Sarah Palin is a Demagogue

A demagogue is someone who appeals to people's sense of victimization or to their simple prejudices in order to motivate them with feelings of anger, outrage or spite. In ancient Greece (the source of the word: demos, people, and agogos, leading), entrenched aristocracies were frequently overthrown by demagogues, the sense of the word at that time being "organizers of the common people." Greek conventional wisdom, however, took a negative view of this progression, as typically demogogues emerged as tyrants, meaning rulers who were governed by no law other than their own beliefs and desires.

Today the word demagogue means someone who capitalizes on the resentments or passions of some group of people, usually including the sense that the demagogue is exaggerating or misstating the facts, in order to use the target group as a means to power. Eva Peron, who represented herself as a common Argentine woman as opposed to the local Latin oligarchy, is one modern example of a demagogue. The most striking example of demagoguery in the 20th century was Hitler's use of the Jews, who he portrayed as sinister manipulators and not "authentic" or "pure" Germans, to focus and thus control and direct anger and violence that had in fact built up as a result of German defeats in World War I. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are contemporary examples of demagogues: they are able to blame the United States for the sufferings of their own people and as an external threat that necessitates authoritarian rule.

Sarah Palin is a demagogue. Her rhetoric is strikingly consistent: she is a common person from humble origins (a victimized woman who may help herself to feminist rhetoric when convenient), motivated by a higher law than secular laws (Christianity), and angry and indignant about elite and less purely American forces that are active in sinister plans to deprive the volk of their political autonomy.

I don't think that Palin will ever again be on a national political ticket because I just don't think she's got the right stuff, and so I wasn't much interested in discussing her further, but the other night I saw on TV an extraordinary scene of protesters in front of David Letterman's studio in New York and I felt compelled to take a couple of minutes to spell this out. These people were whipped up into a frenzy. The history of demagogic success is full of tales of broad swathes of national populations who thought "it can't happen here." Sarah Palin understands as well as everyone else that Letterman was not referring to her fourteen-year-old daughter (I'm not going to bother with the ritual "His joke was tasteless but..." caveats). Without any doubt she despises feminists (by the way) behind closed doors as part of the Godless liberal left. She has no compunction about using her children and her family as chessmen in her rhetorical machinations. She saw an opportunity to demagogue an issue and she took it.

She traffics in anger, resentment, innuendo, exaggeration, provocation and distortion. She presided over political rallies where members of the crowd called the Democratic candidate a traitor, a terrorist, a communist, a Muslim, an Arab, a monkey and a nigger, routinely calling for his murder well within her earshot, and only took steps to clean up the perceptions of these rallies when it became politically necessary (in fact she scarcely bothered: it was McCain who took conspicuous steps to clean things up). She is a vicious, dangerous person. That is a plain fact.

Who Will She Be?

I've been very impressed the past couple of days by Jennifer Granholm, the Democratic governor of Michigan. She's very articulate and fast on her feet, deftly supporting President Obama and the auto industry, including ousted CEO Richard Wagoner. I've been enthusiastic about Kathleen Sibelius, Democratic governor of Kansas, for a long time. Both of these women look like presidential material to me. Of course, any woman who wanted the Democratic presidential nomination would have to get through Hillary Clinton, who I am proud to say I supported for the nomination most of last year. The point is, the Democrats are the party of women, and their bench is deep: women in the Democratic Party will assert their claim for spots on the ticket, presumably after we try to reelect this administration in 2012 God willing.

So it was particularly obnoxious, I thought, to get a media blip today about how Sarah Palin was predicted to be the first woman president. If she's on the ticket in either 2012 or 2016, I'd say the GOP will be in big trouble. The argument is that it's the conservatives who can elect a woman, but the opposite is true. It's not about tokenism: the Democrats are the party of women, just as they're the party of blacks, and the party of gays. Anyway, if the Republicans can't find a responsible, centrist candidate the next time they have a shot, their time in the wilderness will be quite long.

