How to use this Page

Here at Oxford, we love words. We love when they have ancient histories, we love when they have double-meanings, we love when they appear in alphabet soup, and we love when they are made up.

Last week on The Sean Hannity Show, Sarah Palin pushed for the Barack and Michelle Obama to refudiate the NAACP’s claim that the Tea Party movement harbors “racist elements.” (You can still watch the clip on Mediaite and further commentary at CNN.) Refudiate is not a recognized word in the English language, but a curious mix of repudiate and refute. But rather than shrug off the verbal faux pas and take more care in the future, Palin used it again in a tweet this past Sunday.

Note: This tweet has been since deleted and replaced by this one.

Later in the day, Palin responded to the backlash from bloggers and fellow Twitter users with this:

Whether Palin’s word blend was a subconscious stroke of genius, or just a slip of the tongue,  it seems to have made a critic out of everyone. (See: #ShakesPalin) Lexicographers sure aren’t staying silent. Peter Sokolowksi of Merriam-Webster wonders, “What shall we call this? The Palin-drome?” And OUP lexicographer Christine Lindberg comments thus:

The err-sat political illuminary Sarah Palin is a notional treasure. And so adornable, too. I wish you liberals would wake up and smell the mooseburgers. Refudiate this, word snobs! Not only do I understand Ms. Palin’s message to our great land, I overstand it. Let us not be countermindful of the paths of freedom stricken by our Founding Fathers, lest we forget the midnight ride of Sam Revere through the streets of Philadelphia, shouting “The British our coming!” Thank the God above that a true patriot voice lives on today in Sarah Palin, who endares to live by the immorternal words of Nathan Henry, “I regret that I have but one language to mangle for my country.”

Mark Liberman over at Language Log asks, “If she really thought that refudiate was Shakespearean, wouldn’t she have left the original tweet proudly in place?”

He also points out that Palin did not coin the refudiate word blend. In fact, he says, “A

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

The NAACP was doing its job when it accused the Tea Party movement of harboring “racist elements,” but it didn’t necessarily go about it in the most productive way.

All it took was for supporters of the Tea Party movement like Sarah Palin to write, “All decent Americans abhor racism,” and that with the election of Barack Obama we became a “post-racial” society, and the NAACP’s charge was soundly “refudiated.” Or, as Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell put it to Candy Crowley on CNN on Sunday, he’s “got better things to do” than weigh in on the debate. He was elected to deal with real problems, not problems made up in people’s heads. Case closed.

If one has decided not to see something, one won’t see it. (And to be sure, if one has decided to see something, one will always see it. That’s a stalemate.)

I think the NAACP ought to consider the possibility that the residuum of racism that exist today are more thoughts of omission than acts of commission. Racism is a very different beast today than it was on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, or on the eve of the Civil Rights Act. Indeed, it is so difficult to detect and even harder to eradicate precisely because it is no longer hidden behind a white conical hood.

Because our standard for what counts as “post-racialism” has gone up with each civil rights milestone, the NAACP should realize that as the old in-your-face racism is gone, so too should the old confrontational techniques of accusation and litigation. Unconscious racism can only be taught and remedied by explanation, not declamation.

To understand unconscious racism, consider the case of Mark Williams of the Tea Party Express, who was expelled by the Tea Party Federation, an organization that seeks to represent the movement as a whole when Williams posted a fictional letter to Abraham Lincoln, saying “We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards.”

The stridently mocking tone of this letter belied a breezy assumption that any and everyone could see that this was a l

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the Republican party. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

American presidents do not have the luxury of savoring victories, but this is also an asset because they have a multitude of areas to prove their worth to the American people. Following the House’s historic vote on health-care last Sunday, President Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, and made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. Next month, he will attend a summit on nuclear security with 40 heads of state. The President is attempting a pivot to show that he is the president on domestic policy and health-care, and he can also be a president abroad.

And this is why the Republican campaign strategy of repealing the Democrats’ health-care bill for this November cannot be enough. Republicans have been playing catch-up all year, reacting to events rather than creating them. For a while, the Republican message-of-the-day was that the Democrats were tone-death on the jobless rate and misdirecting their energies on the health-care debate. But the jobless rate isn’t the central concern of politicians or economists as it was last year. Now the Democrats have passed health-care reform, Republicans have shifted their focus to wanting to repeal it. Not only is this a mere politics of reaction, it is also the politics of delusion. Republicans running on repeal are running on something that can never happen – because President Obama will wield his veto against 67 Senators should it come to that – and when Republicans fail to do what they promised to do, their base would only become disenchanted.
At the heart of the Republican search for a positive and not merely a reactive agenda for campaign 2010 is the search for its soul. And even in this, Republicans have been reactive, for many were too slow to recognize the phenomenon called the Tea Party Movement. This movement has the potential of making or breaking Republican dreams this November. Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman didn’t merely force Republican Dede Scozzafava out of the race in the special election in NY23, but he ended up splitting the vote on the political right and giving the election to Democrat Bill Owens. Similarly, Sarah Palin may be the brightest political star of the Tea Party Movement, but she polls poorly with moderate Republicans. To decipher what they are for, Republicans need to sit down and think about what to make of, and what to do with, the Tea Party Movement.

