I’ve tried a few times to write something about why I still like Sarah Palin, but I confess that I’ve really struggled with expressing it. It’s not an easy idea to reduce to the kind of sound bite that I know resonates with most people. I can get close; but up to now the sentences I wrote lent themselves too easily to misinterpretation. But I think I’ve finally gotten a handle on it.
The people that pursue politics as a career in this country, (from both parties) are usually people like Joe Biden, who wouldn’t be able to succeed if they had to worry about things like talent or competition. My local state senator Jennifer Beck is a good example of someone with a similar lack of substance on the Republican side. Both she and Biden are attractive and reasonably well spoken, but their only talent is in telling people what they want to hear when they want to hear it, and avoiding responsibility when things go badly. Neither has what you might call character or even a core of beliefs.
In fact, even more than that, they will energetically believe whatever you tell them to if you can convince them that it will lead to them getting more political power. Sometimes compromises come with that. Both Democrats and Republicans believe a general philosophy that they can’t contradict too terribly much. But the only reason they don’t is because they don’t want to seem inconsistent; and even that is only because it might cost them votes. If it was in their interest to be a socialist today and Austrian school true believer tomorrow, they would have no internal issue with making the switch.
They would tell you that those compromises of principle are simply a part of playing the game and you can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg or two. But the fact is, the game is as it is because Biden and Beck are as they are. And what they are is ambitious. They long for power… they crave it with every fiber of their being. They want to rule. They want to be in charge. It’s their defining character trait and they’re prepared to sacrifice everything toward reaching that goal. Put them in a situation where they can have absolute monarchical rule of all of America if they’ll just put 6 million Jews in a gas chamber, and neither of them (nor virtually any other professional politician in America) would have any issue at all re-enacting the holocaust.
Fortunately for America’s Jewry, that isn’t a choice any of them will be offered. But replace the Jews with an even less popular group like Insurance companies, or Wall Street Executives, and change the gas chamber to something more moderate like a permanent indentured servitude, and all bets are off. For Biden and Beck, their desire for power will vastly outweigh any theoretical idea about the rights of citizens, and they’ll happily strip them of those rights as fast as they can. Of course, in America extremist views don’t win votes so there will be no gas chambers any time soon. But while the degree is dramatically different the principle (or lack of one) is exactly the same. The people in public office don’t have a problem with an utterly unjust act, only that it won’t help get them re-elected.
This isn’t to say that these two particular politicians have a populist streak, although they can if it serves their greater ambitions. Like I said, they’ll believe whatever the fashion of the day will allow them to so long as the result is that they get more power. There is no cost too great for them to meet that goal. They are empty vessels filled with whatever we want them to be. They are utterly without vice or virtue apart from the ambition for power. The only beliefs they hold or personality traits they possess are those that they have been convinced will lead to more control over the masses. And they are moderated in their beliefs only by what shows up well in the polling.
Sarah Palin does not fit that mold. Sarah Palin has a set of core beliefs which she values as more important than any personal ambitions. As I said in the first paragraph I ever wrote about her, “she doesn’t just talk the talk, she also clearly walks the walk”. She may be playing the same political game as Joe Biden or Jennifer Beck, but she’s doing it from the position of someone who would rather lose the battle than give up her core beliefs. Many American live their lives that way. I like to believe I have, and I know a great many of my friends have as well. And to us, it’s very easy to see that very same thing in Sarah.
To the media and the elites on the coasts, she looks like an unsophisticated rube. But Sarah remains unphased by their criticism. It's been more than adequately demonstrated by people like Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry that intelligence isn't a requirement for political success, so who cares it the New york Times can't tell her quotes from those said by Tina Fey? She's confident that if she just stays true to what she believes, the truth will out in spite of the media's attempts to distort it.
In Sarah's view they can either accept her for who she is or not… but since she isn’t going to change, there is no need to fret over it. And rather than playing the game to win at all costs like most politicians do, she’s going to play to achieve what she believes is right. She has principles, and principles don’t change. Even if the poli-sci teachers at Harvard would have us all believe otherwise.
That’s the thing about her that I don’t think the media understands. She’s not in this to win if it means she has to sacrifice those principles. That idea is totally foreign to them so it looks like she’s not taking the game seriously. But I believe she is. I think she knows as well as anyone what the stakes are. In fact, she probably understands it better than the gobs o’ ambition that rule the roost in DC. She knows that if we don’t turn the tide very soon then we’ll quickly become a third world country with a third world standard of living. And very shortly afterward, what we know as ‘America’ will cease to exist.
So she’s trying to make things better. And if that means she can also win… great. But she isn’t prepared to sacrifice her principles for it. For empty suits like Joe Biden or Jennifer Beck, there is no internal struggle in doing their job. How could there be? They don’t believe in anything so there are no beliefs to compromise. But Sarah Palin is different. Sarah Palin’s internal battle is between the virtue of representing the interests of a free people, and the vice of ruling a dependent and subservient populace. If she decides to win at all cost like most politicians do, then she’ll be choosing the latter, and in her mind that would mean that she’s already lost.
I like Sarah, and I think I understand her. And so long as it looks to me like the virtue of her character is winning, she’ll continue to have my support.
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