Hawaii, a racial fantasyl
and in which whites, blacks, and native Hawaiians lived side by side harmoniously without the specter of discrimination that had seized the rest of America since its inception. By Obama’s own account, he experienced almost no prejudice, save for an occasional cutting comment from a basketball coach. Yet Obama intimately identified with his blackness, enough to spend years searching for the legacy of his deadbeat African father and later pen a memoir with the issue of race at its epicenter. Sonia Sotomayor, who has speculated that her Latina heritage might make her a superior judge to a white man, similarly obsesses about the color of her skin. It is a key connection for two people whose philosophies might otherwise not entirely sync.
It’s difficult to make an argument that Sotomayor shouldn’t be confirmed, given the array of awful choices Obama could have made. But as the confirmation hearings begin tomorrow, the Senate should bear in mind the troubling influence that race seems to play on her judicial thinking and demand answers.
Answer: I think so. It’d be one thing if Press Secretary Robert Gibbs kept getting hounded by Fox News’ Major Garrett and some blogger standing in the back representing WheresTheBirthCertificate.com, but the it’s the cream of the mainstream media crop who are now scoffing at Gibbs. When Helen Thomas burns you during a press conference and later calls your administration more contemptuous of the press than Richard Nixon’s, there may be a bumpy road ahead:
Some have said this episode demonstrates Gibbs as roughly on the same plane as Scott McClellan when it comes to White House public relations. But in Gibbs’ defense, what exactly was he supposed to say? A constant refrain from the left during the Bush administration was that Bush only spoke at town hall events where the questioners were pre-selected. Obama promised a new age of governmental transparency, yet won’t even break free from his own handlers. The press is finally catching up on the president’s barrage of broken campaign promises, starting with the middle-class tax cuts and continuing today with this. Also, color me impressed by Helen Thomas. I had previously assumed she was simply a crazy person, but now understand that she is an enormously principled crazy person. She’s a liberal true believer, not a Democratic hack.
MSNBC, the Huffington Post, Media Matters, Think Progress, etc. have been maintaining radio silence on this all day, by the way.
Hotair.com picked up this video from this morning’s White House press briefing. Remember how those nutty right-wingers kept claiming during the 2008 campaign that Obama would raise taxes…even though, as liberals wearily kept pointing out, Obama had promised tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans? Yeah…
What’s most astonishing here is not that Obama may break another campaign promise. With economists warning that America may lose its AAA credit status if we keep spending recklessly and China balking at the idea of gobbling up any more American debt, the revenue for Obama’s government bloating was going to have to come from somewhere. The real shocker is that the press finally seems to have had its fill. Reporters in the briefing room just openly laughed at Robert Gibbs! With cameras rolling! Who do they think he is, Scott McClellan?
So is the media honeymoon finally over? I mean, to be sure Democrats’ engaged in political kneecapping during the cap and trade debate. And there may be criminal investigations into to why Obama’s EPA covered up a major study demonstrating climate change wasn’t particularly dire. And the president is amping up taxing and spending to unprecedented levels, despite his campaign pledges. But look at how funny and affable he is! And he bought Brian Williams Five Guys! And how about his wife, huh? She’s so damn sheik and…
Ahem, sorry.
Follow up question: Obama’s favorite economist Paul Krugman has repeatedly blamed the prolonging of the Great Depression on President Roosevelt’s decision to bow to conservatives and raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit. How is this even remotely different?
PFC Lynndie England, the soldier seen mugging for the camera in the notorious Abu Ghraib abuse photos, is promoting a new book Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World. According to an interview with AOL, England’s life has been less-than-glamorous since her debut as a naked pyramid aficionado.
More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home.
Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn’t landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.She doesn’t like to travel: Strangers point and whisper, “That’s her!”In fact, she doesn’t leave the house much at all, limiting her outings mostly to grocery runs.“I don’t have a social life,” she says. ” … I sit at home all day.”She’s tried dyeing her dark brown hair, wearing sunglasses and ball caps. She even thought about changing her name.But “it’s my face that’s always recognized,” she says, “and I can’t really change that.”…“They think that I was like this evil torturer. … I wasn’t,” she says. “People don’t realize I was just in a photo for a split second in time.”