If Washington Democrats know what they are for, Republicans haven’t settled yet on anything other than what they are against. “Hell no” will give a Republican primary candidate the Tea Party Movement’s vote, but it doesn’t guarantee anything come the general election, not least because major provisions

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at American aristocracy. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

Decades ago, Louis Hartz wrote an opus on American exceptionalism – the idea that America is special because we were never marred by the disease of feudalism that had plagued Europe – and without a confining social order, individualism and the American dream was born.

Watching the Oscars on Sunday night, I wonder if we have established an aristocracy that is even more powerful than all the peers of the realms that Europe ever had. Our aristocracy is not only insanely wealthy unlike the declining nobility in Europe (or the old money in our east coast), they also set the standards of beauty, morality, and even politics. When I watched the movie industry celebrate its own achievements, I was reminded that for all the human warmth and joviality of the event, the glitz and the glamor are the same escape we seek in our modern aristocracy as we found in the old.

Celebrities are not normal human beings. They are stars. Bright, shining gems far far away even though each performance they make seem to bring them closer and deeper into our own hearts. There were a lot of emotions shared last night, but I’m not sure that universal tears aside, an average American understands what it is like to receive or not receive an accolade to which they are not even remotely eligible and probably will never be.

They say a civilization can be judged by how it treats its dispossessed. But in a country such as ours where everyone is apparently middle-class, we are better judged by the cultural elite we have created. Like the old aristocracy, our aristocracy have taken upon themselves the noblesse oblige to dedicate themselves to the people. They  have a duty to entertain, and it is their privilege to be loved in return. So our stars burn bright for as long as they are beloved by the people. Our aristocracy is not hereditary but quite temporary.

This is why it is unclear whether Sarah Palin bestowed on Barack Obama an accolade when she called him a “celebrity” in 2008. Perhaps when now his star is no longer burning so bright, he will stop being an entertainer and become a President. Or perhaps, as the new electoral college, the media establishment will today insist, he must embrace his cultural milieu like the Gipper and Slick Willy, and give us a show worth applauding. The people would not have it any other way.

Hartz was wrong. While we did not inherit a European feudalism, we have made an American one.

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks a Reagan and the Tea Party Movement. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

In 1966, Ronald Reagan won his first political campaign in a landslide victory against the two-term Democratic Governor of California, Edmund Brown. What is sometimes forgotten is that the preceding Republican primary had been a highly contested one. According to Reagan, it was “very bitter at times, largely because of the lingering split between conservatives and moderates in the state party.” The intra-party attacks became so heated that state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, proposed the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” a rule that Ronald Reagan obeyed ever since because the intra-party strife he experienced in his first political contest left him with a bitter taste in his mouth. Henceforth, his political career was dedicated to building coalitions and fitting as many people as he could squeeze under the Republican tent.

Forty years later, on the day on which Reagan would have celebrated his 99th birthday, Sarah Palin called on his memory when she delivered the keynote address at the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN, rehearsing a litany of bumper sticker lines that the Old Gipper would have approved. But Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan.

While like Palin, Reagan exuded charm and a common touch; unlike Sarah Palin and the general tenor of the Tea Party movement, he was not categorically, viscerally, or paradoxically anti-establishment. While Sarah Palin has admitted to being a pittbull with lipstick, Ronald Reagan was no pittbull. He was as as mellow and as measured as politicians came. He didn’t feel dispossessed or victimized. And if he felt it, he never showed the one sentiment – even if it had been legitimate – that permeates the Tea Party Movement: anger. Red, hot, seething, Glenn Beck Fury.

Most illustratively, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers do not believe
in the 11th Commandment. Next week, Palin is off to campaign for Texas Governor Rick Perry against his primary challenger, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Palin has already campaigned against Dede Scoozzafava running for election in NY 23, where she had supported Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman because he had “not been anointed by any political machine.” At Nashville, she reiterated her support for intra-party competition: “Despite what the pundits want you to think, contested primaries aren’t civil war. They’re democracy at work, and that’s beautiful.”

