I’m just going to say at the outset – getting it out of the way – that I don’t think there is anything stupid about Sarah Palin. My sense is that she is an excellent politician, with great skills and instincts at what she does, which up to this point in her career has primarily been to win over voters.
But that doesn’t even begin to let John McCain and his political advisors off the hook. The fact is they appointed someone who is painfully unqualified for the job of vice president. She was clearly not vetted properly, and she doesn’t know the first thing about the issues she is being asked about. Even her supporters understand this.
Having said that, I’d like to return to last Thursday’s vice presidential debate. The Sarah Pallin “victory” consisted primarily of the Republican vice presidential candidate making use of a loophole in the debate rules to avoid showing any ability to answer questions. Or, in fact, to do anything other than recite predefined talking points.
Why does this matter? Can’t we just congratulate the Republicans on having successfully hacked the debate, by getting their underqualified V.P. candidate through a tight spot?
My argument is that it matters a lot. It matters because the Republican strategy is a gross insult to all women, with Sarah Palin as her gender’s stand-in. By putting up somebody who is completely unprepared not only to discuss the issues, but even to understand them, they are reducing Palin to the status of a talking chimp – one of those sad trained animals you see on roller skates in old T.V. shows.
None of the people cheering her “victory” last Thursday evening believes that she has any demonstrated knowledge of the issues. It’s rather obvious, from her performance, that her entire debate strategy was, in fact, to refuse to acknowledge such prosaic ground rules as the need to answer the questions asked by a moderator. She actually announced this strategy at the start of the debate.
If she were a man holding up as a “victory” the spectacle of having cleverly avoided needing to show any knowledge of issues, or even the ability to answer a simple debate question, she would have been laughed off the stage. The subtext here is clearly that because Sarah Palin is a woman, it’s ok for her to act like an ignorant clown, reciting pre-rehearsed speeches rather than responding to serious questions. In fact – if I understand the dynamics of this properly – people love her for this deliberate show of ignorance. They find it somehow sexy.
It’s like the bubble-head act that Jessica Simpson was putting on several years ago, before she started to realize that people were taking the act seriously. Sarah Palin is playing tha part of the non-threatening silly little woman. Sure, she drops her g’s, gets all folksy, and oozes a sort of down-home charm. But when you listen to what she actually says (and I think people do hear what she actually says – deep down people are not stupid) her statement is actually: “Because I am a woman, I don’t need to know the issues, or in fact to show any competence.”
Basically what the Republicans are doing – and my theory is that Governor Palin is too ambitious to allow herself to admit that she iis being roped into this agenda – is promoting their V.P. candidate as the female equivalent of an Uncle Tom. The subtext is that women are a slave race – pretty and stupid and very charming when they know their place. Make babies, pose with a shotgun when called for, and avoid serious questions by “answering” with non-sequitors. Let those menfolk worry about silly things like actually being able to answer a question or speak to an issue.
This positioning of Sarah Palin as a sort of modern-day minstrel show may be the single most focused assault on the dignity of women that our nation has seen in a very long time.
Republican strategy might me a gross insult – but not only to women
In your opinion there isn’t “anything stupid about Sarah Palin”. But just a moment, are you saying that because she is addicted to power, she can’t be stupid?!
To me being narrow minded and being driven by a small town – black and white – good and evil – morality is stupid, especially in a complex global world. And as you said “not even been able to understand the questions she is being asked” – I am sorry, this again is stupid to me.
So in the end you say, because she can’t comprehend, for whatever reason, she is an insult to women.
Hey, I believe in equal rights for women and men. There are a lot of unprepared and not really bright men in politics and here we are: women have the right to be dumb too. So at least from me, there is no insult taken because of her gender.
That any person with the same limited possibilities as Sarah Palin running to become the V.P. of the US is an insult to all of the voters and scary to many people in the US and outside, that is something we can agree on.
The argument that she even can’t understand the questions contradicts your point that she only plays the role of the non-threatening silly little woman.
If she only plays – she has to understand the questions.