Contrary to her contentions (which were picked up by many anti-war polemicists), England was not an intelligence officer or interrogator who received orders from the nebulous “higher ups” to abuse prisoners. She was an Army specialist assigned to the prison kitchen. The men who she humiliated were not suicide bombers captured on the battlefield, but run-of-the-mill prisoners suspected of committing lesser crimes against other Iraqis. As long as we’re wrought with doubts about forgiving Mark Sanford for cheating on his wife, England, who essentially perpetrated an gangrape that humiliated the United States, deserves nothing less than what she’s gotten. Agreed, Quorumers?As I’m sure you’ve already heard, the House of Representatives passed one of Obama’s pet initiatives on Friday: legislation which caps the total amount of emissions allowed for American corporations and then forces them to pay for whatever share of pollution they deem necessary to survive. What has gone virtually unreported was the contentious battle that erupted on the House floor. Nancy Pelosi allotted a whopping five hours of total floor debate for what is one of the most landmark economic bills in American history. That morning, a 300-page amendment was added to the bill with virtually no time for review by congressmen. Needless to say, Republicans were outraged. For those with some sort of social life who weren’t transfixed to C-SPAN Friday evening, here were some of the highlights.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) gave a passionate speech admitting Republicans couldn’t outvote Democrats and pleading with the American people to call their congressmen and speak out:
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) called the inevitable passage of the legislation a great achievement for “humankind”. Rangel evidently thinks polluting corporations don’t pay enough taxes, and he knows what it’s like to not pay enough taxes:
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louis.) questions how a bill containing 55 pages addressing job losses will not cause job losses.
Things got pathetically hilarious towards the end of the debate as Republicans, led by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), realized that no official copy of the bill, complete with the 300-page amendment that had been added that morning, had been distributed. Barton asks and asks and asks, but denied the right even to check to see if the official document was anywhere in the House chamber. Democrats, alerted to Republicans’ sneaky tactic of reading bills before they vote for them, shut him down:
It was later determined that the copy of the bill in the chamber was not integrated with the amendment and thus incomplete. I’m thinking it’s time to retire the niceties of Congress and create an atmosphere more like the House of Commons where Barton could have pounded the podium and screamed, “For God’s sake, where’s the fucking bill???”
Minority leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) showed up at the end and engaged in the House equivalent of a filibuster, spending nearly 20 minutes mocking the 300-page amendment that Democrats inserted at the last minute.
The kicker comes here, when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) objected to Boehner and was shot down, prompting applause from Republicans and an epic, awesome, kickass scolding from Boehner.
In watching these videos, please, please don’t let the shameless efforts of Democrats to ram this legislation through without even the most cursory consideration make you to lose your already rock-solid faith in our legislative process. Oh, and if you happen to work for an energy company, you may want to start checking the classifieds.
I was first introduced to Governor Mark Sanford at a panel discussion at the Cato Institute. The topic was national ID cards, which had the libertarians at Cato in high dudgeon over the looming specter of a federal police state. When discussing such issues, garden variety libertarians have an occasional tendency to jump the sanity rails, warning of shadowy conspiracies and federal stormtroopers and barcodes on every ankle. Not Sanford. For nearly half an hour he spoke with incredible articulateness, citing John Locke and the Federalist Papers on one hand while explaining the messy details of national ID cards and their potential for abuse on the other. He was calm, measured, optimistic, witty, and intensely bright. His co-panelist, Senator John Tester (D-Mont.), seemed muted by comparison.
I had gone with a friend who insisted that I had to see Sanford speak. “He should run for president,” I said after the event. “I told you,” my friend said.
If that sounds like a love note more appropriate for an infatuated middle school girl to give to her first boyfriend (or perhaps for Brian Williams to give to Barack Obama), then so be it. Sanford had floated the idea of running for president in 2012 and I would have supported him wholeheartedly without further consideration. When I heard his Appalachian trail hike excuse for his leave of absence questioned after he was spotted at the airport in Atlanta, I secretly hoped he was laying the groundwork for an exploratory committee or meeting with a wealthy donor. When I saw the MSNBC chryon blaring that Sanford had admitted to an affair on the television screen in a Piccadilly Pub, I immediately ordered another beer, hoping it might start to diffuse the knot in my stomach. The GOP’s brightest hope had just been dimmed.
