Palin: The Worst Angels of Our Nature

Unless something unexpected happens in the next nineteen days, the American people will elect Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States, and will do so by a large enough margin to give him the mandate he needs to address the numerous problems caused by that disaster known as the Bush Administration.

The challenges will be immense. And should Obama stumble, Sarah Palin will be waiting in the wings.

Like it or not, an Obama victory will not end the Palin threat. She is already laying the groundwork for a run in 2012. And given her actions over the past two months, it is a safe bet that she will do everything in her power to win.

The key question is not whether she will challenge Obama in four years, but rather what kind of race she will run. Is Palin merely another ambitious politician willing to say and do anything to get elected, or are we witnessing the emergence of a genuinely anti-democratic populist -- a successor to such notorious figures as Charles Lindbergh, Father Charles Coughlin, Huey Long, Strom Thurmond, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace?

If the past two months are prologue, Palin represents a real threat to our democratic traditions. She favors demagoguery over democracy. She celebrates her own lack of judgment and experience as her best qualifications for the office she seeks. She slanders Obama and other opponents, suggesting that they are willing to sell out America. She uses her supposedly folksy background to attack the media and elites as out of touch with average Americans. And she plays to the mob, appealing to and encouraging the most reactionary, angry, hateful, and racist elements of our society.

These are Palin's people, the worst angels of our nature. They are ready, willing, and determined to follow her regardless of what happens on Election Day. The Palinistas are far less interested in electing McCain than they are in putting the Sarahnator one step away from the White House (and, they hope, in it soon). They will never accept an Obama presidency, and should McCain somehow pull off a miracle, they will count the days until Palin is able to push him aside and assume power herself.

It would be easy to suggest that Palin is little more than a demagogue, that she would not move the United States away from its democratic traditions. Some may contend that it is still far too early in Palin's career to determine whether she is a genuine threat.

But do we really want to take the chance?

If Palin really does represent a move toward anti-democratic populism, she already is far more dangerous than any earlier demagogue. She's not merely some nutjob with a radio following, or a regional figure who failed to move onto the national stage. She's a major party nominee for Vice President of the United States.

No previous anti-democratic figure -- not even Strom Thurmond in 1948 or George Wallace in 1968 -- ever had a serious chance of getting elected. Palin does. Change genders, and Palin is a modern day version of Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrup, the anti-hero of It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis's alternate history of America under a fascist dictatorship:

Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, . . .in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms. . .and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not syndicated in newspapers, and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate.

But he was. . .twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.

That's Sarah Palin: fake small-town rhetoric combined with an unquenchable thirst for power. Like Windrup, she has attracted a cabal of back-room intellectuals (e.g. Karl Rove, William Kristol, and Henry Kissinger) who intend to use her to achieve their own ends. What's not yet clear is whether Palin is, like Windrup, little more than a figurehead, or if she actually has the ruthlessness to control those who would make her queen.

Given the fact that we still do not know how much worse things will get over the next few years (and even though they are unlikely to be as bad as the Great Depression, they surely will be worse than anything most of us have ever seen), there is a very real possibility that an Obama Administration may not reverse the disastrous situation that Bush has left us. That is the premise of Lewis's novel -- that Roosevelt's best efforts weren't enough and things were much worse at the end of his first term, opening the door to an anti-democratic demagogue.

If history does not repeat itself -- if Obama is not able to tackle the problems we face -- then hope, change, logic, and cool will not be enough to sustain him. Again, Lewis:

The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party. . . was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions, for the peppery sensations associated, usually, not with monetary systems and taxation rates but with baptism by immersion in the creek, young love under the elms, straight whisky, angelic orchestras heard soaring down from the full moon, fear of death when an automobile teeters above a canyon, thirst in a desert and quenching it with spring water--all the primitive sensations which they thought they found in the screaming of Buzz Windrip.

Sarah Palin is ready. Should things get even worse over the next four years, her folksiness and rhetoric may start appealing to more than just the far right. If she turns out to be all that I fear, then John McCain may be remembered best not for his own career, but for his role as an American Paul von Hindenburg.

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Comments

[BarackMarley]

Here's the Top 5 McCain/Palin Hate Mob Videos
http://newsone.blackplanet.com/nation/top-5-mccainpalin-hate-mob-videos/

[NicasioKid]

Palin had the benefit of surprise when she first hit the scene. No longer. We know her a lot better now. She could easily continue to be a nuisance, because now she has an audience for her far right ideology. But posts with major power? No. The rabble she attracts that have crawled out from under their rocks will soon retreat. And after Barack has been in office for a while, a few may actually come to recognize their fears were unfounded.

Hate against people of color and the government will persist in America. But maybe we'll be successful in diminishing it, even just a little bit.

[peacegurl48]

It can happen here, it is happening here...albeit on a small scale. Palin is the handmaiden of the rabid right and I do expect to see her in 2012.
It has been asked again and again: can you imagine if the Obamas had the recent AIP conncections or if Biden had been found guilty of an ethics violation or abuse of power? How does this woman get a pass? These issues are serious and speak volumes about who she really is...and still she rises.
This is why we need to be afraid and not write her off as the "toast" that she deserves to be.

If the brilliant Obama is "not up to" the challenge of our times how can his vapid hatemonger be "ready to be President"? Why, based on Troopergate alone , is Palin's judgment not being questioned?

As Obama said, we cannot be cpmplacent...even when he wins!

[vreeseque]

No one takes her serious because of her lack of intelligence. So they just don't expect much from her. But wake up America this lady has about a 40% chance of being VP. And if she gets that far about an 80% chance of being POTUS either briefly with a McCain illness or running after his first term.

[peacegurl48]

Or after they get rid of McCain.

[payos]

That is why education, the cornerstone of a civilized society, is so important.

