Yes, she scares the willies out of me. But my vote tends to be based on concrete realities, rather than what George Lakoff calls "the realities of the political mind." I find this HuffPo article he put up today very convincing:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-palin-choice-and-the_b_123012.htmlA couple of quotes:
But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind -- the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.Exactly. And:
Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.
Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.Progressives have a lot of trouble countering this strategy because we
don't get it. It makes no sense to us. Obama has succeeded as well as he has, largely, because he's turned this metaphorical narrative on its head and played the "family values" card from our standpoint. He's played the "responsibility" card, from our standpoint. He's played the "strength" card, from our standpoint. And he has refused, rightly I think, to enter the Politics of Personal Destruction arena where his strongest style assets --intelligence, thoughtfulness, and deliberation-- are liabilities.
I believe Lakoff is right. We can compile list after list of facts that patently (to us) demonstrate her monumental unfitness for the office of Vice President of the United States. But large numbers of undecided voters-- and not necessarily stupid ones-- make their decisions
not based on facts, but on the answers to questions like these:
- What kind of person is the candidate?
- Is s/he sincere? Believable?
- Does the way s/he communicates remind me of people I like and trust?
- Does his/her life story have lots of things I recognize in it? And feel identity with?
- Do her/his stated priorities mean something to me, personally?
- Does s/he look and/or act like me? Or like people I like and trust?
- Is it easy to understand his/her answers to questions?
From the standpoint of answering those questions for large numbers of moderate and leaning-conservative uncommitted voters, Palin is a good choice.
Superficially (and that's the level on which the majority of American voters evaluate candidates) Sarah is an attractive kind of person: physically attractive, the camera likes her, she has a wholesome, girl-next-door cleancut appeal. She smiles a lot and it's a nice-looking smile. Her apparent achievements --as a mayor, a governor, a mom-- seem to indicate a lot of appealing characteristics in the way of hard work, determination, ability, etc. (Yes, I know
seems is the operative word, but how many non-political people see beyond "seems?")
She does project sincerity. She projects it very well. On camera, her body language is relaxed and confident. Her delivery is well-paced and apparently spontaneous. She has a knack for looking the camera in the eye and making a point with a smile. For a lot of people that kind of presentation translates into believability-- look at Reagan.
The way she communicates will remind a lot of people of folks they know and trust. She's doesn't project an intelligence level that would feel threatening. She doesn't indulge in wonkish verbal mannerisms. She makes unscripted remarks that might make
my hair stand on end ("Just what is it a Vice President does all day?") but people can identify with them. "Ordinary folks" remarks, but clearly she's not really "ordinary folks" since she's Governor of a state, and all. So isn't it nice that she's not stiff and condescending about it?
Her life story is being beautifully spun by the GOPpie spinmeisters. Miss Wasilla is hardly preparation for high Executive Office but it's something a lot of ordinary folks can identify with. Ditto sportscasting. Ditto helping hubby with the family business when they had a commercial fishing outfit. Ditto a lot of things about her life that have points of reference for voters. They can see themselves in her. They love their families-- she has five kids, including a special needs baby and a troubled teenager. They like the outdoorsy life-- she's lived the outdoorsy life.
Her
stated priorities also resonate for a lot of people: Keep it simple. Keep government, with all its annoying complexity and ambiguity, from interfering with their lives. Solve the high gas prices thing any way we can-- preferably in some simple, obvious way like, well, drilling. Respect life, protect unborn babies (never mind that her methodology for doing so is profoundly disrespectful of adult womens' lives and sets up conditions of unspeakable misery for those babies and their desperate mothers.) Encourage independence and self-reliance.
She has good looks, but not scary-good looks-- women would like to have those kinds of looks, so they see themselves (as they want to be) in her. The glasses and professional-looking skirt suits keep her from being "too sexy," but she's still sexy enough to be accessible for men.
We may mock her answers to complex questions, but you don't have to be well-informed on policy issues to understand them. Even if they are simplistic to the point of being misleading or irrelevant, they sound easy. People like easy. They trust easy.
We see her as a train wreck but unless we get smart and strategic about using her massive pile of deficits, she could have just the effect the GOPpies hope she will have. And while I don't think it would be enough to
win the election, it just might get things close enough to
steal.We have to treat her as a credible threat and develop strategies to counter her appeal to the voters who make their decisions based on the answers to questions like the ones above. I think there are only two strategies that will work:
Strategy One: Target ConstituenciesI don't want to entirely write off the power of facts. One or two facts, calculated to have maximum impact on a specific constituency, powerfully presented and relentlessly emphasized and repeated, can be very influential. Jewish conservatives have been in bed with the fundie nutbags for a long time because of the Israel issue; but it might be possible to bring home the scariness of putting an extremist fundie Christian one heartbeat away from a 72-year old cancer survivor of a President. In a position where she might be making Supreme Court appointments, Federal Judiciary decisions, etc.
This would require a lot of work, teasing out which facts will make which segments of the uncommitted electorate see Sarah as scary as we see her, and developing ways to pound
just those facts home to
just those voters. It would require a great deal of discipline and attention to the signal-to-noise ratio, and a constant vigilance to keep making the same point over and over no matter how the GOPpies try to twist and spin and distract the targeted audience.
It's do-able but it requires so much investment of resources and effort that it can't be done on a large scale. We would have to find the specific segments that will tip the victory beyond the stealing-point in key states, and let a lot of the rest of the electorate go, more or less.
Strategy Two: Hillaryize!The GOPpies want to turn Sarah into Hillary? Alrighty, then! Let's help them! Let's turn her, not into the Hillary we know and love, but into the Demon Hillary that they spent ten years vilifying, excoriating, and scaremongering about. The castrating bitch. The shrill ball-buster. The woman obsessed with
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition.
Take every facet of her life and expose it as
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition. Every vengeful firing in Wasilla. Every petty manipulation like inferring that she, not her classmate, won the Miss Congeniality award. Every sleazy suckup to anyone who could advance her
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition, like the AIP, Ted Stevens' 527, etc.
And yes, every decision that has put her
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition before the well-being of her family and her children, ugly as that is.
What kind of woman are we scared of? An incompetent, unqualified, extremist ideologue. But that's not the kind of woman who scares the voters the GOP wants to capture. They are scared by the woman who walks all over regular people (in her high heels, no less) to advance her
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition. They are scared by the woman who sacrifices family, home, and children to her
Naked, Calculating, Political Ambition.
This strategy is so ugly it makes me nauseous to think about it. But it's cheap. It's easy (GAWD is it easy, she just keeps throwing us material!) And it beats the GOPpies at their own game. It has some risks-- done clumsily, it can backfire and let them play the victim card and elicit the sympathy vote. (Though playing the victim card isn't always an effective counter-strategy for men, it can still work for a female candidate with these voters.) But I think it's what they're most scared of. That's why they're not really trying too hard to keep all the damaging facts from coming out, and why they're not wasting a lot of effort on a fact vs. fact campaign. (Well, that and the fact that they'd be clicking an unloaded revolver...)
I think this analysis, convoluted as it is, is validated by the very words of Rick Davis in today's WaPo:
This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_manager_this_election_i.htmlWe ignore him --and the threat potential of Sarah Palin-- at our peril.
We need to notch down the wild revelry, fun as it has been, and get to work. Pick our strategy and stay focused. We have a candidate who can deliver, if we help counter the GOPpies' sleaziest manipulations.
We know how scary Sarah is. We know we don't want her in a position to make decisions for our families. Let's convince everyone!
soberly,
Bright
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