Results tagged “Sarah Palin” from The Morning After

By Angela Kirkland

Let's get this straight first: Yes, I'm a self-described liberal. Yes, I did my research regarding both leading candidates and I decided to vote for Obama because I agree with most of his policies, and yes, I am happy he won. I respect McCain for gracefully and elegantly conceding the election to Obama.

However, I do not respect McCain for loosing a severe blight of frightening stupidity in the form of Sarah Palin onto the national stage. McCain won 46 percent of the popular vote. Forty-six percent. That's almost half of the electorate. And these people voted for McCain despite, or, more frighteningly, because of, the fact that he had picked a vice-presidential nominee who has, among liberals and conservatives alike, gone down in the record books as the worst choice for a vice president in the history of the US government.

I will say this for Sarah Palin--she sticks to her guns, and no matter how many of us, including myself, disagree with her views, we must at least show her respect for not wavering on (most of) them. But we've seen and heard the countless stories in the news:

She was never properly vetted; McCain had met her once before he had decided to put her on the ticket. Her televised interviews, clips of which were broadcast on all major networks and have been widely seen on YouTube and other sites, were excruciatingly painful to watch. They are perfect examples of her lack of what should be required knowledge for the vice presidency, and this despite her having been a town mayor and, subsequently, state governor!

She admitted to not knowing what the Bush doctrine is, but then put the blame on Bush for the Republicans' loss. Although the legal investigation ruled that she was not guilty, the nonbinding probe in the Troopergate scandal found her behavior to be unethical, and she blatantly denied it to reporters. She incited frightening amounts of hate-filled rhetoric from participants in her rallies, which have also been well-documented by the mainstream media and YouTube.

I suppose the "real Americans" in the "pro-American parts of America" did not see the recklessness in McCain's decision. The results of the election, with so many people having voiced their support of Palin, even as far as to suggest a 2012 presidential campaign, still chills me down to my bones. It is proof positive that ignorance is still seen as a virtue rather than an embarrassment; that even after the past eight years, an even more uneducated and inarticulate person can still come so close to being in the nation's highest office.

FADE IN:

Cue cascading images of Sarah Palin with John McCain.


Cut to image of Palin with rifle.


Cut to image of the women's club from I Love Lucy, featuring Lucy, Ethel and the gang.


Gunshots ring out. The screen goes black momentarily.

Cut to images of Sarah Palin raising her fist triumphantly at the convention.


Cut to image of Sarah Palin with a rifle. Slowly fade from color to black and white.


Cut to image of pop singer Pink, comic Margaret Cho and actor Matt Damon.


Cut to black. The text on the screen reads, "Paid for by DUMB 2008."

FADE OUT.

I know, I know. I'm a writer. I advocate liberty. I'm generally against censorship in all forms. But there comes a time when a man must draw the line, not for the preservation or purification of language, not for the betterment of the writing profession, not even for the public good. The following words and phrases need to become extinct, if not for eternity then at least for this campaign, for no reason other than because they drive me nuts.

Veepstakes
Don't get me wrong, I love wordplay. The whole veepstakes/sweepstakes thing would be plenty cute if not for three agonizing reasons: 1) Its first component uses an obnoxious abbreviation...of an abbreviation. Veep. Not to mention, it sounds like some sort of slang word for a sexually transmitted disease. "Hey bro, I think I caught the veep." Ugh. 2) The word it's based off of already has a sharply negative connotation that conjures images of a sweaty guy, in a suit with dollar signs on it, promising a small fortune or a ticket to see the Backstreet Boys if you just send him enough money for him to stealthily leave the country before anyone has the chance to say, "I want it that way." 3) And most importantly, I think I heard the word this summer about five times for every person that saw Barack Obama speak in Germany. Enough said.

Despite John McCain's surge in the polls and Joe Biden's suspicious gaffe calling Hillary Clinton more qualified than himself, this word should be gone for a while. I hope.

[Anything]-gate
Once again, wordplay surpasses its nauseating limit. The Nixon administration's Watergate fiasco was colossal, and for good reason it filled the role of quintessential scandal. But people, it gets old. Bill Clinton's Monicagate. The New England Patriots' Spygate. Sarah Palin's Troopergate. Where is the originality? Or, more frighteningly, where is this heading? How close are we to the days when disgruntled wives give their husbands the cold shoulder over Toiletseatgate?

