In 1976, I was a junior in high school and Saturday Night Live (SNL) was in its second season. One of the more popular segments was the Weekend Update. It was there where Chevy Chase took stage as the first "anchor," a position from which others would go on to great success (Bill Murray, Dennis Miller and most recently, Tina Fey, to name a few). SNL in those first years was a revelation and Mondays at high school invariably included gleeful re-caps of the weekend's best offerings.
1976 was also the presidential election year when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter would go on to win their respective Republican and Democratic nominations. During the primaries, however, one Ronald Reagan attempted to wrest the Republican nomination from the incumbent Ford. Reagan was nothing short of manna from heaven for the writers at SNL. There were skits about "Bonzo goes to Washington" (a reference to one of Reagan's more memorable films "Bedtime for Bonzo" and a sequel that didn't include him "Bonzo goes to College," films about a professor who tries to raise a chimpanzee as a human child), and incessant one-liners during the Weekend Update segments of Reagan's seemingly ridiculous candidacy. He ultimately lost the nomination to Gerald Ford, but not before winning nearly 46% of the Republican vote.
After SNL's Weekend Update delivered blow after blow to Reagan during the 1976 presidential campaign, reducing him and his seriousness as a political figure to that of a party joke, and with the ultimate election of Jimmy Carter as president later that same year, there was a general feeling of relief amongst Democrats that, with regards to the political career of Ronald Reagan and Republican conservatism in general, they had effectively "put Bonzo to bed."
In the presidential campaign of 2008, the surprise nomination of Sarah Palin has ignited a disquieting sensation of deja vu. The first thought I had when The Huffington Post mentioned her as a possible running mate back in June was "it's Tina Fey!" and I was already anticipating the possible roasting she would receive by SNL should she be nominated. When Palin was definitively announced as the Republican candidate for Vice President and her pathetic background came to light (a broadcast journalism major who went on to local sportscasting; a former beauty queen; an extreme Christian Evangelical whose fellow church members regularly spoke in tongues; a mayor of a town where she won with 616 votes and a governor of a state with a population less than San Francisco's; a politician who most likely abused her power over issues of nepotism and censorship, who signed off on a budget that required rape victims to pay for their own kits, who does not support abortion on any level including rape or incest; who, as governor this year, sent a well-wishing video to the Alaska Independence Party, a separatist party convention advocating Alaska secession, etc.) and the storm of scandal, political satire and comedic parody ensued, it was eerily reminiscent of the Reagan roast of 1976. Never has such a supremely unqualified pretender (even including our sitting president) been thrown up as a candidate for possible assumption of the highest office of American, and indeed World, government.
Her performance during the vice-presidential debate (was the bar ever set any lower?), however, was more than simply eerie. I watched her (as a cold chill crept steadily up my spine) cajole and wink at her ever-growing demographic, convincing them of the seriousness of her ability to run the country should the decrepit McCain take ill or die. I watched her flawlessly pronounce the names of foreign leaders and correctly identify foreign countries (that up until last year, having never owned a passport, she couldn't even visit), feigning a knowledge of foreign policy that was sure to reassure her ignorant base. I watched in horror (trying to imagine myself one of her identified supporters) as her fresh-faced, home-spun, mother courage image was marketed to "Amurka."
In the end, even acknowledging that Joe Biden had won the Vice-Presidential debate (as most everyone else has also acknowledged), and even being heartened by the swing of late towards Obama's ultimate victory in November, I felt a little sick to my stomach at the shuddering recognition of a "Reagan in the wings," waiting to take stage at some point in the future. Bonzo's latest protege (let's not forget less-than-curious George) is not ready for bed just yet, and even if she's successfully put to sleep in November, given her popularity and appeal, I have the sick feeling that it's just a matter of time before she wakes up again to wreak even more simian havoc on our threadbare democracy, and further destabilize an already dangerously unstable world.