What SP taps unto is the ig.n.o-rant and angry underbelly of our culture, where the prevailing emotion is fear, because people are afraid of what they do not know and understand.

But then you have the so-called educated factions represented by what we read in such as the National Review, WSJ, etc, certainly ignorant in the sense we mean. I posit that these are the cynical and greedy "upper-belly," to coin a term, who exploit the ignorance of the masses to pad their own purses.

[bilbo8]

Let's all calm down.

She's TOAST!!!!

If she ever runs for a national office; all her opponent has to do is replay the Couric interviews.

(There is no spin for stupidity)

[shimown]

Indeed, she is toast. Her very current history could very conveniently be used against her. The fact that Obama has inspired so many to counter the demagogic trend she has motivated should give us hope that we will not fall victim to Palin's brand of inanity and wrongheadedness.

Bye bye Sarah!

[matthewhusseinsmith]

"Like it or not, an Obama victory will not end the Palin threat. She is already laying the groundwork for a run in 2012. And given her actions over the past two months, it is a safe bet that she will do everything in her power to win."

This time around, Palin was chosen by ONE person.
In 2012, it's doubtful that Sarah will win the republican nomination for president in the republican primaries.
Question is, would the next republican nominee chose her as VP again?

[anachoret]

"That's Sarah Palin: fake small-town rhetoric combined with an unquenchable thirst for power."
----------
"With ... small-town life ... there are hundreds of thousands ... who are not content. The more intelligent young people ... flee to the cities ... and ... stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted ... is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment ... the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world."

--"Main Street"

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity."
--Sarah Palin quoting Westbrook Pegler at the Republican National Convention

There are good people and bad people everywhere. But if you are fishing for good people, you don't use the likes of Sarah Palin for bait. Her Rhetoric may be exaggerated, but we're well advised to know that it is real.

[krocklin]

Why is the media not going after her affiliations with the AIP, to which she gave an address in 2008, and McCain's with Liddy and many others? Liddy has advocated murder and has social relations with McCain and as recently as 2007 was praised by him on his radio show.
I don't get it.

[Artola]

Why aren't we talking about the charge of abuse of power by Palin as gov.? She broke the law as gov. How is someone that needs to be reformed going to reform Washington? When she had a little power, she abused it - now the RNC wants us to give her more and trust her with it?

[BillZBubb]

Palin appeals to exactly the same crowd that loved George W. Bush. That means she has a real chance to get 50% of the vote in a national election. Those people never learn.

She will undoubtedly spend the next four years polishing her resume and her interview skills to prepare for a run at the presidency. Neo-fascism has its "great white hope".

[SeriousBlack]

And that is truly the worst thing that John McCain has visited upon us - unleashing this dangerous person on America.

I guess that's what he means by "Country First", huh?

[Annoula]

Let us not forget that Sarah Palin was appointed by whoever was (ill) advising McCain at the time. [After all, it's a well known fact that he wanted Lieberman as his running mate)
She was not elected in a primary and I doubt that she would ever survive through a single debate with other more serious Republican contenders. She makes Huckabee look like an Oxford scholar and Giuliani like a philosopher!
If in four years, people still consider her a serious candidate and allow her to charm and wink her way to the Oval Office just by being soooo cute, that will be the unquestionable indication that this once-great nation is irreversibly DOOOMED!

[bluerabbit47]

It isn't her cuteness. She, and her followers, really have this idea that they are going to put all women (except her, of course) back into th virtual kitchen. How? Well, it starts with removal of choice in the termination of pregnancies (which, by the way, just means that girls will die--remember the fifties and early sixties??). Then, it moves on to all forms of birth control, starting with the Pill. The idea is that, then, employers will be justified in discriminating against women because they might get pregnant or their kids might get sick. Then, when women are hostages again, men, the thinking goes, can beat them up and emotionally abuse them at will and they won't have to compete against them at work. There are a lot of angry guys out there who think they are missing out on some kind of birthright because they can't get away with what Pop got away with. Don't believe me? Ask young women who want kids and have given up on finding a guy mature enough to be a father. They're skipping the thirty-year-old kid and going for artificial insemination. Well, on the other side of this, you have Palin supporters. Don't think sexual politics is important? LOL. Think again.

[deezig]

I think you're onto something.

[hlthlvr]

HuffPost's Pick

Sarah Palin is beyond terrifying. I suggest that all these people who adore her move to Alaska where they can worship at their feet. Then when Todd Palin succeeds in getting Alaska to secede from the United States, they can all live up there in a condition of total gloating and paranoia about the "Lower 48."

[larrykath]

Yes, move them all up there and when Russia attacks to get at all that oil, they can turn their well-armed militia loose and defend themselves without any help from the lower 48's military.

[ohioan73]

Palin reminds me of Professor Umbridge from the HP series. Cutesy business suits, a fake smile, and a grating sarcastic, accusatory, condescending tone while harboring sadistic tendencies.

[nancytheragingliberal]

She is one scary person. Woman should be running away from her as fast as they can. Yet, many woman actually think she is Presidential material. How can this be? She is not allowed to speak to reporters, for the simple reason she is unable to formulate a cohesive, simple four word declarative sentence. She is uneducated, unintelligent, unqualified, but people actually believe the B.S. she spews. She has a shrill, mocking voice. I don't get it.

[SeriousBlack]

Simply look halfway attractive, and have extreme right-wing beliefs (and instead of trying to disguise them or ameliorate them, fully embrace them and yell them out in a righteous-sounding voice), mix in some national news exposure, and you automatically have a built-in constituency of the far-right and/or ignorant voters that we see on numerous videos filing into McCain/Palin campaign rallies calling Obama a terrorist.

It's actually very simple (as simple as it is disturbing and dangerous).