Democracy at work – grassroots movements without the backbone of a machine – has too often, in a dominant two-party system such as the US is, meant politicians out of a job. To survive after the surge of populist disaffection at a recession has subsided and to be more than a spoiler in elections, the Tea Party Movement must, paradoxically, go mainstream. And it should take it from a icon they have wrongly called their own. Ronald Reagan pulled the various factions of the Right together under a large, fusionist electoral tent that delivered him to victory. Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers are trying to do the reverse and (perhaps inadvertently) break this tent up in a battle fo

Add a Comment

Big Quarter For HarperCollins

By Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 2/2/2010 3:16:00 PM

HarperCollins’ bet on Sarah Palin paid off over the holidays as Going Rogue helped to drive sales for the publisher in the quarter ended December 31. Total revenue in the period rose 25%, to $381 million, and operating profits jumped to $65 million from $23 million. Comparisons were helped by the fact that the fourth quarter in calendar 2008 was one of the worst at HC in several years, with revenue falling 25% and profits plunging 66%. Despite the turnaround, CEO Brian Murray said he remained cautious about prospects for the year. “I’m still worried about retail, and consumer spending in general,” Murray said.

The improved results in the most recent quarter put sales and earnings close to where they were at the end of the 2007 holiday season. Last year’s poor fourth quarter was followed by a significant downsizing at HC a little over one year ago. Among other actions, the Collins division was integrated back into the general books group and Brenda Bowen’s imprint was closed. HC said the increase in profits was driven by higher revenue, improved margins on sales and lower costs.

In addition to Rogue, which has 2.8 million copies in print, other titles that did well in the quarter included Where the Wild Things Are, which benefited from the release of the movie, The Vampire Diaries, The Lacuna, Pirate Latitudes, SuperFreakonomics and Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas. E-book sales continued to do well and accounted for about 5% of adult sales in the quarter.

For the first half of fiscal 2010, revenue at HC was up 11%, to $691 million, and operating income jumped over 200% to $85 million

Share on Facebook

Add a Comment

Anne Zaccardelli, Library and Online Sales Assistant

Sally G. McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Department chair at Davidson College. Her newest book, now out in paperback, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement illuminates a major turning point in American women’s history, a convention and its aftermath, which launched the women’s rights movement. Below I share the interview I conducted with McMillen about this tumultuous time in our nation’s history.  Be sure to check out McMillen’s previous OUPblog posts here.

OUP: While I was reading the book, I was completely shocked at just how scandalous it was for a woman to merely speak in public. Why was that?

Professor Sally McMillen: The idea of American women speaking in public to mixed audiences was unacceptable until the mid-nineteenth century. They could address other women, and Quaker ministers like Lucretia Mott spoke in meetings. In the late 1830s, when Sarah and Angelina Grimke addressed audiences of men and women, New England ministers were shocked. Women should confine their activities to the domestic arena and not presume to be experts on moral issues—in this case, slavery. In 1837, these ministers issued a formal “Pastoral Letter,” objecting to the sisters’ audacious behavior. Their “Letter” was read in churches across New England, denouncing the two for stepping beyond the female sphere. This caused a number of women to realize that they were as enslaved as the slaves they were trying to free. It also led to Sarah Grimke’s writing one of the earliest treatises on women’s rights, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. Nearly a decade later, Lucy Stone, who attended Oberlin Collegiate Institute, discovered that the school did not allow female students to study rhetoric, to debate, or to speak in public. Later, during her career as a public orator for the anti-slavery movement, Stone sometimes found herself drowned out by rowdy protestors and pelted with rotten vegetables and books. Finally, by the 1850s, such reactions subsided, and women’s voices were heard.

OUP: From Hillary Clinton’s pant suits to the cost of Sarah Palin’s clothes, a female politician’s appearance is heavily scrutinized today. Did the suffragettes have this problem as well?

McMillen: Clothing has always been an issue for women that can elicit strong responses. In the mid-nineteenth century, female attire consisted of layers of petticoats, tight corsets, and floor-length dresses. Tight lacing caused health problems by constricting internal organs. In 1850, Elizabeth Miller returned from Europe where she had worn the “Turkish costume” with puffy pants and a short skirt. Welcoming this freedom of movement, soon her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton adopted the outfit, as did Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony. Amelia Bloomer’s newspaper ran sample patterns, and the new fashion statement now had a name (“bloomers”). But the comfortable costume had an abbreviated life, for the public and the press ridiculed women for such unsightly, unfeminine attire. Female reformers soon realized that the

Add a Comment

Here we are on the eve of Going Rogue publication, and I know how excited we all are. Harper reportedly plunked down $5 million for the book, which I initially thought was crazy but now think was crazy genius.

