Go Sarah

In my daily Manhattan world, where most of my friends and acquaintances are old style political groupies of a distinctly liberal bent, nothing gets them more riled, really riled, hyper-irritated, when I mention that I admire Sarah Palin.

They fuss and fume to such an extent that I have serious qualms of the effect on their physical health. Some, I can tell by the clenching of their fists and the sudden burst of color on their complexions, are on the verge of combat.

Frankly I am baffled by the extent of their antagonism. It is visceral, mouth foaming and indicates a kind of existential hatred I have rarely seen in the political arena. In my view it is completely irrational and fed by the snobbery, elite exclusivity, and a circumscribed media of like-minded, anti-Palin views that feed, reinforce, inflame
and buttress their antagonism.

Up front let me tell you why I admire Sarah Palin. I like the fact that she has a point of view of many of the women I met in my many years of living in the West: independent, family oriented, tough, opinionated, fearless, unafraid to air their grievances, and, above all, comfortable in their own skin.

She reminds me of the kind of women, heroines of yesteryear, who pioneered the western frontier and were willing to take on all the hardships inherent in putting down stakes in an unforgiving and dangerous land. I know this will sound absurd to many of my friends, but in some way, she reminds me of Hubert Humphrey who had been dubbed by the media as “The Happy Warrior.” Hubert, an old style liberal, jumped into the fray with a smile, a sense of humor and an unshakeable optimism. Unfortunately, his political future was trashed in Chicago by ugly protests and overreaction by the authorities.

I like Sarah’s competitive spirit and love of sports, her joy in the outdoors and its many wonders, including fishing, hunting, (yes hunting for all you effete New Yorkers who love eating red meat) skiing and hiking. I like the idea that she took on the good old boys who ran their fiefdoms in Alaska politics and bashed them at the polls. I like the idea that she took on the challenging balancing act of being a working mom in a demanding political job, and I have no doubt that she is fiercely devoted to her kids, to her country, to her parents and her friends.

Although she has obvious old fashioned values which I grew up with and understand, she has not shied away from modern mores and has grappled with the difficulties of raising children like most families dealing with the perils of child rearing in this ever more permissive society. It amazed me that she didn’t go into a depressive funk at the way the media treated her daughter, especially the ugly ridicule of Letterman.

Harry Truman, one remembers, was so pissed off with a music critic at the Washington Post who dissed daughter Margaret’s singing debut that he wrote a nasty letter to the critic in which he called him a son of a bitch. Frankly, Sarah showed remarkable restraint and should have kicked Letterman in his overactive you-know-whats for insulting Bristol.

Parents are often blindsided by adolescent peer pressure and their children’s foolish self-inflicted mishaps. She was also roundly criticized for exploiting her kids by taking them to the convention and on the campaign trail. Would it have been better to have left them home with a caretaker or a relative? Ask that question of millions of working mothers and check their response.

If anyone took the trouble to really delve into her record as both Alaska Governor and her excellent work and acknowledged expertise in the energy field, it would dispel the notion that she is stupid, which is the way the elite media has portrayed, pummeled and persecuted her. She is a realist, frank and open, big hearted and decent.

Maybe she wasn’t quite up to par on current events at the time of her hatchet job interview with Katie Couric, a fading media star who insults the fact that the great Walter Cronkite once held sway on that network. Anyone with experience in the news business knows that it’s pretty easy to make a jackass out of someone if you’re determined to do it, especially if you also control the editing.

Oh yes, she is enormously attractive, with movie star good looks, which, in her case, might actually be a political negative. Still, she has done wonders for women in specs who were often categorized as less than pretty. Remember all those Hollywood movies where the bespectacled woman removes her glasses and her boyfriend suddenly swoons with rapture over her beauty. I think she looks just great in glasses and probably has done wonders for the optical trade.

I may not agree with all of her political views and statements, which is par for the course, since I often disagree with everything in the lexicon and views of most politicians of whichever party. Review the campaign promises and rhetoric of the present occupant of the White House and compare it with the reality of those promises and you will know what I mean. He is hardly an exception. Few, if any politicians, will ever get passing grades on that test.

What I take issue with is the utter nastiness and Sarah bashing in the media that this woman has endured. It is far beyond the pale of political combat. It has been hateful, riddled with snobbery, bigotry and pure mean-mindedness.

When Sarah Palin is discussed in my social circles, she is characterized as trailer trash, ignorant, unfit, uneducated, downright stupid and worst of all, a lousy mother. Not only is she accused of exploiting her children for political gain, she is blamed for her daughter’s early sexual promiscuity and her family is characterized as hopelessly dysfunctional. And this passes for political dialogue in modern America?

To counter these rather disgusting comments, especially when they are particularly venomous about her family life, I ask these brilliant nose-in-air critics to look to their own families and honestly confront their own foibles and imperfections. It becomes dangerous territory since most people are rather touchy and in denial about their family histories, especially if they are divorced, have less than perfect children, and have squabbles that have poisoned their own lives. I put half the families in America in that category.

