How Sarah Palin's Plucky Ingénue Could Spell Curtains for McCain

If screen credits appear at the end of the 2008 presidential election, I'd guess they'll tell us the story was created by Kurt Vonnegut and Harriet Beecher Stowe, with a screenplay by Thomas Pynchon and Tom Stoppard, as directed by the Robert Altman of Nashville.

This election season has offered us a dizzying set of intertwined, overlapping and contradictory storylines. And just when it all seemed to be cohering, John McCain tossed us Sarah Palin, a stock 19th century melodramatic ingénue. I guess McCain hopes that Palin will take to the post-post-modern stage and turn his foes and critics into so many Snidely Whiplashes.

Popular cultural narratives are like riverbeds. The flow of our experience usually follows them. We understand what we do and think, what happens to us, and what happens in the world through our shared stories. Sometimes experience overflows the riverbanks. Occasionally, during powerful social, economic or political upheavals, unprecedented experience re-routes the rivers.

This year, the riverbeds of some of our shared stories are being unsettled by unprecedented snowmelt floods and little earthquakes all at once. Maybe the old riverways will survive. Maybe there'll be a new course.

The candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton rocked the traditional storylines in obvious ways, challenging stereotypes and opening narrative possibilities historically foreclosed to women and people of color.

John McCain wants to be seen as the good-hearted bad boy, his eyes twinkling even at his obvious cons. He wants to be Robert Preston's Harold Hill in The Music Man. Instead, he has become much more like River City's doddering, cranky mayor, George Shinn (portrayed brilliantly in the film by character actor Paul Ford).

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Now McCain complicates it all by picking Palin, who looks and acts like River City librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones). But Palin was the mayor, not the librarian, of Wasilla, Alaska. She's a female George Shinn who appears to have done quite well in the grand tradition of petty local politics determined wholly by gossipy feuds. As the Meredith Wilson Music Man lyric puts it, "Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep, cheep, cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more."

When many Democrats and pundits found themselves stumped about exactly how to respond to McCain's choice of Palin, part of the reason was the contradictions in Palin's character. Here was a conservative, traditionalist ingénue promising to complete the heroic journey of Hillary Clinton and other feminists who have spent decades challenging misogynistic American melodrama.

We can't mock her as an ingénue because she's posing as a hero. We can't mock her faux heroics because she's an innocent ingénue. What do to?

Conservatives have long had a better handle on the power of cultural narratives in politics. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that cultural narratives are conservative. They exist to conserve old values and habits in the public memory. Creating new stories is harder work.

It's also the case that progressives often dismiss the power of story as secondary to the power of universal, transcendent reason. Political scientist Elisabeth Anker puts the lie to that in her insightful essay, (PDF) "Villains, Victims and Heroes: Melodrama, Media, and September."

So what do we do with Palin the hero/ingénue?

First, we should recall that the stock character from melodrama has also been a favorite target of satire and comedy. Democrats will be afraid of this tack, guessing that Palin will play the victim well and win votes with sympathy. Maybe, maybe not.

In any case, it's worth remembering that for every Mary Pickford in The Foundling there's a Betty Boop in Blunderland. It's the role of ingénue that's mocked, not Betty or Mary.

Still, McCain's failure to vet Palin is probably the more fruitful path. He is the presidential candidate, after all, and his public stumbling and bumbling have already cost him support. Botching this key early decision is a major blunder, one worthy of River City's Mayor Shinn.

Seen in this light, Palin becomes McCain's victim, not ours, not Obama's or Joe Biden's or the cruel media's.

McCain kidnapped an earnest if quirky and woefully inexperienced local gal for his own evil purposes without concern for her welfare -- or the welfare of the nation he wants to lead.

That sort of betrayal is also a traditional American melodramatic storyline, easily understood, easily communicated. McCain and his henchmen are the Snidelies, Palin the hapless victim. Dismay at her unique unqualified-ness and sympathy for her plight turn into antagonism toward McCain. This doesn't mean that Palin's ethical troubles and odd "Northern Exposure"-like behavior is off limits. It just means McCain shouldn't have dragged her into the spotlight to be humiliated as half of his comedy team, Moose-hunter and Squirrel.