Some people love Sarah Palin. I mean...well, I’ve heard that some people do. I live in New York where Republicans are mythical creatures that people report spotting but can never empirically prove the existence of. But the point is, the success of Palin’s book isn’t going to be based on whether the people who love her turn out to buy it. It’s going to have to do with just how much vitriol the people who hate her can muster up against the book.

Let’s face it: liberal columnists and bloggers looooove to hate Sarah Palin. She’s a go-to whipping post, and the articles lambasting the book are already hitting the web faster than you can say, “Gotcha!”

Tomorrow promises to be a full media pile-on, and that’s going to send thousands upon thousands of readers to the book store. Palin’s got an Ann Coulter-ish appeal. She’s brash enough that the people who love her admire her spunk and the people who don’t are terrified.

I don’t know whether or not I’m going to buy the book, but I know that I could be swept away by the media frenzy. Whether or not I actually read it, I do know for sure that I’m going to spend more time on the book’s Amazon page watching the frequently hysterical freak-outs from Palin’s most disturbed supporters and detractors. What can I say--I love a good fight.

So who already bought it? Who is boycotting? And better yet--who’s going to the book tour?!

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Sarah Palin. See his previous OUPblogs here.

Last Thursday, former Governor of Alaska endorsed Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, over Republican Party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, in New York’s 23rd Congressional District’s special election. This is a pre-book launching publicity stunt, leaving no doubt that Sarah Palin is Going Rogue. She has now erased all remaining speculation that she retains personal political ambitions, at least within the Republican Party. Ironically, it is not Barack Obama who has become a self-centered celebrity, but Sarah Palin, who is wowing the conservative crowd with her personal, anti-party appeal. Celebrities are most popular when they stand beyond and outside party – consider the sharp dip in Oprah Winfrey’s popularity when she campaigned for Obama – and this is exactly what Palin has done. On Facebook, she explained her endorsement of Hoffman: “Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of “blurring the lines” between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections. Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate who more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party’s ticket.” Palin must know that her support of the Conservative candidate will split the Republican vote, and could end up giving the election to Democrat Bill Owens. If she had wanted to play the endorsement game without stepping on anyone’s shoes, she could have thrown in her support for the Republican candidates in the NJ and VA gubernatorial races, but she hasn’t. Instead, she has become the Frankenstein maverick the McCain campaign created, biting the very hand that fed her. Here is how she concluded her Facebook note: “Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual.” Palin doesn’t so much stand for Doug Hoffman as she stands against “the Republican establishment,” fanning the conservative sentiment that the Republican Party performed poorly in 2008 not because it had become too conservative but because it wasn’t conservative enough. Hers is the anti-median-voter theory of elections, better read as the ideological theory of losing elections. Palin is going to drive the legitimacy crisis of conservatism if she continues on this road. Harold Hotelling and Anthony Downs have showed us that in single-member districts moderate parties targeting median voters win elections. This is a mathematically provable proposition. That is why Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty are not weighing in on the New York race, because they are trying to do exactly what Sarah Palin is accusing the Republican Party of doing – blur the line between conservatism and Republicanism so that they can appeal to as many potential primary voters as possible should they choose to run in 2012. Ideologues (and celebrities) do not care about winning elections, and Huckabee and Pawlenty want to keep that option open. There was a time when liberals were proud to be liberals, and that spelt the beginning of liberalism’s end. Pride and ideological purity drove liberalism’s legitimacy crisis, as will be the case for modern conservatism’s demise. Democrats, folllowing the lead of the “third-way” Bill Clinton, learned after the excesses of the War on Poverty not to stand on ideology alone – which is always extreme and uncompromising – but also on programmatic commitments that could appeal to the median voter. Sarah Palin would not remember it, but there was a time, at the turn of the 20th century, when “conservatism” was a bad word coterminous with “stand-patting.” She is in danger of recycling history, not that she cares, because she has a personal agenda, not an institutional one. When a party allows those who do not care about winning elections to speak for its base, it courts trouble. Behind every anti-Republican establishment hurrah Palin provokes is a voter ready to Go Rogue on election day. Republicans, beware.

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on Sarah Palin’s resignation. See his previous OUPblogs here.

People love to hate Sarah Palin. I thought she was trouble on the McCain ticket, trouble for feminism, and trouble for the future of the Republican party, but I am troubled at the feeding frenzy that has continued despite Palin’s express desire and efforts to bow out of the negative politics that has consumed her governorship.

The speculation about what exactly Palin is up to is itself revealing - for it comes attached to one of two possible postulations - neither of which are charitable. Either Palin is up to no good, or she is completely out of her mind. Even in surrender Palin is hounded. Either she is so despicable that post-political-humous hate is both valid and necessary or she is so dangerous that she must be defeated beyond defeat.