And if she does understand the questions she is being asked, but prefers not to answer them, that is a strategy. If her counterpart lets her get away with we can blame the counterpart for being “stupid”.
What Sarah Palin does, is to offer a “moral clarity” to Joe and Jane Six-pack, good and evil, black and white. A simple solution for a complex world, playing with deep seated fears, fitting for the religious right wing voters and that religious right wing voters aren’t really the people fighting for women rights, well yes, I think that is nothing really new.
The role model of the hockey mom fits pretty good for most of the men and a lot of women, who haven’t learnt any better.
The freedom of different lifestyles and the freedom to think and to have an own opinion, scares a lot of people and we are still far away from the dream of an coercion-free discourse between people like Habermas suggested it.
Happy voting!
I didn’t say that she can’t be stupid because she is addicted to power, I said that she isn’t stupid. But I do think she is limited, by virtue of an extreme lack of knowledge and relevant skills. She has considerable skill in being persuasive to a certain demographic, but she seems to have little or no knowledge of many of the areas that are required to manage a large nation like the U.S.
Governor Palin is woefully ignorant of and unskilled in the issues that would face a president of the United States. And she has the hubris to pretend that this lack of skill and knowledge does not matter. That combination of ignorance and hubris doesn’t make her stupid. But it does make her scary.
I stand by my original statement. This choice is an insult to women in particular because any man who presumed to join a presidential ticket, while displaying a complete lack of ability to discuss or really comprehend the issues of governance, would have been laughed off the stage outright. The G.O.P. calculated, apparently with some initial success, that they could get away with this travesty because Sarah Palin is a woman. And that is indeed an insult to women.
The stupid part
I guess we have simply different definitions of “being stupid”. (English is not my first language – as you might have guessed ;-)).
But I will try to define stupid here. To me stupid means NOT being able to give an answer to questions to statements, one has made. Like when Palin was asked what she meant, as she answered the question about her knowledge of Russia, that she could see the country.
Everything she has to offer is some kind of surface knowledge on more or less important topics and through her training she has learnt to play some buzzword bingo. That does not seem really intelligent to me. I don’t know if that adds up for you?
What you tell me is, that she is not stupid because she knows simple rules of communication, e.g.: how to make populist statements. You are right with that, but I don’t think she actually plays with this statements. An intelligent populist knows that he or she shortens the equation. I don’t think that that Palin even realises that some topics might be more complex.
To me this is not enough for not being stupid.
The insulting part
Palin is used because she has a certain appeal to an important group of voters – as far as I understood. That this certain appeal is based on her looks, well that is an insult to the voters, because it says, guys you are so dumb, we can even get you with Palin.
I still don’t see, why this should be insulting for women especially.
If I try to follow your argument here it seems to me like you are saying that, when I go into a major negotiation and I am dressed sexy, because I like it and I know the guys I am dealing with stop thinking straight and I end up with a better contract, it is insulting for women, because I have included my body as an argument, too?
To me it only says that I have negotiated with some dumb guys. 😉
You said a man with this lack of knowledge wouldn’t have been nominated. I don’t think so, I guess the G.O.P. would have used anybody who would have an appeal for the very right wing and hey they found a good looking woman for that.
There’s a difference between the terms “stupid” and “ignorant.” People who are ignorant have the capacity to learn, but have either not been taught or were not interested in studying an issue. People who are “stupid” have a diminished capacity to learn. Is that what youo’re getting at, Ken?
Yes, I meant ignorant. Although one can only conjecture, I believe there is a reasonable possibility that Sarah Palin was told very clearly, by those who pressured McCain to select her, that her lack of knowledge would not be a problem, since if she ever were to sit in the Oval Office she would be functioning as a figurehead – other people with much greater experience would be on hand to make complex decisions for her. If this is true, then her decision to run is not stupid at all. Cynical, but not stupid.
For all we know, she might be perfectly capable of eventually acquiring the knowledge and analytic skills she now conspicuously lacks. But these are skills that take quite a few years to learn – Obama, McCain and Biden have all been serious students of national and world politics for decades, and it shows. The G.O.P. doesn’t have decades to instruct her – with an election mere weeks away – so she’s clearly been asked to fake it, which is just what she is doing.
