Mean Girl

Written by: Jeff Smith on Sep 4, 2008 4:11 PM EDT

(cross-posted at Prairie State Blue)

They say you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Too bad Sarah Palin blew hers pandering to GOP prejudices during her convention acceptance, rather than taking the opportunity to make the case that the McCain-Palin ticket would amount to a pair of real independents.

Already criticized for being a policy lightweight, Palin shamelessly embraced the shallow, bragging about the smallest of accomplishments, from selling state assets on eBay to dishing out feel-good checks (paid for with the sweat and tears of Americans in the other 49 states getting drilled at the pump). It was a performance worthy of the admonition attributed to Mencken that no one loses money or office by dumbing down the conversation.

Whereas Joe Biden went out of his way to pay some respect to John McCain, and differed primarily with his colleague's decisions, Palin had no such regard for Barack Obama, delivering one belittling, even juvenile, barb after another, most targeted at Obama's personality (or the GOP's narrative thereof).

When Palin did delve into issues, it was to wave the same old, same old tattered Republican canards, like "Democrats want to give us Big Government."  As if the Worst Administration Ever had not also given us the Biggest (and Big Brotherest) Government Ever. Watching Palin dig deep to pull one rhetorical handful after another from the ancient trickbag of GOP slime was like watching the car get towed out of the swamp at the end of Psycho.

To me, the gross flaw in McCain's picking Palin was not that she didn't have enough foreign policy experience, or enough experience in government -- it's not that she seemed, initially, a bad person. It's just that it seemed impossible to make the case that out of all the Republicans in America, she was most qualified to be vice-president. The best they could find. To me, it doesn't matter whether pundits think the move is brilliant or harebrained. What's wrong with her selection, no matter how you spin it, is that it was a <i>purely political</i> move, and thus the exact opposite of what McCain and now McCain-Palin pretend to be. Hey, if Peggy Noonan and I agree, you know it's truth.

Watching Palin read the teleprompter, one got the sense that she would have dutifully delivered her scripted lines with the same lecturing smugness whether they detoured into a Paul Harvey-like mouthwash testimonial or were replaced, say by some hacker, with a tale of alien abduction. Palin, by showing herself willing to have almost any words put in her mouth, belied the narrative about small-town America, which is to say fundamental decency.

I'd guess that her homies who say don't underestimate her are right. The pageant queen sees her chance for another tiara and is willing to throw elbows and kick shins at anyone who might stand in her way. I wouldn't underestimate her, but I wouldn't cut her any more slack than she gives a moose.

Tags: