What seems evident now is that for the time being Sarah Palin is the face and voice of the Republican Party. Not the stumbling old man who in another life was a Vietnam War POW who finally came out of Hanoi to begin a political career. McCain is done. If the GOP imagines it has any future, it obviously believes its future is Palin and not McCain. Who is it, after all, who pulls the crowds? It's not McCain, it's Palin. Never mind who she's pulling, the mob that yells "Kill him!" with the same gusto shown by lynch-mobs in former days of mob insanity, gusto also cranked up to get someone elected to public office for private gain.
McCain is finished, a shell of whatever he once was, which may be not as much as some people think. He represents the past, he shows signs of what may be an aging brain, and whatever force remains in his campaign apparently resides in the stiletto heels and shrill cackle of his beauty-pageant-girl, soccer-mom, moose-dressing running mate.
And they run. They run hither and yon waving their arms and shouting, "Terrorist!" "Treason!" "That one!" And the mob shouts back, "Kill him!" "Kill him!" "Kill him!"
What's really behind it all is the idea that the only "good" is the personal good of this old man and his titillating soccer-mom, and that the public is to be fooled, manipulated, herded like sheep to put the Hanoi Candidate in the White House and Sarah Palin in the VP house to be the "maverick" in-waiting. That's really all they care about. He chose her not for the country but because he thought it would get him the White House, and she jumped at the chance to be the media star she always wanted to be. What's good for the country was irrelevant. It's Me First, the idea made popular by Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, the Bush dynasty, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and the crowd of money-grubbing right wingnut media hacks in process of swinging enough to the center to keep working if the Hanoi Candidate and his Miss Wannabee Alaska go down as the mood of the country shifts away from selfishness. To hell with the public, they say. The public is to be sold the way soap is sold: sell the package and not the soap and you will laugh on your way to the bank.
Since McCain is now nothing but a relic, what we need to be concerned about is Palin. It's apparent that out of her mouth will come anything she thinks will get her where she wants to go. Her evident job in the GOP campaign is to rouse the rabble, shriek at them, stomp around on her stilettos, wave at them, rile them up.
"Terrorist!" she shouts.
"Kill him!" they shout back.
Palin shouts, and McCain stands behind her and waves his arms in approval.
Even some conservatives are worried about Palin and what she means for the future of the Republican Party. David Brooks says William Buckley Jr. would be appalled. If that's indeed true, then Bill Buckley was never smart enough to understand the endpoint of his ideas.
That's one of the big deficiencies of the educated wealthy class in America--too many of them are not smart enough to understand the endpoint of their ideas.
Meanwhile, we have an election circus in front of our faces--and a political watershed. America has to decide whether its soul belongs to the good of the many or the good of the few. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren will enjoy or suffer the consequences. This is no ordinary moment. If Sarah Palin is the future of America, we are in the deepest trouble we can imagine.