John Mark Reynolds has concluded his lengthy liveblogging of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue". I encourage you to read the whole thing, and watch a Christian intellectual who really likes Sarah Palin struggling to come to terms with her mediocre book and what it tells us about her as a politician. Excerpt:
Practical wisdom is guided not just by common sense, but by reason and the experiences of generations of wise people from ages past. Palin knows this is true, but shows no knowledge of it.Don't tell me a plain speaking book has to be this devoid of ideas. Read Lincoln. He could get big ideas across in simple ways to farmers with primary school educations. Read Reagan. He was not Lincoln, but he did the same thing in a television age. When I was a kid, I read Conscience of a Conservative in some yellowing paperback and it made sense to me. For heaven's sake, read William Jennings Bryan who sent the Grange through the roof with prose that sounds positively dialogicala compared to this book!
Teddy Roosevelt could thunder and denounce with the best of them, but he could write a book. Dwight Eisenhower won a war and then had someone ghost an awesome account of that win. If Palin is running for President, we needed more.
We don't need a philosopher president, but we do need someone who can make our cause appear plausible to the half persuaded.
I want to like Palin. I love many things about her politics, but where oh where oh where are the ideas?
From John Mark's concluding remarks:
This was a bad and unhelpful book. It was not bad because it was simple. Goldwater (or his ghost) used fewer pages in Conscience of a Conservative and said more. It was not bad because it was autobiographical. Though I don't like his politics, President Obama confessed more and said it better in Dreams from My Father. If you don't believe that this book is bad, then read (really do!) Ronald Reagan's autobiography Where's the Rest of Me? Ronald Reagan showed more substance in his delightful book written mostly about his time as an actor than Palin shows in her four hundred pages.Reagan (or his ghost) did not write a wonk book. It is very, very readable, but it wrestles with ideas even in the context of a film star career! It is not Plato, but it is interesting and makes you want to talk to the man who wrote it. There is a man behind the book, though Reagan had help writing it the Gipper is in every paragraph, but there is only a ghost of a personality in the corporate machine written Going Rogue.
The best you can say about this book is that it is forgettable and will be forgotten. It is a book-of-the-moment non-book meant to be purchased and given as a Christmas gift to conservatives. It is an utter waste of an opportunity for something better, but it is no worse than most political "memoirs" of its type.
Read the whole thing, especially the Ten Things he learned from "Going Rogue." As John Mark said in an e-mail to me today, the real lesson in "Going Rogue" is that Sarah Palin failed to go rogue in the least, but instead took the easy way out, and to the extent she discusses ideas at all, it's all completely bland and uninteresting Republican Party boilerplate.
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It's amazing. Universally, readership here decries the politicians lust for power. The first officeholder who doesn't apparently have any lust for power, and quits when it seems like that's best for her state... Is excoriated as 'quitter' for doing so. Gee, I'd LIKE to have politicians who just don't have a lust for power or office.
So, she writes a book, and doesn't lecture us on our intellectual failures, nor set herself up as an authority on things ideological, and you excoriate her as failing to be intellectually curious or failing to think.
Frankly, I have never seen the goalposts being moved around so often, so extensively, or so rapidly.
Could anyone please point me to any current politicians who have written intellectually inspiring books? Or even if a majority of them have? And by that, I mean both state and federal officeholders. Apparently, "failing" to write definitive ideological expositions isn't even the slightest handicap to being elected.
I even read a story being highly critical of Palin, because she ISN'T building a huge web presence. This person was just beside himself for her doing little besides posting on facebook and a blog now and then.
The more I read Rod's criticisms, and the others he quotes that don't like her, the more I like her. You see, he's demanding all of the very things that just annoy the daylights out of me. I'm absolutely SICK of politicians who think they're the authority on right and wrong, have all the answers to every question, and will cling to office, in a bull-headed obstinacy, even though they're useless to the people they are supposed to serve.
