Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

I had thought ‘Sandra Day O’Palin’ was the ne plus ultra of this genre, but it won’t surprise many of you that there’s a McArdle piece that’s even better (via LGM):

She slides the stiletto in without either losing her femininity or coming across as catty, and given that she’s married to an eskimo, it’s going to be hard to fit her into the narrative of conservative closet racists trying to perpetuate white domination...

[…]

The Democrats are, as my colleague Clive Crook notes, in trouble. Whatever you think of her as a potential president, she is a politically brilliant choice, and Democrats are going to have a very hard time finding traction to attack her...

[….]

I have no reason to think that she would be a particularly bad president. Obama hasn’t any more relevant experience than she has; he’s simply been coaching for the thing longer. If he can get up to speed to be president in 18 months, presumably so can she, and I think its reasonable to expect McCain to live that long. We do not elect presidents because they are experts on everything that will come up during their presidency–they couldn’t possibly be. We elect them because we think they have good judgement and values that match our own. Contra my Democratic friends, I’m not sure that voters will see ‘But McCain really might die in office!’ as a bug, rather than a feature...

"Heh" to the indeedy.

‘Married to an eskimo’ is a nice, if irrelevant, touch.

Charles Lane (2008): Sandra Day O'Palin?: "Still absorbing her speech last night, I'm trying to understand how Sarah Palin could be so apparently unfazed by her current situation...

...She's in charge of a state government, just gave birth to a Down syndrome baby, has a pregnant teenage daughter and now it's 'Gotta run, John McCain wants me to be vice president.' But she's not only coping with the slings and arrows; she has fired back with gusto. It must be more than just religious faith, ambition or ideology.

She reminds me of another prominent Republican woman from the West: former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. O'Connor was much more moderate ideologically than Palin. With two degrees from Stanford, she had high-level intellectual training, which Palin lacks. But in personal terms, there are a lot of parallels.

O'Connor grew up on a remote desert ranch where self-sufficiency was the name of the game. It was the kind of place where all the kids had chores as soon as they were out of diapers. Her playmates were cowboys, and she tamed a bobcat for a housepet. As a mother of three in the Phoenix of the 1960s (a place a lot smaller than it is now), O'Connor was an irrepressible joiner of charities and causes, which led to local politics. She was nervous when Ronald Reagan plucked her from the obscurity of a state appellate court--talk about not experienced enough for the job!--but never let it show.

O'Connor's folksy demeanor cloaked a sharp pair of elbows and a spine of steel. Being a centrist, her former law clerks often told me, was not the same as being indecisive. While I was covering the Supreme Court many people who knew her attested privately to the fact that it was not wise to cross Sandra Day O'Connor on any matter, large or small. Many an unprepared attorney found that out at oral argument; I did, too, once when I tried to ask her a question that she did not particularly feel like answering. If looks could kill.... No one ever called her Sandra Barracuda, but it would not have been unfitting. By the time she got done with two decades' worth of outflanking both liberals and conservatives on the court, she was the most powerful woman in America.

Maybe there's something about growing up in a challenging, male-dominated physical environment (desert, tundra), in a family where everyone's expected to get his or her job done (and there's no time for drama, fuss or introspection), that turns certain girls into very confident women--women who love to play against the big boys, and love to win.

Megan McArdle (2008): Thoughts on Sarah Palin: "They're a little scattered, since I spent the speech lying in bed and wheezing. So, bullet points:

• This woman is an Obama-level political natural.  She is a ferociously good speaker, and almost preternaturally composed.  
• Sarah Palin is what the McCain camp has badly needed:  an attack dog who can be deployed against Obama.  She slides the stiletto in without either losing her femininity or coming across as catty, and given that she's married to an eskimo, it's going to be hard to fit her into the narrative of conservative closet racists trying to perpetuate white domination.
• She's going to be a hard act for McCain to follow tonight
• The Democrats are, as my colleague Clive Crooks notes, in trouble.  Whatever you think of her as a potential president,  she is a politically brilliant choice, and Democrats are going to have a very hard time finding traction to attack her: "Well, the Democrats have a problem. They had a few days of calling her a clueless redneck, a stewardess, a nonentity, and she has hurled that back in their bleeding gums. (If I were Joe Biden, I'd start practising for October 2nd right now.) Even before tonight's speech, they had backed off the 'no experience' strategy, because (as the Republicans intended) that was sending shrapnel in Obama's direction. Their line right now is their default mode, that McCain-Palin is four more years of George Bush. But this too is a completely untenable strategy, since the Republican ticket now looks stunningly fresh to voters, as fresh in fact as Obama-Biden. Where they will have to end up is obvious: McCain-Palin is an extreme right-wing ticket. It is a team that will prosecute the culture war against all that is decent and civilized in the United States: that must be the line."
• Many Democratic bloggers are itching to go after this woman for all of her perceived flaws.  I understand why, but if they do so, they are very likely to get McCain elected.  If I were a Democratic strategist right now, I would be telling the campaign to pretend she doesn't exist.  There is simply no way to attack her without alienating the swing voters they need by sending the message:  'People like you are idiots who can't be trusted to make important decisions', and also, triggering the social opprobrium that falls on men who say nasty things about women.  What can I say?  Sometimes sexism works in womens' favor.
• The McCain/Palin ticket represents something that I think is fairly troubling:  a sort of parody of traditional gender roles.  McCain is, and is running as, a hyper-macho flyboy, one whom I personally find disappointingly adolescent.  Palin's speech seemed to imply that her main qualification for office is having five kids and a great husband.  What man would have characterized himself as a 'hockey Dad' when introducing himself as a candidate for the second highest office in the land?  Being a parent is hard and important, but it is no more a good qualification for higher office than is being a journalist, which is also hard and important.  Palin's entire persona seems crafted to be the anti-Hillary: no man will find her a challenge to his masculine ego.  I do not like the fact that this seems to be more successful than running on, say, actual policy positions.
• I have no reason to think that she would be a particularly bad president.  Obama hasn't any more relevant experience than she has; he's simply been coaching for the thing longer.  If he can get up to speed to be president in 18 months, presumably so can she, and I think its reasonable to expect McCain to live that long.  We do not elect presidents because they are experts on everything that will come up during their presidency--they couldn't possibly be.  We elect them because we think they have good judgement and values that match our own.  Contra my Democratic friends, I'm not sure that voters will see 'But McCain really might die in office!' as a bug, rather than a feature.
• The 'hockey Mom' schtick is a political lie.  You could not possibly be a hockey Mom and the vice president of the United States, or for that matter, governor of Alaska.  Todd is a hockey Mom.  Sarah Palin, whatever she has done in the past, is now exactly like male politicians:  someone else is doing the main work of raising her kids.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that, of cours, and as political hogwash goes, it's pretty low-grade.
• She really is more like ordinary voters than the other politicians here.  Wail all you want about how she's super-pro-life, has five kids, and lives in a tiny town.  Sarah Palin is not a member of an upper-middle-class elite that has been groomed all its life to seize the power they've been told they're entitled to.  She doesn't vacation in Europe or go to the opera.  Neither do most of the voters she's trying to attract.
• I'll be surprised if McCain doesn't get a sizeable convention bump.  Democrats are in denial about the trouble--which I too find inexplicable--that the Obama campaign is in.
• As a person I like her.  Politically, I dislike what she represents:  populism, culture warmongering, and especially, the notion that if a woman is to hold power, she has to make herself non-threatening by emphasizing her domesticity and fertility.  I don't blame her for doing these things, since they seem to work. But I don't like living in a society where this works.
• Obama is already having HUGE trouble with the union rank and file in the old guard unions.  I don't know what's happening in up-and-coming unions like the SEIU, but in traditional unions like the Laborers, leadership endorsement has failed to translate into support from the membership.  The fact that Todd Palin was a steelworker is probably going to pull more of those people into the Republican camp, though of course, McCain's stance on trade will continue to cost him a lot of votes with the Steel and Auto workers.
• We might as well not bother to talk about policy issues in this campaign; we're now in all out culture war, with the coasts and the heartland fighting for control of Ohio.

Clive Crook (2008): Sarah Palin's speech: "Astonishing. It was a fine convention speech--but, reading the text, no better than very good...

...What was just sensational, far exceeding my expectations, was the delivery. After the thrashing she has received from press and television in the past few days, knowing what was at stake for the party and for John McCain as she stood at the podium, with a good part of the nation watching and waiting for her to trip, her composure and self-assurance were simply amazing. Who could fail to be moved by this? And it was even more impressive than it looked, because the waves of adulation from the audience kept interrupting her momentum: they did not know it, but at times the audience was making it harder for her. Yet she never looked hesitant or thrown. She paused when she had to and controlled the timing. She actually seemed comfortable. If ever there were a political natural, we saw one tonight.

