David Frum analyzes the Times Palin story yesterday. Excerpt:
Anyone who has ever covered a school board or worked in municipal politics will recognize the pattern.A network of long-term incumbents settles into comfortable patterns of self-dealing and nest-feathering.
Periodically there is an eruption of reform. The leaders of these eruptions have to be brave and charismatic. They excite intense loyalty among their followers - and provoke keen resentment among those who have enjoyed the old ways of doing business.
But it also often happens that this same bold leader has a strong messianic streak. They see no difference between themselves and their movement. They draw fierce lines between friends and enemies. They intensely resent criticism. They see no contradiction between their demand for total openness from others - and secrecy for themselves. They can be paranoid and vindictive - because after all, their enemies are enemies of the great cause.
As my Dallas friend Wick Allison points out, that's what happened to our last mayor, Laura Miller, a crusader who came into office riding a reform wave, but ended up alienating lots of folks. Nobody knows yet how Palin will end up...
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Frum is a very bright man. But after coming to regret writing for and about President Bush("The Right Man" doesn't sound so great today, does it?), get the sense he slinks off like Carl Spackler fleeing the thunderstruck bishop on the 18th green. This looks like innoculatory plausible deniability. If Mccain/Palin get in and make a mess, Frum can be above the fray, living to write another day with his ominscience intact.Further suspect many of the populist things about Palin are exactly the things that repulse Frum. Note Harvard's best and brightest got us into Vietnam, relative amateurs wrote the Consitution.
This government needs a shock to the system, a regular person coming in with a BS meter and stopping the insanity. That might be a fools' errand or wishful thinking. Also, the culture of "the next great speech" solving everything has to end. Frum is a speechwriter, his interest is obvious. Soaring rhetoric by both sides has gotten us nowhere. Palin appears to be regular person who isn't going to fall victim to that. May be these ideas are wishful thinking by many of us. But to abandon such ideas would be the height of cynicism. And worse-an acknowledgement that our government is basically doomed.
I wonder if the same could be said about Obama, the reformer and agitator for change.
We will see.
I wonder if the same could be said about Obama, the reformer and agitator for change.
Sure, it's possible. But wouldn't we already have some sense of that by now, after 19 months of campaigning, whether Obama has those tendencies. If there were constituents who believe he abuses power, we'd have heard about it. If he had a habit of secrecy in how he performs his public job, if he had a habit of settling scores, if he had a habit of including Michelle on personnel decisions, if he had a habit of firing political enemies for personal reasons, we'd know about it.
[Thomas Tucker wrote:
I wonder if the same could be said about Obama, the reformer and agitator for change.]
[Daniel wrote:
Sure, it's possible. But wouldn't we already have some sense of that by now, after 19 months of campaigning, whether Obama has those tendencies.]
Not if the press has treated him with kid gloves and has done its best to get him elected as their golden boy. Palin has been subjected to more probing investigation by the media in the past weeks than BHO has had in his entire political career.
If the investigation had been done in good faith, I would have been all in favor or it and to subject ALL four of the candidates to a similar wringer.
[Daniel wrote:
If there were constituents who believe he abuses power, we'd have heard about it. If he had a habit of secrecy in how he performs his public job, if he had a habit of settling scores, if he had a habit of including Michelle on personnel decisions, if he had a habit of firing political enemies for personal reasons, we'd know about it.]
He's been a legislator. He has had perks & privileges of legislators, but no real/executive power, authority, or responsibility. He has had no hire/fire responsibility outside his own campaigns. To put it another way, he hasn't had the opportunity to abuse anything more significant than an expense account.
Palin has been subjected to more probing investigation by the media in the past weeks than BHO has had in his entire political career.
Absolutely, and utterly absurd. The conservative press and well-funded conservative commentariat have had 19-months of this campaign, as well as his previous campaign against Alan Keyes. The Clinton machine had 19 months to go after him. The press dissected every moment of Rev. Wright's time at Obama's church, so clearly if there was a story, it would have been found if it came to questions about his leadership and decisionmaking.
Look how much they found in just two weeks on Palin. Look at how many people came forward in two weeks--although a major ethics investigation in her own legislature helped--and look how many questions have been raised. It didn't require much digging; it was already at the surface.
Palin and McCain are learning what life is like in the big leagues. McCain has always been a press darling--except in his own state--and now he's seeing what it's like when he isn't handfeeding reporters. Palin is finding out what it's like to face a press beyond Fairbanks and Anchorage (although many of her problems were documented by the Alaska press and arguably available to the McCain people if they'd bothered vetting her).
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