Heartbeat away
This charming phrase has equally charming implications. If the McCain-Palin ticket gets elected, Heartbeat Away whispers under its breath, McCain will limp through inauguration only to die seconds later, ceding power to some good-looking lady from Alaska and making William Henry Harrison's presidency of nearly one month seem like a century. The even deeper implication is that American's shouldn't vote for the Republican nominee because he'll die.

How morbid can you get? There are plenty of reasons to suggest the senator from Arizona will survive a full term, his mother of 96 years and his doctor's clean bill of health among them. Why are people so willing to hint about the inevitability of McCain's death by natural causes, but not the possibility of Obama's by assassination?

Out of touch
The voices from both sides are absurd. John McCain is out of touch with Americans because he's old, doesn't know off-hand how many houses he owns, and he's been in Washington for decades. Nuh uh, Barack Obama is out of touch with Americans because he bowled a 37, is elitist, and is really a Kenyan-born Muslim!

With the occasional exception of specifics, both sides are correct. McCain and Obama don't live like the rest of us. Most of us know, without even having to think about it, that we own zero, one or, if we're especially lucky, two homes. Most of us can bowl at least double Obama's score when we're drunk. Most of us work instead of legislate for a living. Most of us don't even know what arugula is. Of course both candidates are out of touch; it's a moot point. But it's character and political philosophy that matter, not whether a candidate orders the same value meal at McDonald's as we do.

Change
Again, the left and the right squabble over a superlative unearned by either party's national ticket. In the 2008 yearbook under Most Likely to Bring Change, you'll find neither Obama-Biden nor McCain-Palin. All four people are career politicians. For the Democrats, you have a man who has voted in the senate straight party line a reported 97% of the time. For the Republicans, you have a man who has voted with the Republican incumbent a well-publicized 90% of the time. For the Democrats, you have a VP nominee who has been in the senate since the pre-Disco era. For the Republicans, you have a VP nominee who as governor stands by her requests for $200 million of federal earmarks for her state.

None of the four are breaking the mold by any means. Regardless of who wins, Americans will get what they've gotten for years--higher inflation, more wars, and bigger government.

John McCain's unexpected pick of celebrity lookalike Sarah Palin for VP has been spinning heads for days. The move comes off at first as a blatant ploy to get disaffected female Clinton supporters after Obama snubbed her in his own veepstakes. Some no name first-term governor from the third-least populous state in the Union?

A second look reveals the more impressive facts about Palin. She left her post as Ethics Commissioner of Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in protest of the corruption she saw there within her own party. Her journey to the governorship included defeating the incumbent Republican in the primaries and defeating the former Democratic governor in the general election. She's campaigned against members of her own party because of their corruption. She's used her power to cut government waste.

(Of course, to be fair, she has no experience on a national level, and her dealings with Canada and Russia aren't the kind of foreign policy experience that voters are looking for.)

VP picks don't usually matter too much to voters, but Palin does affect the way Obama can run his campaign.

• They can't bully her.

Palin won't necessarily secure the roughly 50% of Hillary voters that aren't committed to Obama, but if either he or Joe Biden are perceived by that group as bullying Palin or attack her gender, whatever amount of unity created at the convention will dissolve. A lot of former Hillary supporters have qualms with perceived misogynism exhibited by what they consider the "prO-bama" press and the DNC. Obama's campaign would do wisely not to fuel the fire, even if it means occasionally walking on eggshells. 

• He can't count on the shallow vote.

Let's face it--some Americans vote based on which face they would prefer to see repeatedly on TV for the next four years. That thinking has been credited for the wins of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Before, Obama had that vote locked up. Women are more attracted to a fit man in his 40s than a fit-for-his-age man in his 70s.

But now the country has taken a look at Sarah Palin. And according to a Google search for "sexy Palin" yielding about 175,000 results, they like what they see.

• She takes the fire out of "change."

Obama began his campaign promising to bring the sort of change actually embodied in Palin. She's a Washington outsider who has led a movement for ethics reform and bipartisanship. Even now as Obama's change has morphed from anti-"old politics" to anti-Bush, his more-of-the-same charges don't stand against Palin. Her unflinching use of the veto to cut government spending stands in stark contrast to George W. Bush, whose greatest economic failure is his excessive spending.

*

When the pundits cite polls showing how few voters change their minds based on a VP nod, it doesn't mean the selection doesn't matter. The choice of Palin won't directly gain or lose a significant amount of voters for McCain, but the way Obama's campaign handles it can decide the election.