venerable erotic figure, the tigress unleashed once the glasses are removed and the tresses fall. Why, Mrs. Palin, you’re, you’re b-b-beautiful... Exactly right, sonny, and no fool either.
In Sarah Palin the right has its perfect emblem: moral avatar and commodity, uniting the put-upon woman who gushes, “She’s just like me!” and the chest thumper who brays, “I’d do her, and her daughter” with those who have long exploited the fear and sorry machismo of both, with the help of another durable reactionary weapon. Now that it’s official, as McCain’s campaign manager said, that “this election is not about issues; this election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates,” McCain’s only live tag appears to be, Republicans Do It Better. Translation: small-town, gun-toting, rough-and-ready, all-American Sarah and Todd versus Barack and Michelle. White Power. (Or, close enough, White-ish.) Palin Power.
And there’s the rub for McCain. It looks like Palin’s party now, and whatever she does for his virility, she’s not the hockey mom, or the babe, or the third wife he can stomp on. If her acceptance speech was indicative, she can match the “sneering, condescending attitude” that former Republican Senator Bob Smith says is fundamental to McCain, but with a smile and a dagger’s turn. Her role model Esther doesn’t just win favor from the king and a reprieve for herself and her people; she enables her people to engage in bloody slaughter against the king’s other subjects, maneuvers for the public execution of his closest adviser and the man’s sons, sees her de facto father become the de facto king; in sum, sabotages and unmans Ahasuerus. Palin has been too cagey to identify exactly who her people are, but in playing off cronies and oilmen in Alaska and even Christians to get where she is, she does seem to have grasped the art, so vital to politics, of the exquisitely timed double cross.
The Insiders: How John McCain Came to Pick Sarah Palin
Jane Mayer
“Here’s a little news flash,” Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for vice president, announced in September, during her debut at the party’s convention, in St. Paul. “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But, she added, “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion.”
In subsequent speeches, Palin has cast herself as an antidote to the elitist culture inside the Beltway. “I’m certainly a Washington outsider, and I’m proud of that, because I think that that is what we need,” she recently told Fox News. During her first interview as John McCain’s running mate, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, Palin was asked about her lack of experience in foreign policy. She replied, “We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody’s big fat résumé, maybe, that shows decades and decades in the Washington establishment.... Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing, and kind of that closed-door, good-ol’-boy network that has been the Washington elite.”
Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington elite than her rhetoric has suggested. Paulette Simpson, the head of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women, who has known Palin since 2002, said, “From the beginning, she’s been underestimated. She’s very smart. She’s ambitious.” John Bitney, a top policy adviser on Palin’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, said, “Sarah’s very conscientious about crafting the story of Sarah. She’s all about the hockey mom and Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington—the anti-politician politician.” Bitney is from Wasilla, Palin’s
In Sarah Palin the right has its perfect emblem: moral avatar and commodity, uniting the put-upon woman who gushes, “She’s just like me!” and the chest thumper who brays, “I’d do her, and her daughter” with those who have long exploited the fear and sorry machismo of both, with the help of another durable reactionary weapon. Now that it’s official, as McCain’s campaign manager said, that “this election is not about issues; this election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates,” McCain’s only live tag appears to be, Republicans Do It Better. Translation: small-town, gun-toting, rough-and-ready, all-American Sarah and Todd versus Barack and Michelle. White Power. (Or, close enough, White-ish.) Palin Power.
And there’s the rub for McCain. It looks like Palin’s party now, and whatever she does for his virility, she’s not the hockey mom, or the babe, or the third wife he can stomp on. If her acceptance speech was indicative, she can match the “sneering, condescending attitude” that former Republican Senator Bob Smith says is fundamental to McCain, but with a smile and a dagger’s turn. Her role model Esther doesn’t just win favor from the king and a reprieve for herself and her people; she enables her people to engage in bloody slaughter against the king’s other subjects, maneuvers for the public execution of his closest adviser and the man’s sons, sees her de facto father become the de facto king; in sum, sabotages and unmans Ahasuerus. Palin has been too cagey to identify exactly who her people are, but in playing off cronies and oilmen in Alaska and even Christians to get where she is, she does seem to have grasped the art, so vital to politics, of the exquisitely timed double cross.
The Insiders: How John McCain Came to Pick Sarah Palin
Jane Mayer
“Here’s a little news flash,” Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for vice president, announced in September, during her debut at the party’s convention, in St. Paul. “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But, she added, “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion.”
In subsequent speeches, Palin has cast herself as an antidote to the elitist culture inside the Beltway. “I’m certainly a Washington outsider, and I’m proud of that, because I think that that is what we need,” she recently told Fox News. During her first interview as John McCain’s running mate, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, Palin was asked about her lack of experience in foreign policy. She replied, “We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody’s big fat résumé, maybe, that shows decades and decades in the Washington establishment.... Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing, and kind of that closed-door, good-ol’-boy network that has been the Washington elite.”
Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington elite than her rhetoric has suggested. Paulette Simpson, the head of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women, who has known Palin since 2002, said, “From the beginning, she’s been underestimated. She’s very smart. She’s ambitious.” John Bitney, a top policy adviser on Palin’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, said, “Sarah’s very conscientious about crafting the story of Sarah. She’s all about the hockey mom and Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington—the anti-politician politician.” Bitney is from Wasilla, Palin’s
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