It was not a safe speech, though at the beginning, when she was talking mainly about McCain, I thought it was going to be. She had a pair of difficult acts to follow, because both Mike Huckabee and (especially) Rudi Giuliani gave terrific barnstorming speeches before she came on. (Let's not dwell on Mitt Romney's bizarre contribution.) She not only touched on her own biography, in ways sure to delight small-town Americans across the land, she also asserted her command, as the governor of an oil-producing state, of the energy debate. Had Democrats forgotten that this is a key issue in the election, and one on which they are trailing the Republicans in public opinion?

I was surprised that she dared to attack Obama-Biden on national security and foreign policy, where her credentials are weak: here she was saying, I'm not afraid of you. In fronting her own executive experience, comparing it favorably (and not without justification) with Obama's, she dared to mock the Democratic nominee. That too was a risk, because mockery easily backfires--ask the Democrats about that tonight--and it paid off. All the barbs--'he has written two memoirs but not one piece of legislation,' and so on--went home.

Well, the Democrats have a problem. They had a few days of calling her a clueless redneck, a stewardess, a nonentity, and she has hurled that back in their bleeding gums. (If I were Joe Biden, I'd start practising for October 2nd right now.) Even before tonight's speech, they had backed off the 'no experience' strategy, because (as the Republicans intended) that was sending shrapnel in Obama's direction. Their line right now is their default mode, that McCain-Palin is four more years of George Bush. But this too is a completely untenable strategy, since the Republican ticket now looks stunningly fresh to voters, as fresh in fact as Obama-Biden. Where they will have to end up is obvious: McCain-Palin is an extreme right-wing ticket. It is a team that will prosecute the culture war against all that is decent and civilized in the United States: that must be the line.

Aside from further surprises in her biography, this--not her supposed inexperience--is the vulnerability that Palin has brought to the McCain candidacy. We need to hear her questioned on those issues. How unbending a social conservative is she? So much as to frighten the independents McCain needs? McCain is not a culture warrior. That is not the campaign he wanted to fight. At the moment, however, this factor seems massively outweighed in electoral terms by the excitement she has brought to the campaign. The party cannot believe its luck. They want to win again, and suddenly they think they can.

What one next wants to know is how Americans at large react to what they saw tonight. I will be surprised if they were not very impressed.

Update: CNN on why the speech was a problem for McCain: 'Well, he has to speak tomorrow night, and as we know, he is no governor of Alaska.' Flexibility you can believe in from the best political team on television.

Scott Lemieux: Don't Look At Us, We Didn't Do It!: "Megan McArdle proposes that the Donald Trump taking over the Republican Party was an amazing coincidence...

...the previous actions of party elites had nothing to do with. Jonathan Bernstein disposes:

Republicans had encouraged, or at least tolerated, schoolyard taunts and far-fetched conspiracy talk long before Trump’s campaign. He started out in Republican presidential politics by accusing the president of not being a U.S citizen, a slur that had been bandied about by many highly visible Republicans. He has now moved on to recycling conspiracy theories from 20 years ago about Hillary Clinton that were promoted at the time by talk-show hosts and Republican members of Congress...

The fact that Donald Trump rose to prominence within the Republican Party by promoting birtherism while Republican elites first looked the other way and then eagerly sought his support is indeed crucial.

Another part is how Republicans lowered the standards for their politicians. Normally voters might oppose Trump as flat-out unqualified for the job, both by lack of relevant experience and lack of knowledge of government and public affairs. But by giving a megaphone to people like Pat Robertson, Herman Cain, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, Republicans showed their voters what counts as a ‘normal’ Republican presidential candidate — and it isn’t all that different from Donald Trump. Republican voters had many well-qualified candidates in 2016, but they had been taught by their party to ignore normal qualifications, and they did so.

