Flirting her way to victory

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both
female candidates and US political discourse

Michelle Goldberg Friday
October 3 2008 guardian.co.uk

At least three times during the U.S. VP candidates debate, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have
universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly
so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political
discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full
sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential
candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing
announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries
put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you
want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let
them know my track record also," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she
was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack
lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own
pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as
such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth,
wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to
pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a
mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a
candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she
is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the
financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria
are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid
utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators
would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant
and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming
and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality
managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last
night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes
clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she
responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been
short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue
Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You
preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now
doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do
for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I
know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for
30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother,
who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to
all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra
credit for watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a
fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard
questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy
filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness,
which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her
achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to
ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection
to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in
the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how
are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college.
Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is
engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin'
redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most
quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of
major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow,
mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on
what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a
farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008