Even Governor Mark Sanford got a day or two of sympathy from his political opponents before he admitted to other extra-marital dalliances and referred to his Argentinian belle as his “soul-mate.” Sarah Palin was accorded no such reprieve. Yes, I think gender is entirely relevant here.

Feminist scholars have studied the double-bind of woman political leaders for a while now. Women leaders are faced with a dilemma a still-patriachical political world imposes on them: women must either trade their likeability in return for male respect; or they preserve their likeability but lose men’s respect for them in exchange. When it comes to women in positions of political power in the world that we know, they cannot be both likeable and respected. Unlike men, they cannot have their cake and eat it as well. This is not the world I like, but it is the world I see.

Let me draw an unlikely parallel to make the point. People love to hate another woman that we saw a lot of in 2008 - Hillary Clinton. Like Palin, she was to her detractors the she-devil to whom evil intentions were automatically assigned for every action. But unlike Palin, she was respected and feared - she was everything Sarah Palin was not. What Palin lacked in terms of likeability she possessed in terms of respect (or at least reverent fear). No one underestimated Hillary Clinton, no one doubted her ambition. And of course, as Barack Obama put it in one of their debates, she was only “likeable enough.” Clinton was respected as a force to be reckoned with, but she paid her dues in terms of likeability. Just like the Virgin Queen and the Iron Lady, she could only be respected if she surrendered her congeniality.

Palin stands at the other end of the double-bind. Where Palin was in need of respect she gained in terms of likeability. She was the pretty beauty queen loved and beloved by her base, unapologetically espousing a “lip-stick” feminism (in contrast to a grouchy liberal feminism). But what she enjoyed in terms of likeability she lost in terms of respect. If there was one thing her detractors have done consistently, it has been to mock her. She was the running joke on Saturday Night Life, and now, a laughing stock even amongst some Republicans who see her as a quitter and a thin-skinned political lightweight. Strangely enough, Sarah Palin is Hillary Clinton’s alter-ego. Where Clinton is perceived as strong, Palin is seen as weak; whereas Clinton turns off (a certain sort of) men, Palin titillates them.

If we lived in a post-feminist, gender-neutral world, the two most prominent women in American politics, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, would not so perfectly occupy the antipodal caricatures of women trapped in the double-bind of our patriachical politics. That they each face one cruel end of the double binds tells us that the two women on opposite ends of the political spectrum sit in the same patriachical boat. So the next time liberals mock Sarah Palin, they should remember that they are doing no more service to feminism than when some conservatives made fun of Hillary Clinton’s femininity allegedly subverted by her pant-suits.

Add a Comment

Tweens' tamer style (takes a cue from the wholesome on-screen look of Miley Cyrus and the"HSM" cast. Plus EW asks whether the JoBros need to grow, i.e. rethink their upcoming Disney show, to keep their fanbase interested) (Los Angeles Times, reg.... Read the rest of this post

Add a Comment

So Sarah Palin returns to "normal" life and starts making the rounds of the talk shows.


DR. PHIL walks on to the TV set and greets the audience

DR. PHIL
Hi there, folks! This is a great and news-making and earth-shattering and super-duper-pooper day because - right here in front of your very eyes and on TV's around the world, our guest today is Sarah Palin!

(audience cheers)

It's true - I swear it! Would, I, Dr. Phil lie to you all? Look - my fingers aren't crossed! Just a joke... Sarah's gonna be here and we're gonna talk about...stuff. You know, Alaska...Russia...the prank phone call... What's it like to lose... Meanwhile, put your hands together and welcome... SARAH PALIN!

(audience cheers)

(SARAH PALIN walks on to the stage, waving and throwing kisses to everyone. She stops half-way and throws more kisses, smiles)

DR. PHIL
Hey Sarah...sweetie! C'mon over here, darlin'!

(she ignores him and continues to wave to audience, who is now on their feet and applauding wildly)

DR. PHIL
Um...Sarah? This is my show? Hello?

(ROBIN, Dr. Phil's wife walks on stage and pushes her from behind until she is directly in front of DR. PHIL)

DR. PHIL
Now ain't that nice? Robin really loves this woman, y'know! Right Robin? 'Course she does!Now sit down, Sarah, honey!

(SARAH is still waving and throwing kisses)

DR. PHIL
(placing a hand on either shoulder)
I said...sit down! Okay. That's better. I'm the only one who stands up on this show. So Sarah - how does it feel to be a loser?

SARAH P.
Loser? You're a loser, Dr. Phil! The whole media are losers! Everyone in the whole world are losers.

(the audience responds by applauding loudly and cheering)

SARAH P.
See? They agree! Yeah! I'm a loser, alright! You better believe it!

