COLUMNISTS : The Palin revue, a review
Posted on Sunday, October 5, 2008
Got home Thursday night and the cable was
out. No television. We called the appropriate
cable-TV-type authorities and were told not to panic, that it would be back in no time. Lots of folks had been calling. To judge by the nervous interest, you’d have thought the Super Bowl was coming on, or a Razorback football game back when that wasn’t something you were looking to avoid. Nope and nope. The must-see TV was a vicepresidential debate. Vice presidential. Well, you betcha. You’re dern right it’s the vicepresidential debate there. Okay, I’ll stop. An hourand-a-half of folksy Fargo-isms is more than enough. Really, dial it back a bit, would ya, Sarah ? I used to live in Minnes-OH-tah there, and I didn’t hear that much trite slang in a year. It’s no secret why folks were chomping at the remote to get a look at Sarah Palin v. Joe Biden in the one and only debate between vice-presidential candidates. This promised to be great television, if there is such a thing.
The prelims to this light-heavyweight bout had set the stage. At one rostrum would be Sarah Palin, who’d wilted under the oh-so-menacing stares and trick questions (What magazines and newspapers do you read ?) of, uh... Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric ? Really ? A couple of former morning-show hosts ?
Anyway, at the other would be Joe Biden, the Democrat who’s been in Washington so long he signed the construction beam on the U. S. Capitol. But ol’ Joe can still sound like a rookie who’ll say anything—even if the words aren’t his.
How could you resist this prime-time match-up ? Would Biden deliver the Gettysburg Address and claim it as his own ? (“ I jotted down these notes just this morning... ” ) Would Palin blank while reciting her ABCs ?
No such luck. For the most part, Palin rose to the level of mediocrity—which was enough for her worried, now re-devoted fans to proclaim her Reaganesqueand Biden hovered just above it. Although both had their moments. Especially Palin’s hey-can-I-call-you-Joe there deal at the beginning, and Biden’s emotional peroration. Any parent who could watch that and not well up doesn’t have a pulse.
But if the highlight of a debate happens before it starts—when Mrs. Palin ingratiatingly asked her opponent if she could call him by his first name—it wasn’t so great, after all.
Then again, this wasn’t about a debate, was it ? No. This was a review of Sarah Palin. Would we see the give- ’em-heck St. Paul Sarah who stole the show at the Republican convention ? Or more fodder for Tina Fey, who’s managed to parody Mrs. Palin on Saturday Night Live just by reciting the transcript from that Couric interview ?
Conclusion No. 1: It was St. Paul Sarah.
Conclusion No. 2: St. Paul Sarah is wearing thin.
It’s not just the Palinguistics. Holy homespun sayin’, Joe, say it ain’t so !
It’s not just her refusal to answer the questions, preferring to talk about whatever th’ heck she wants to, Gwen, and all ya nefarious filterers in the mainstream media elite there. Although that shtick no doubt played well with the base, it really doesn’t serve the purpose of a debate, even a quasi-debate like this scripted thing. If you’ve agreed to the rules, follow the rules. Otherwise, take your series of memorized mini-stump speeches to the stump and let the rest of us watch the Cubs game.
What really started to wear thin about Palin was that she was a little too sure of herself / her talking points and way too quick to play the blame game. Consider her rehearsed certitude on the economy. Who’s to blame ? “Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $ 300, 000 house if we could only afford a $ 100, 000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street.”
In short, blame the bankers and not the borrowers. That’s a little too easy. But here was a conservative candidate for high office playing the victim card like an old liberal pro. Even when she talked about personal responsibility, she did so in a way that put the blame elsewhere: “One thing that Americans can do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars.” To sum up, she’s agin Wall Street fat cats and mortgage-lending slicks who exploited and took advantage of Main Street Ma and Plain Talk Pa. Problem is, Main Street Ma and Plain Talk Pa are a lot smarter than Palin gives them credit for, and they’ve likely been investing in the market for some time by now. You want some straight talk, Sarah ? A lot of us knew what we were doing. But what may bother most about St. Paul Sarah is that she recites her lines so well, by rote, adding just the right dash of Wasilla authenticity as to make them sound almost original. Listening to her during the debate, performing so strongly after all the rushed rehearsals, you wonder if she’s had time to really think. For herself. Too often, Mrs. Palin exhibits the absolute certainty of someone who has been told exactly what to believe. And hasn’t given it a second thought. Oh, Joe Biden was there, too.
—––––– • –––––—Kane Webb is a Perspective feature writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at kwebb@arkansasonline. com.
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