Then there is the matter of her intense Christian faith which has been fair game for the media. These are the same folks who once supported and gushed over the born again Jimmy Carter.

Women seem to be the most vitriolic and outspoken in their critique of Sarah. Indeed, isn’t she the personification of what women have struggled and fought for, someone who follows her passion and ambition in the work place, competes vigorously with her male counterparts and manages to fulfill all the rituals of motherhood and maintain a loving family life? Isn’t that what women wanted when they burned their bras in Atlantic City and started their long delayed revolution for equal treatment?

To depersonalize my inevitable counterattack I will often cite the family lives of some of our revered politicians of both parties and heroes of the snob media, stalwarts of the marriage tradition of “faithfulness”, e.g. the Kennedy brothers, Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and (sorry folks) Thomas Jefferson, a certified pedophile and a host of others whose personal lives are less than stellar, far less. As for parenting, I’d declare that off limits in this discussion.

This defense of Sarah is not rooted in her presently perceived qualifications to become President of the United States, a possibility that induces apoplexy in my social circles. I’m not beating the pots and pans for such an outcome, but I don’t completely rule out the possibility.

We have elected the allegedly qualified who turned out to be monumental duds. Recent history has Jimmy Carter’s Presidential legacy to reckon with and there are many of older vintage who have been disappointing examples of Presidential leadership. Indeed, the overqualified often stumbled. John Adams comes to mind.

None of these comparisons will matter to the Sarah haters. They will continue to spew their hatred and declare this admiral woman a danger to America as if she was the female reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. She will continue to be harassed by the same media elitist snobs, continue to be treated with disdain. If I was an Alaskan who voted for Sarah I would be offended as hell by people who think I was some Neanderthal moron for voting for Sarah as my Governor.

But then, the people in my daily circles in the isolated precincts of Manhattan will never surrender their prerogatives as masters of the universe, poseurs and keepers of the flame of intellectual superiority. Truth to tell, I often fall into that category and love the contention and combat of my peerless native city. Growing up in the old Brooklyn, before gentrification, and rooting for the old Dodgers, I guess I’m programmed for an underdog defense, and rooting for Sarah stirs my juices.

Frankly, Sarah needs no defense from me. She has the stamina and feistiness to rise above the endless array of targeted torment being spewed over her by the media snobs, many of whom will die off as their vaunted power bases splinter and break up into a thousand niches by the onslaught of digital technology and the Internet.

A Presidential perch is a long shot for Sarah. Out of my social circles in the alleged wastelands between the coasts, she has found a vast crowd of ordinary Americans, often described as the great unwashed, made up of working folks, many of them unemployed and disillusioned by the empty promises of the smooth talking and elegant speechifying of the people currently in charge, who feel some kinship with this very exotic political orphan.

The great Ivy Leaguers of both genders who are leading America over the cliff to financial ruin and their colluders in the worst Congress in recent history, who apologize for American exceptionalism, butt kiss our enemies and deny the ongoing phenomena of brutal Jihadist terrorism, will one day have to reckon with the likes of Sarah Palin.

The Politics of Apology

I’ve always been impressed by people in public life who have mastered the art of the public apology. Some have couched their pleadings in terms of remorse as, for example Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle and Charles Rangel, throwing themselves on our mercy, hoping that the media and the public would buy into their “forthright” confessions of ignorance and innocence in the matter of their blatant tax evasion.

Their ploy is to publicly castigate themselves for their naiveté and stupidity or worse, hoping that their thespian qualities and careful scripting by public relations consultants paid or volunteered would carry the day. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t as poor Tom Daschle found out. Perhaps there was too much public resentment about Daschle using his Senate inner knowledge to make a killing financially, appearing to severely weaken his populist image.

One of the most artful tactics of apology came from Richard Nixon when he was the Vice-Presidential candidate running with Dwight Eisenhower. He had been accused of being the recipient of a so-called slush fund that was designed to subsidize him in his political career, a situation that seemed to seriously dance around the bounds of legality.

His television speech, forever dubbed as the Checkers speech, since that was the name of the family cocker spaniel, was an outright plea for mercy on the grounds of economic hardship and the perils and wonders of a Horatio Alger boyhood, still in vogue at that time. He cited his devotion to public service and the fact that his poor wife only wore a “Republican” cloth coat since they were, as he implied, unable to afford a mink coat. Apparently the public bought into that exercise in self-pity and justification and, as we know, the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the election.

He took a different tack during the Watergate scandal, a hard-headed refusal to cooperate with investigators and, despite a huge election win and a massive effort at damage control, couldn’t save himself from resignation, nor keep his enablers out of jail. He was forced into exile and did not emerge until pardoned by President Ford in what was characterized as one of the greatest political payoffs of all time. Ford offered no apology for his action but used “we must put it behind us” reasoning which, in the end, doomed his chances for a second term.