DR. PHIL
Now...Sarah. When did you first experience these feelings of persecution?

SARAH P.
The minute I bought these new glasses. I mean, I needed a new prescription so I went out and bought new frames! Is there anything wrong with that? Suddenly, everyone is wearing the exact same frames! They could have bought other models but nooooo - they bought the exact same one's as me! Why did they do that, Dr. Phil?

DR. PHIL
(finger on chin, pensive)
Cheez - I dunno, Sarah... Maybe they were on sale or something? Never mind that. So...how y'doin'?

SARAH P.
Well...alright I guess. I mean, Alaska ain't New York or Washington or Boston or...

DR. PHIL
Aha! See folks? Sarah here's isn't geographically-challenged like the press says she is!

SARAH P.

....or Montreal...or L.A....

DR. PHIL
We get the point, babe. So? Whad'ya been up to? Been hunting lately?

SARAH P.
Well Phil - you don't mind if I call you Phil - after all...we're friends now. What was the question? Something about Neiman-Marcus?

DR. PHIL
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...! You're so funny. Not as funny as Tina Fey but funny. I was askin' you 'bout whether or not you been huntin', lately

SARAH P.
Hunting? Who told you I hunt? I don't hunt! I buy all my meat at the supermarket, silly!

DR. PHIL
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha....! 'Course you do and I'm Arnold Schwarzneggar!

SARAH P.
Who?

DR. PHIL
Arnold? Governor of California?

SARAH P.
California? Oh yeahhhhh! I can see California from my door! Yeah...

DR. PHIL
So what are your plans, now? Just to go back to your boring job of governing Alaska?

SARAH P.
Yeah... I mean, being a governor is challenging work! Very challenging! Like every morning I go into my office... Uh-oh...I forgot where my office is, again. We move a lot, y'know. They keep opening new Walmart stores

DR. PHIL
'Course it is! We know that! So...like...let's say...if a person - not me of course - wanted to hunt possum in Alaska, could they?

SARAH P.
'Course they could! We got lots of possum waiting for the stew pot in Alaska! Why, we got them running everywhere

(silence for 5 seconds)

DR. PHIL
You don't know what possum is, do you, Sarah?

SARAH P.
Not really...

DR. PHIL
Well - there you have it, folks! A regular sit-down-and-get't'know-'ya with the loser... I mean to say, Governor Sarah Palin! Thanks for dropping by, Sarah! See? We ain't so bad after all!

SARAH P.
Just wanna say before I leave that I'll be having my own talk show this fall right after you, Dr. Phil! Isn't that wonderful? You and me on the same network? It's so exciting!

DR. PHIL
Thanks for dropping by, Sarah.

SARAH P.
And I just wanna invite you and Robin to come shoot possum in Alaska anytime you want. Bye everyone!

DR. PHIL
(whipping out cell phone)
Possum in Alaska, huh...get me Wolf Blitzer at CNN...

Add a Comment

On the eve of this historic election, our friends at SurveyU (a Ypulse advertiser and research sponsor at the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East) have just released data on college students and early and absentee voting. If anyone is still... Read the rest of this post

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he reflects on last week’s vice-presidential debate. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

Obama supporters were surprised that Sarah Palin didn’t trip up in her debate with Joe Biden; but they nevertheless thought that she was incoherent through most of it. Palin’s supporters were thrilled that she came back after multiple setbacks with her interviews with Katie Couric with a slam dunk. We have become so divided as a nation that we can’t even agree on which is night and which is day.

The reason, I think, is because Sarah Palin did not answer Gwen Ifill’s questions. When a student refuses to take a test, we cannot meaningfully compare her performance with another.

Right at the outset of the debate, Palin announced her contempt for the debate format: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” Palin’s opponents cried foul, but her supporters applauded her contempt of the media and Washington’s rules.

Here was Gwen Ifill’s first question: “The House of Representatives this week passed a bill, a big bailout bill … was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?”

This was Palin’s first non-answer: “You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, “How are you feeling about the economy?”

Biden did a classic debate pivot, but he did try to answer the question, saying “I think it’s neither the best or worst of Washington, but it’s evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we’ve ever had.”

Consider Ifil’s third question: “Governor, please if you want to respond to what he (Biden) said about Sen. McCain’s comments about health care?” and Palin’s petulant non-reply “I would like to respond about the tax increases.”

Or Ifill’s seventh question: “What promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you’re not going to be able to keep?” Sarah Palin tried her hand at the pivot trick too: “I want to go back to the energy plan, though, because this is — this is an important one that Barack Obama, he voted for in ‘05.” By pivot I mean, tangent.

In her closing statement, Palin again made clear where her priorities were. “I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.” Speak to the American people she did, but answer these tough questions she did not.