By the way, I don’t think we should be talking about her appearance at all in this context. Barack Obama is very attractive, and lots of women find him sexy. If you’ve got it, use it. The issue I’m discussing is readiness and adequate knowledge for the job.
I could be wrong about the sexism angle – it’s possible that a man who obviously knew nothing about the issues could get a pass by being sufficiently folksy and charming (Reagan was both, but he also spoke to the issues during debates). If I were to see such a thing, I would withdraw my comment about the choice of Sarah Palin being an attack against women in particular.
@ Stacy
thank you very much for the clarification here.
I still would have called even someone with an IQ score above 130 stupid,
if there would be a lack of thought. 😉 And I still call Sarah Palin
stupid, let alone because she pretends (on a television interview) to read
the ‘economist’ and doesn’t know anything about foreign affairs and
economics. And if you only take a look at their website,
http://www.economist.com, you will realise one should get a pretty good knowledge
about those topics.
So this would fit even to your definition, because it tells one, she might
be reading but she isn’t even able to quote what she was reading, or to
come up with an own opinion or thought.
@Ken
And actually that isn’t ignorant! And that shows that not only analytical
skills are missing.
Maybe I am too cynical, but I don’t believe that people vote for someone,
because someone has a readiness and adequate knowledge for the job.
Actually I don’t believe that someone needed to tell Palin, that she will
be a puppet. She can’t be that stupid. 🙂
The hockey mom, the pitbull with lipstick will take her
chance.
To quote another politician:”Hasta La Vista, Baby!”
Politics are and have ever been a cynical game of power and networking.
One can either put a non powerful person in charge, who will be driven by
other people.
One could see in between the relationship between
Cheney and George W. Bush.
Another wonderful example is Condolezza Rice as she started her job a a
national security adviser. There is this great book about her written by
Elisabeth Bumiller. This book tells quite good, what games the boys played
with her.
Another wonderful example is the relationship between Dmitry Medvedev and
Putin. Hardly anyone believes that it is Dmitry Medvedev who decides.
Or look at Helmut Kohl, he actually knew how to run his puppets. In his
final days as a chairman of the CDU parliamentary group he underestimated
a unknown politician,
Angela Merkel was her name, who finally crashed his network by giving a
long interview to a major German newspaper.
Or look at Obama, why did he go for Biden and not for Clinton? Clinton
would have been too much of a president herself, that’s it. And one better
doesn’t go for a a running mate, who can really compete.
[And I know that a lot of people support Obama because of his looks.]
But to get back to the women topic. No woman will right now break into ‘the
good old boys network’, because of her knowledge. That is simply because
men are only used to several role models for women, like mother, sister,
nurse,
supporting wife, hockey mom, but hardly as a peer in politics or
technology. And
before a woman can make a career only based on their knowledge, those role
models in the heads of men need to be changed.
So how does a woman get forward in politics? She is plays the hockey mom
role, that does no harm and so men are not afraid. And it is enough to be
street smart to know how to play a game like this. It is just a gesture of
submission at the right time. Since women are trained to do this by
upbringing mostly, it is easy to do. There are no analytical skills needed
to act like this. You can see this in this wonderful interview Mc Cain and
Palin gave together. She was sitting there like his daughter and he said
several times how proud he is., to be her father (oh, I guess I am not
quoting here correctly…)
So it happens that a completely low-brow person like Sarah Palin ends up
as a running mate.
It would have never been possible for an eg excellent female economist to
end up as a running mate, because she would have been too much of a
competition and would have made too many people afraid.
Sarah Palin as a running mate, says more about the men, then about women.
What you meant is, that would have never been possible for a man. I don’t
think so, George W. Bush, was as far as I remember not really a hero in
foreign affairs, too as he started his job. Nobody laughed him of stage,
since he was useful to many people.
And Sarah Palin still scares me, if I hear what she thinks about abortion,
that she does not support sex education in schools, etc. and one thing scares
me more than anything else, that she believes that her decisions are based
on inspiration of god.