The most masterful public apology in history was the one perpetrated by young Senator Ted Kennedy, who with the help of family and an army of retainers, orchestrated a brilliant apologia that is hands down a text book study of a public relations coup. In that case, a young woman Mary Jo Kopechne was drowned in a car driven by Senator Kennedy after a party in the Chappaquiddick section of Martha’s Vineyard in Cape Cod. He had driven the car into the water and managed to escape while the poor girl was left trapped in the car and drowned.

One still wonders how he managed to escape without helping the young lady to safety along the same escape route he had taken. Worse, he did not report the accident until the next day and was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a minor violation. There were rumors of heavy drinking but the Kennedy loyalists at the party appeared to have closed ranks against the allegation and the drunken driving accusation became sidetracked.

His apology on television was a tribute to his thespian abilities and the brilliance of the acolytes and public relations experts who fashioned the speech which was probably rehearsed many times before it was delivered. It was chocked full of confessional platitudes like dubbing his actions in not reporting the accident as “inexplicable”, a good word, which puts reason on hold and he was groomed for the event like a mature innocent choirboy. Clearly though, panic, fear and confusion after the fact trumped any accusation of intent to deliberately end the life of this young woman.

His television apologia one-upped the Checkers speech and proved its mettle by saving Kennedy’s Senatorial career for its forty year run where he had won accolades for his hard work and consistently effective work for populist causes.

Those with a more acute long term memory will note that he was not rewarded with the Presidency he worked so hard to seek, not being able to gain enough traction in the primaries. If one very reluctantly puts aside the horror of Mary Jo Kopechne’s aborted young life, and sets it against the terrible tragedies of the Kennedy family, one is conflicted but cannot ignore a measure of compassion and clemency for the youngest brother of this ill fated clan. Perhaps there are moments when redemption is called for, although it comes with the curse of Mary Jo’s untimely death.

Even raising the issue years after the event while Senator Kennedy might be on the verge of answering his call to the beyond comes with some reluctance and sadness that cannot be ignored in the context of this essay.

But the weirdest attempt at an apologia came from none other than Bill Clinton who insisted, in the face of all evidence and against all the known logic of human behavior that he “did not have sex with that woman.” Of course no one believed him, even his wife, especially since his definition of sexual congress was mystifying. Indeed, there are those that truly believe that his putting oral sex beyond the boundaries of sexual activity set off a wave of true believers, especially among teenagers who, in apparent response, measured by statistics and anecdotal evidence, put oral sex into a category of popular amusements no more harmful than monopoly or roasting marshmallows at a campfire.

He was impeached despite his breakup with his chubby teenage intern but somehow held on to his post until George W. Bush took over. His image recovery is nothing short of miraculous. His effort at denial was an astounding success and he is now a role model for those who aspire to high office.

President Obama had two shots at apologia and handled them brilliantly. The first was in the matter of Reverend Wright whose church he had attended for decades. His method was to deny that he had ever heard the good Reverend’s obnoxious sermons. Despite the raised eyebrows everywhere, he had by then established such an unblemished image of probity that he was able to rise above the noise of his critics.

His second was in the matter of having gotten an especially good land deal from one of his financial sponsors Tony Rezko, now in jail and awaiting trial on other corruption charges. During the campaign Obama called his decision to make the deal in the first place “boneheaded.” Of course, he wasn’t running for President at the time of the real estate transaction which increased the size of the land footprint on his house and certainly increased its value. Given the state of Illinois politics, such obvious influence dealing was par for the course. We fervently hope there is no other shoe to drop in this case.

The problem with apologies in public life is that one cannot go to the well too often. In the President’s case the public will quickly tire of his multiple admissions of “screw-up’s”. I’m sure he knows this and given the infancy of his administration, he will undoubtedly put the brakes on the apology of self-effacement as time goes on.

Ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich took the denial road. He mounted a PR campaign on television to tell people he did nothing wrong. Since he was also indicted for corruption and was soon to go to trial in Federal Court his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears and he was unanimously kicked out of office by acclamation of the Illinois legislature. If I had to guess what did him in in the long run, despite the damning evidence of his wiretapped rants, I’d say it was his hair. Something about that hair-do was off-putting.

Apology dramatics is an important part of a politician’s toolbox and the fidelity of the apology is directly proportional to the politician’s words and demeanor. Perhaps the secret of the Kennedy apology was his Catholic upbringing where confession is a ritualistic commandment and redemption a necessary response.

The truth is that a confession, especially if it comes with some histrionics, like moist eyes and the obvious facial ticks and body language of sorrow and innocence, can induce forgiveness.

But then, as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have proven, strong jawed and steely eyed denial can be a lot more effective in the short run. Perhaps in the long run as well.