Unlike any Republican presidential candidate of recent memory, Sanford was smart. His speeches are brimming with references to classical liberal philosophers from which his practical ideas consistently spring. When asked by the American Conservative why he supported term limits, Sanford gave the following incredibly dorky answer: “The ‘beta’ is the correlation between an individual stock and the market as a whole. Term limits change the beta of a political decision. Some politicians look at a single political decision and say, ‘Man, this could affect my career for the rest of my life.’ But with term limits, if it only affects you for the next two years, it’s not a life-changing event.” He couldn’t even admit to a sexual dalliance Wednesday without beginning his press conference with a reflection on how “God’s law is indeed there to protect you from yourself.”
There is a toxic wing of the Republican Party that seems to despise the intellectual. Filled with hatred of pointy-headed professor in ivory towers and moderate urbanites schmoozing at cocktail parties, these conservatives have lustily supported inarticulate, uninspiring, lightweight presidential candidates like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin because they “understand the common folks” and “don’t speak the language of Washington.” Sanford, simultaneously brilliant and folksy, had the power to shed the image created for the GOP by these populists while keeping the party base entertained and satisfied. He had the ability to calmly and illuminatingly explain true conservatism to an American public rapidly growing weary of Barack Obama’s statist economics. He had the potential to give the Republican Party leadership and direction at a time when its power structure was constantly in flux. Rush Limbaugh said Sanford could have been “our JFK” for a reason.
But more importantly, Sanford was the necessary corrective to years of big-government Dubya neoconservatism. Most libertarians who didn’t ditch the GOP years ago have watched Republicans for the past decade with gritted teeth, as they passed the largest prescription drug entitlement bill in history, as they collaborated with Ted Kennedy on No Child Left Behind which resulted in further federalization of education and the stripping of anything reminiscient of a voucher from their signature legislation, as they rammed through a farm bill that increased subsidies, as they increased government spending and regulation at record rates, as they spent the United States into the largest deficit in American history, as they invaded Iraq without constitutionally-mandated congressional approval on flimsy pretenses, as they ardently defended the torture of prisoners, as they passed the Patriot Act, as they authorized warrantless wiretaps and imprisonments.
By contrast, Sanford was wedded to the Constitution. As a congressman, he often joined Ron Paul as one of two dissenting votes in the House against unconstitutional legislation. As a governor, he term-limited himself, opposed pork barrel projects of every stripe, and attempted to remodel South Carolina’s education system using competition and school vouchers. Even some of his less advisable iniatives, like his attempt to reject Barack Obama’s stimulus money, were rooted in libertarian principle. There is a small charter club of conservatives on the national scene who have consistently advocated constitutional, classically liberal ideals, even if it meant swimming against the tide of the Republican Party. The most extreme of these is Ron Paul, and others include Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Jim DeMint, Representative Thaddeus McCotter, and Representative Jeff Flake. Mark Sanford was their unofficial leader and first potential presidential candidate.
There is little doubt that this scandal will consume Sanford’s political career. Sanford’s wife could stand by him, his sons could forgive him, he could raise Farrah Fawcett from the dead, and he would still be damaged goods. According to a SurveyUSA poll (taken last night at 1 am apparently), 60 percent of South Carolinians think Sanford should resign as governor. FDR’s image recovered after he shipped every Japanese-American on the west coast to a detainment camp, but no politician can survive the stinging stigma that results from an exposed affair. The public will forever see you as genetically dirty, the political equivalent of a neighbor peeping through the fence to look at the swimming pool. One imagines the German people would have abandoned Hitler if his affair with Eva Braun had been blasted on the front of Der Spiegel, racist ideology or no racist ideology.
It’s a damn, heartwrenching shame. Sanford could have been the most promising Republican presidential contender since Ronald Reagan threw his cowboy hat into the ring in 1976. Instead, he’ll go down as a tawdry footnote in South Carolina history. Who will scoop up the GOP nomination now? Palin? Romney? Pawlenty? Who cares? Without Sanford, the race will be infinitely less interesting and promising.