Imagine that. A very ordinary person. Nothing exceptional, at all, really. Not afflicted with a massive lust for power. Not someone who lives and speaks and does everything calculated on the basis of personal political consequence or advantage. But, when in office, served well, was effective, and has a history of opposing corruption, and is an "instinctive" conservative. Not one who presumes to lecture the nation about the superiority of his or her own thinking... who recognizes that once you get outside of the artificiality of DC or its little mirror islands of political intrigue, you find the real America.
So, Palin's not the most brilliant politician. Not arrogantly presumptive of her own brilliance. Doesn't presume to lecture everyone on how to be "pure". Doesn't seem to know how to stage anything, and just behaves as herself.
Well, compared to EVERY person Rod promotes... Well, let's just say that those Rod admires have brought all this destruction upon us. And it doesn't seem likely that the Palin types would have gone along with much of any of it. Ok, I'm sold. Throw the elites out. They're all proven failures. Let's try some people who still have a connection to real life for a while.
Mr. Reynolds I want to tell you that what I've read so far of your review I like. It doesn't strike me as a total panning of her and what you say does at least feel true of what we've seen of her so far. Not in a really bad way either, just in a way.
I think statements about online University or whatever are obviously not literal, but the Internet attracts some very literal-minded types so I guess you'll have to live with criticism like that.
@HA HA
You comment is interesting.
You do know that in 2007 Palin hired a publicist to pursue the national stage, don't you? You want to try "some people who still have a connection to real life for a while." The Palins have earned over a quarter of a million annually for some time now (the national average is under $50k). Ms Palin has a PAC and a publicist paying her travel, etc, etc. She has a legal defense fund that allow each member of her family over $10k/year at the asking (so long as there is money in the account). While it is wonderful that she changes diapers, so does every other mother out there, even the ones who are struggling to make it on $25k/yr. THEY are connected to reality of the majority of Americans. I content that Ms Palin is not connected to real life now (and as a woman who's been able to earn money from her looks and seems acustomed to getting her way with a wink, its likely that she's not been "connected to real life" for a while.)
As govenor of a state, there was much that Alaska still needs. The falling gas supply to their people (who pay the highest rates in the country to heat in the coldest state in the country). The western bush who'd had trouble AGAIN meeting substinence levels. They're among the most crime ridden states in the union. There was plenty that a lame duck govenor could have pushed through if they weren't concerned about re-election if they had a mind to improve the state. Yet, Palin opted to walk away as (essentially) no longer interested in the mess because of complaints. (An odd sort of karma, given that she and her family filled an equal number of complaints againt the ex-brother-in-law).
You wrote: "The more I read Rod's criticisms, and the others he quotes that don't like her, the more I like her." -- I suspect that there are many out there like you, who've formed this emotional attachment to the character that you believe Palin to be. I find it hard to understand how a those that want to claim American "exceptionalism" are suddenly so stridently in defense of the opposite. Should we now teach our girls to cry sexism everytime they're slighted? Even Glenn Beck is sending his child to an Ivy League school, shouldn't he be sending her to community college?
All I can say is beware the idols that you worship.
HAH HAH
The first officeholder who doesn't apparently have any lust for power, and quits when it seems like that's best for her state... Is excoriated as 'quitter' for doing so.
I, too, think it's best for Alaska that Palin is no longer leading that state.
I would like to see that principle applied to the national stage, and perhaps Palin could, in fact, quit attempting to lead the nation before she even starts.
Well, at least Palin didn't give clemency to a prisoner who (allegedly) went on to kill for Washington State cops.
No points for guessing the "ethnicities" of the (alleged) perp or victims.
http://michellemalkin.com/
I don't think Huck is going to be our next president.
@ In Ohio
If you are referring to the 'publicist' in the Jane Mayers Atlantic article, the publicist was plainly part of an effort to get the natural gas pipeline approved. Any governor who doesn't hire folks to lobby in Washington DC for their state is guilty of malpractice.
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