We should stop pretending that debates really happen in American politics; even the four organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates no longer qualify. Masquerading for debate, all we get are solipsistic televised addresses delivered to us in alternating segments. Last Thursday, Gwen Ifill was little more than a two-minute time keeper with no control of how Biden and especially Palin used their time.

Let us remember why we care for debates. Because meaningful exchanges between alternative voices stand at the heart of democracy. By controlling for question, we can see how candidates measure up to each other substantively. Instead, American politics today is deluged by speeches and not debates, asymmetric communications in which politicians talk past each other rather than to each other.

Avoiding the questions and eschewing a debate may be good for a candidate but it is bad for democracy. And we should not allow Sarah Palin or any other candidate to tell us that democracy is only about connecting with people and not also debating the issues. Only demagogues insist on trading directly with the people without the watchful eye - Palin calls it the “filter” - of the media or a dissenting interlocutor. Democracy is best served by reciprocity and deliberation, not one-sided assertions to one’s base with no follow-up questions.

While Palin connected last Thursday, she hardly debated. As supporter Michelle Malkin revealingly put it: “She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message.” Seven ayes for style, an aye for substance, and nay to debate. The nays have it.

ShareThis

Display Comments Add a Comment

Drug dealing in GTA (as if the haters needed one more reason to target this video game. Plus ads coming to Guitar Hero) (News.com) (Alley Insider) - College women (not keen on Sarah Palin, according to this research) - NPR 2.0 (public radio has... Read the rest of this post

Add a Comment

Ronnee Schreiber, author of Righting Feminism: Conservative Women & American Politics, points out in her CNN op-ed, that we should not underestimate Sarah Palin’s appeal to women. In the excerpt below from Schreiber’s book, we learn about one of the most powerful women’s organizations in America, the conservative Concerned Women for America. Schreiber shows us how CWA has the organizing power to rally behind Palin and other politicians.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) was founded in San Diego in 1979 by Beverly LaHaye, a mother of four who used to organize marriage seminars with her husband. Along with its 500,000 members, the organization employs approximately thirty national staff and boasts an $8 million annual budget. It has a diverse funding base…which has been considered a contributing factor to its longevity. Its founding was initially spurred by LaHaye’s desire to oppose the ERA and to contest feminist claims of representing women. Indeed, its strong objection to feminist activism on behalf of women is clearly articulated in the information it sends to its new and potential members: LaHaye watched a television interview with Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women. Realizing that Betty claimed to speak for the women of America, Mrs. LaHaye was stirred to action. She knew the feminists’ anti-God, anti-family rhetoric did not represent her beliefs, or those of the vast majority of women.

The organization’s launch and subsequent growth coincided with the politicization of the Christian Right in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, social conservatives were avidly mobilizing to oppose legalized abortion, homosexuality, and communism and to promote school prayer. Leaders like Jerry Falwell ably convinced conservative evangelicals to politicize their religious commitments. As Robert Wuthnow argues, the time was right for such mobilization to occur. In the mid- to late 1970s, criticism of the Vietnam War, legislative responses to Watergate, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions on issues like abortion meant that “morality came to be viewed as a public issue rather than in strictly private terms.” The election of an evangelical—Jimmy Carter—to the White House also gave prominence and visibility to those who identified with this religious tradition. Wuthnow argues that, for conservative evangelicals during this time, it felt “sensible” to become politically engaged and to promote their views on morality.

As the symbolic line between morality and politics blurred, conservative evangelicals “were no longer speaking as a sectarian group, but as representative[s] of values that were in the interest of all.” Under the leadership of activists like Richard Viguerie, religious right groups became familiar with, and adept at using, the latest communication, fundraising, and organizing techniques to rally constituents. Direct mail appeals containing “alarmist” messages about the evil effects of legal abortion and homosexuality startled and ultimately activated people. These religiously committed individuals had solid, close-knit social and church-based networks that also enabled effective mobilization, especially when local pastors used the pulpit to give political direction to their members. Constituents were encouraged to boycott media outlets that offended their moral sensibilities, and fundamentalist ministers were recruited into politics by leaders like Ed McAteer.

