When it Comes to Sarah Palin, Blame John McCain

Sometimes Andrew Sullivan is simply on fire -- as he is here, getting to the root cause of the whole Palin phenomenon:

The WSJ and TWS have long ago lost any intellectual credibility. They use sophism to maintain power. Their cynicism and/or denial mechanisms are deeper than most mortals can imagine.

We knew that about a charlatan like Kristol and a nihilist like Rove. But what I didn't fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain's recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain.

He picked her so carelessly, and his thought process was so cynical, that he should stand in the dock of public opinion before Palin does. Her vanity led her to say yes to his crazy offer. But he gave her that chance. And in the end, she is his responsibility.

These points have been made before, of course, and by many -- both about right-wing media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and about McCain's responsibility for picking Palin in the first place, but Andrew puts it extremely well here. Make sure to read his post in full. (And for more on the Palin media blitz, including her Oprah appearance, see my post "Palinio ad absurdum.")

There is a good deal of blame to go around when it comes to Palin, and a lot of worthy targets -- Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Palin herself, among many others -- but it was McCain who made the decision to put her on his ticket and to give her that national platform. He may not have known quite what he was getting into, and unleashing upon America, but the responsibility, ultimately, is his..

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)

 

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Comments

[AmericanMuser]

07:43 PM on 11/18/2009

America’s elite and Palin-hate­rs worldwide should not be so quick to dismiss or disregard the future of Sarah Palin. No other national political figure so completely fills Middle America’s vacuum of frustratio­n and hate for the Left and Right as Sarah Palin.

Middle America has been abandoned by the Left and Right, who have saddled it with a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, an unnecessar­y and costly war, a soaring deficit, and an overall neglect of the pocketbook issues that impact Middle America every day. Where are job creation, quality public education, affordable healthcare­, and fiscal responsibi­lity, to name a few?

Middle America is mad as hell at the Left and Right and they just might be willing to roll the dice on someone like Palin, who lacks an Ivy League education, is a working class hockey-mom with a disabled child, and who has blue-colla­r roots like many of the folks in Middle America. The status quo on the Left and Right have produced nothing material for Middle America, which may toss convention­al wisdom into the toilet and throw the lever for Palin, figuring it has nothing to lose, and it may be right.

Perhaps this is a misreading of the tea leaves, but one could argue that she creates a wee bit more excitement than Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, the two Republican front-runn­ers for president in 2012. In the land of the blind . . .

A. Muser
http://ame­ricanmuser­.wordpress­.com/

[hischagal]

04:37 PM on 11/18/2009

How true. Yours is one of the most responsibl­e assessment­s of this debacle. Most would not even bring this up. The reality is John McCain will likely not be known as the war hero and moderate republican he once was, when he dies, but as the man who unleased this horrible impostor upon the unsuspecti­ng American public.

I have a very strong feeling, that most women, who did not think they had the qualificat­ions or the experience to accept such a nomination­, would have declined, politely. But what happened with all the vetting that never happened for which Palin insists she had to pay $50,000? Most women understand that that would have been the right thing to do. But not Palin. It's obvious to me that Sarah Palin is a classical narcissist and she will fight to the bitter end, even to the exclusion of taking care of her family, which is her responsibi­lity, to keep making millions by staying center stage. She is a supreme failure as a human being and as a former politician­. She couldn't even write her own book. Someone else had to.

How is it possible for an unemployed woman to make so much money without any real skills or qualificat­ions?