The Palin Doctrine

I think that people are greatly underestimating Sarah Palin. She has been quite consistent in a very essential way: Since her selection, every time she has been asked by anyone about an issue of substance, she has looked the speaker straight in the eye and proceeded, rather dramatically, to act as though she did not understand the question.

I know a lot of people have been denigrating the Governor, but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt here: She is, after all, the chief executive of a major American state, as well as a very active member of the political party that for the last seven years has defined its foreign policy around the Bush doctrine of preemptive invasion of overtly hostile nations.

Under the circumstances, Governor Palin would need to be a complete and blithering idiot in order to actually not know what the Bush doctrine is – or in fact be unaware of the concept of a “presidential doctrine” (as she recent implied in one non-answer). Worse, such ignorance on her part would suggest that John McCain and his advisors were extraordinarily incompetent in choosing her for the ticket.

Rather than insult the Governor with insinuations of utter witlessness, I think we can all agree, given the fact that she is on the Republican presidential ticket, that she in fact does know the basic ABC’s of the field of American foreign policy, but has simply been pretending, for strategic reasons, that she does not.

This is where we begin to catch a glimpse into the fascinating and brilliant mind of Sarah Palin. By making an explicit policy of rejecting any embrace of logic, experience, or even the rudimentary tenets of competency, she is flinging a gauntlet, issuing a challenge to the nation – making it crystal clear that she represents a new, post-millenial, order of things.

What Palin is clearly saying is that it is time to end the “tyranny of the competent”, that this insidious strain of elitist thinking has gone too far. She is fighting the elitist implication that people can actually be “good at things”, that to understand such complex concepts as multilateral international cooperation or the conflicts between mercantalism and expansionism, years of serious study and practice are preferable to, say, knowing how to shoot a moose.

Haven’t you ever been annoyed by that guy at the party who plays piano better than you, just because he’s been a concert pianist for the last fifteen years? You were doing fine impressing the gals with your rendition of Heart and Soul (with both hands!). But after he sat down and gave a flawless performance of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata in its entirety, that cute girl you’d been chatting up ended up going home with him. The bastard.

Well, the Palin Doctrine will put an end to such nonsense! From now on, ordinary folks who have been humiliated – by those fiends who intimate through study, learning, and dutiful practice – will at last have their day.

Imagine the world that Palin is offering, a world free from the tyranny of competence! Your money will be in the hands of an accountant who refuses to embrace such arcane concepts as “interest” and “dividends”. Who cares whether your life savings increment or decrement? That’s just elitist talk. The important thing is that your accountant won’t be acting all superior, like he knows something you don’t.

Tired of going to a dentist who has a million ornery plaques and diplomas on the wall, and funny little instruments that look like they were made by martians? Once the Palin Doctrine becomes the law of the land, you can be sure your dentist won’t act like she knows any more than you do. Bring your own drill if you like – the same one you used to assemble that bookcase last summer. I mean, heck – if you’re going to let a stranger drill holes in your teeth, at least you’ll want to know where that drill bit has been.

Once you understand what Governor Palin is up to, then you can truly begin to appreciate her genius. This is a leader with the courage to promise no less than a radical rethinking of America, to hold forth the vision of a new world order that will end, once and for all, the reign of those pesky intellectual elites who have been making everyone else feel out of the loop.

There is an alternate possibility: That we have somehow managed to place somebody a heartbeat away from the presidency who sincerely does not know what a “presidential doctrine” is.

But that would be absurd.