It's curtains for McCain. If we play it right.

But if any time is given to Palin to become a new America's Sweetheart, a true ingénue immune to criticism, attacks will be worse than fruitless. They will backfire. A grace period will confer just that, grace. Then McCain will get credit as her nurturer, not torturer. It can happen here.

We can't forget that there's power in the plot line. Timing is everything. We can't wait until chapter 2.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate

Comments

[AdultFilmLegend]

She won't play well in middle America. The people clinging to guns and religion can't relate this to woman whatsoever.

[BADEN]

I am amazed, and know not what to say.....!

[deeplip]

Agreed. She's totally out of her league. When the campaign shifts into high gear, she'll begin to look and sound like a losing contestant on a TV game show..

[erykah]

Nice job here. You are right. Dems have got to control the narrative on this one. I hope O and his folks read the Huffington Post.

[GlennWSmith]

Thanks. Maybe if enough of us keeping pointing it out, our side will move to effectively control the narrative. Let's keep after it.

[RobinSeattle]

Glenn:

I have very little regard for the writings of pundits, but your piece was a beaut. That first paragraph was especially priceless. Nice job!

[jeanrenoir]

It's so obvious that the key figure in this whole drama is Hillary Clinton. Hillary should now walk the walk requested, with whatever degree of sincerity, of her followers in her speech in Denver. She should defend her principles, and the poor women with breast cancer with no insurance Hillary claims her campaign was FOR, by BLASTING Palin! Hillary really has no excuse NOT to make a major speech on TV focused entirely on critiquing Palin as an absurd choice for the VP slot. Hillary owes it to Chelsea and the whole feminist tradition to blast Palin's radical opposition to abortion rights, not to mention health insurance for all, etc. It's absurd to claim that "sisterhood is powerful," so Hillary should not attack another woman. That's the opposite of treating women as fully equal to men in politics. Only if women can be attacked every bit as vigorously as men are they fully equal to men in the political arena. If Hillary hangs back and does not take the lead in attacking Palin, before it's too late, then we can only conclude Hillary is acting, as she's so often been suspected of acting, purely out of her own narcissistic blind ambition. But even from that perspective, Hillary had better wake up and try to destroy Palin NOW, because if she does not, then Palin will be a MUCH stronger candidate with Hillary's base of lower class working women than Hillary, and Palin will crush Hillary in the '12 election.

[DAE]

Being President means having a network of advisers and contacts to consult with to gain insights about complex problems and various policy options and from which a pool of prospective appointees can selected for a plethora of executive positions. Its obvious that Obama and Biden have these connections which are necessary to govern. McCain also has them, even though you may decry who they are. What about Palin? No way. She would be completely ripe to be totally manipulated by power hungry neocons. She is a complete neophyte. She has apparently hardly even traveled in the lower 48.No one seems to be making this point which is of decisive importance.

[DasBoot]

Great analysis.

I think Ms. Palin will do the job for us. The more weird statements we hear from her--and wait for the inevitable gaffes--the more she herself will make a mockery out of McCain's decision. With a little luck, we don't have to attack her, but she will implode under the spotlight.

Since we are in the realm of perception and plot: To me Palin's real weakness is her voice. When she talks she comes across as snooty and, well, I won't say the b-word. She is just too much of a hillbilly to be truly likable to middle American suburban soccer moms. I know this is very superficial, but since first impressions count and most voters purely go by their gut instinct, it is significant.

[knighthowl]

I find her voice to be grating, not snooty. Clips of her as a sportscaster show her voice at the time to be more pleasant, but her delivery was inane. She has forgotten whatever training she had and is now grating and inane.

[GlennWSmith]

I worry that some of her weaknesses are seen as attractive "every woman" strengths by the audience you speak of. But maybe the McCain manipulation will be so obvious this won't happen. One thing is certain: we need to engage to affect the storyline. It won't develop our way on its own.