Jonathan is actually leaving out the best example here: Sarah Palin. John McCain — at the urging of party elites — selected her to be second in line to the presidency with no input from the voters, and party elites and conservative pundits* strongly defended the choice contemporaneously. It’s pretty hard to convincingly claim that an ignorant buffoon like Donald Trump isn’t a serious candidate for president when you’ve put an ignorant buffoon on a presidential ticket. (And while George W. Bush was not as unqualified as Palin, the proudly ill-informed anti-intellectualism that was central to his shtick was not incidental to the rise of figures like Trump.)

That same observation can be made about how Republicans have tolerated and promoted bigotry, forging a path for Trump to go even further. McArdle is wrong to say that the Republicans’ ‘Southern strategy’ of the Richard Nixon era was only incidentally pitched to bigots. In 1968, Nixon was clearly and deliberately going after pro-segregation voters abandoned by the Democratic Party, a strategy continued (for example) by Lee Atwater in the 1988 presidential race on behalf of George H.W. Bush.

Right, the southern strategy had nothing to do with racism. When, say, Richard Nixon worked with the not-at-all-racist Strom Thurmond’s top political advisor to try to gut the Voting Rights Act, that had nothing to do with race.

The idea that the Republican Party doesn’t own Trump is simply absurd.

Guess which conservative pundit said the following things when McCain selected Palin:

This woman is an Obama-level political natural. She is a ferociously good speaker, and almost preternaturally composed.

The Democrats are, as my colleague Clive Crooks notes, in trouble. Whatever you think of her as a potential president, she is a politically brilliant choice, and Democrats are going to have a very hard time finding traction to attack her.

I have no reason to think that she would be a particularly bad president. Obama hasn’t any more relevant experience than she has; he’s simply been coaching for the thing longer.

The fact that Republican voters took Donald Trump seriously is truly mysterious.

…much more here.

Jonathan Bernstein: The Republican Party Got the Voters It Deserved: "My View colleague Megan McArdle thinks people are exaggerating the Republican Party's responsibility for Donald Trump...

...Blaming the party, she concludes, ‘is like blaming the weatherman because it’s raining, or an economist for a recession.’ True, most Republican party actors resisted the Trump takeover right up to the point, and in some cases even after, all his nomination opponents dropped out. But the Republican Party nevertheless bears plenty of responsibility for the rise of the reality-show star, and many conservatives have acknowledged shortcomings in the party that Trump exploited. The question is still what exactly paved the way for Trump. Republicans had encouraged, or at least tolerated, schoolyard taunts and far-fetched conspiracy talk long before Trump's campaign. He started out in Republican presidential politics by accusing the president of not being a U.S citizen, a slur that had been bandied about by many highly visible Republicans. He has now moved on to recycling conspiracy theories from 20 years ago about Hillary Clinton that were promoted at the time by talk-show hosts and Republican members of Congress.

Another part is how Republicans lowered the standards for their politicians. Normally voters might oppose Trump as flat-out unqualified for the job, both by lack of relevant experience and lack of knowledge of government and public affairs. But by giving a megaphone to people like Pat Robertson, Herman Cain, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, Republicans showed their voters what counts as a 'normal' Republican presidential candidate -- and it isn't all that different from Donald Trump. Republican voters had many well-qualified candidates in 2016, but they had been taught by their party to ignore normal qualifications, and they did so. That same observation can be made about how Republicans have tolerated and promoted bigotry, forging a path for Trump to go even further. McArdle is wrong to say that the Republicans' ‘Southern strategy’ of the Richard Nixon era was only incidentally pitched to bigots. In 1968, Nixon was clearly and deliberately going after pro-segregation voters abandoned by the Democratic Party, a strategy continued (for example) by Lee Atwater in the 1988 presidential race on behalf of George H.W. Bush.  

Additionally, I don't think McArdle’s explanation of the interaction of political elites and masses is quite correct. She says: ‘You don’t put ideas in peoples’ heads; they just grow there.’ But voters have all sorts of ideas in their heads: conservative, liberal, some of which would make for good policy, some which would not. Most of those ideas -- healthy or toxic -- are relatively loosely held, and many times no candidate or party elicits responses based on those particular views.  The more some ideas are frozen out of politics -- for better or for worse -- the less they thrive ‘in peoples’ heads.' And, more important, only when politicians highlight those ideas do they escape from peoples' heads and become political issues. Yes, neither Trump nor earlier Republican dog-whistlers created the audience they played to. But there are many potential audiences in the electorate. Politicians and political parties choose which ones to nurture -- and are fairly held responsible for those choices.