Charisma Gap

This week's faces of the Republican Party in the media are Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Only Gingrich has any chance of running for the 2012 GOP nomination, a prospect almost as delightful to Democrats as Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin would be. Meanwhile there is a question as to whether Obama is becoming overexposed, in the media sense of being in our faces too much. This can happen and he needs to be sensitive to the possibility, but so far I think he is deliberately being the Anti-Bush: Bush, through a combination of natural aloofness, natural inarticulateness, and a philosophy that the president ought not have to explain himself too much, ended up seeming out-of-touch. Obama is behaving as much like Theodore as like the other Roosevelt: the presidency is a "bully pulpit" and we live in times when the public needs to be continuously updated and educated on what's happening.

I think Obama is also trying to humanize (as in cut down to size) the presidency. He is essentially a technocrat, a fact obscured by his recent historical political successes. If he keeps talking publicly as much as he has been so far, the public (and the media) will tune out a bit, and that might not be a bad thing for the institution. Some unglamorous, nonsuperstar officials are trying to make the trains run on time and keep the lights on, and if you're interested in that sort of thing you can tune in, otherwise you can seek entertainment elsewhere.

It was ironic today when the Czech president denounced the stimulus spending strategy of the US: the Eastern European politician thinks that the Americans are too socialist! When the crisis is economic it sorts out the wheat from the chaff, it's real work to figure out any of this stuff enough to start to get a handle on it. For example Paul Krugman is all for stimulus spending, in fact he thinks that so far the government has not spent nearly enough, yet he is equally adamant that the banking policy of buying up bad assets is a terrible mistake. I confess that this is too deep for me at the moment, but I'm working on it!

Testing Obama

The first 100 days of a presidency, when the new president still enjoys the support and hopes of the public, is a time to get things done, and Obama is doing that. It is also a time for severe testing from his antagonists: will he buckle under pressure? I am glad to say that our man shows no sign of doing that. He is severely and dangerously hampered by the economic crisis, but my sense is that the public is clear enough on the fact that this is a crisis created by funny-money Republicans and their corporate clients. Not that Obama should leave that to chance, and he isn't, repeatedly referring to the fact that he "inherited" the crisis. He also keeps saying, "I'm the President now and I accept responsibility," which among other things is a graceful way of saying "I'm in charge here and you're not." MSNBC stuck with his town meeting in California last night and I thought he was masterly. He knows that his function is essentially political and that he needs to stay in permanent campaign mode, and he's doing that, and he's great at it. Good for him.

He is being criticized for discussing the Final Four, and for going on Jay Leno tonight, but he understands that he needs to communicate with the public and maintain a relationship with the public. He will reach a huge audience on Late Night (not including me - way past my bedtime). That is not "neglecting" the economic crisis, it's functioning as the president. As to that, I'm as disgusted as everyone else by the AIG bonuses, but it has become a distraction. $160 million is big money but it's nothing compared to the money that the government is using for the bailouts, the stimulus package etc (and I am supporting the government at this point). The Republicans have double-downed on that: if he fails they hope to win big, but the flip side is that if he succeeds they definitely lose big. And aren't they the ones arguing that the economy will turn itself around in a year or two? In which case credit will go to...Obama.

On the sports thing, remember how Hillary had a Yankees/Mets problem? She couldn't have it both ways, and as a carpetbagger, she couldn't claim lifelong allegiance (that's how the local politicians finesse it). Sarah Palin got outed by the media for making the same speech about the local sports team in every city she visited. True fans have feelers for that. I always wondered why Bush, one of whose sole actual interests was baseball, didn't discuss it more. Mr. Regular Guy probably figured that the best way to stay out of trouble was just to say nothing, and he was aloof enough in general that it fit. Obama is a real person (politicians: are you listening?). He knows that sports is polarizing but he also knows that it's all in fun. It's a way for people to talk to each other (half of the men in any bar wouldn't be able to converse at all if they couldn't get into something about sports). He's not gaming us. He's being himself. He's into basketball - so sue him!

Which brings me to my last thought for now: out of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, which would you least like to sit down and have a beer with? I know not everyone will agree with me, but Bush is a white-knuckle drunk, tight-lipped and with a chip on his shoulder, hypervigilant about "authenticity," always the sure sign of an inauthentic man. Meanwhile I'd love to hang out with either Bill or Barack, relaxed, smart as whips, enjoying themselves, generous-hearted and articulate.