As we moved into the 1980s, acceptance from public figures like Ronald Reagan also helped to solidify the evangelicals’ base. With a tight and effective infrastructure, large mass mailing databases, and major media outlets like the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), they became a formidable political movement of which CWA was and is a major player. As a religiously based organization that opposes abortion and homosexuality, CWA is a social conservative interest group. Today, CWA has a professionally staffed office in Washington, DC, claims members in all fifty states, and professes to be the largest women’s organization in the United States. Although this book emphasizes how CWA frames its issue debates, the organization employs a host of tactics to effect political change. …

Building on the successful techniques used by Viguerie and others to mobilize conservative evangelicals in the 1970s, CWA continuously adapts new technology to get its message out and to attract new members. It broadcasts audio and visual materials over the Internet, offers podcasts and e-alerts, and frequently updates its polished and professional-looking Web site… Because of CWA’s large membership, its strength lies in part in its grassroots. The ability to communicate with and mobilize these adherents is essential for effective lobbying and public education campaigns. Through e-mail, periodicals like Family Voice, and its online broadcasts and Web site, its national staff work closely with the grassroots members to update them on legislative affairs and educate them to be activists…

…Its national office coordinates volunteers for its Project 535—a group of Washington, DC, area women who meet monthly to canvass lawmakers on issues of concern to the organization (the number 535 refers to the total members of the U.S. Congress). In 2007, for example, women urged legislators to oppose the use of federal funds for stem cell research. Through Project 535, women are trained to lobby, and new members are paired with seasoned activists as they walk the halls of Congress.

In addition to its lobbying and grassroots efforts, CWA houses the Beverly LaHaye Institute (BLI), a think tank devoted to publishing reports and assessing data on topics like abortion and motherhood. Janice Shaw Crouse, a former public relations professional and speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush, heads up the institute. To publicize its views, BLI produces “data digests,” semiannual briefs that evaluate research findings to promote its views. For example, in “Abortion: America’s Staggering Hidden Loss,” Crouse uses figures and charts from the Centers for Disease Control to highlight cases in which abortions are increasing and/or decreasing… In a similar vein, CWA works through its Culture and Family Issues unit to produce papers and reports that warn against homosexuality. Both are public education venues, established to offer alternatives to liberal and feminist think tanks like the prochoice Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). Unlike BLI, however, AGI conducts primary research on its topics of concern.

Another way for interest groups to have an impact is to form political action committees and raise money for those running for elected office. Because of its nonprofit status, CWA itself cannot directly endorse candidates, but under the name of Beverly LaHaye, it established the Concerned Women Political Action Committee (CWPAC) to allow CWA supporters a more direct voice in electoral outcomes. CWPAC distributed $127,000 in 2005 to candidates that support “conservative principles, values and integrity.” It is important to note the central Role that religion plays in this organization; conservative evangelical religious beliefs clearly unite and mobilize many of the organization’s members and leaders. Its stated mission, to “protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens—first through prayer, then education and finally by influencing our society—thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation,” exemplifies its theological convictions…

ShareThis

Display Comments Add a Comment

To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro brings together America’s most esteemed writers and thinkers to offer concrete, historically grounded suggestions for how America can regain its standing in the world and use its power more wisely than it has during the Bush years. In the excerpt from the introduction to To Lead the World below, Leffler and Legro explain exactly what the Bush doctrine is, a short lesson that could have benefited Sarah Palin last week when she was interviewed by Charlie Gibson.

The administration of George W. Bush published two national strategy statements. The first statement, issued in September 2002, aroused enormous controversy, and the second did not flinch from its predecessor’s most controversial propositions. The strategy appeared to be a radical departure from the policies that had defined America’s approach to world affairs throughout the cold war and beyond. Seemingly abandoning containment, deterrence, and a reliance on collective action, the Bush strategy called for a policy of unilateral action and preventive war: “Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot permit our enemies to strike first.”

The emphasis on a unilateral, preemptive initiative shaped the administration’s reactions to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. President Bush and his advisers decided to destroy the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which had provided shelter to the al Qaeda movement, and to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq for supposedly developing weapons of mass destruction and conspiring with terrorists to attack the United States and its allies. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq form the core of the war on terror. They have consumed thousands of American lives, probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives, and vast sums of money, likely to exceed a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. They are worth the cost, says President George W. Bush, if they will contribute to a safer, more peaceful world, conducive to the spread of freedom and democracy.

More than any president in recent history, President Bush has defined the nation’s security in terms of the promotion of freedom around the world. All people, he stresses, want freedom. And freedom everywhere, he claims, is essential for the safety of the United States. “The survival of liberty in our land,” he stated in his second inaugural address, “increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” America’s principles, according to Bush, should shape U.S. decisions on international cooperation, foreign assistance, and the allocation of resources.

Bush’s strategy statements contain much more than platitudes about the value of human freedom and dignity. They outline policies that go far beyond the emphasis on unilateral, preemptive military action. Focusing considerable attention on the advantages of an open international economy, they espouse the importance of global economic growth through free markets and free trade. They stress the importance of disseminating the rule of law, promoting sound fiscal, tax, and financial policies, and nurturing investments in health and education. They state that fighting poverty is a “moral imperative,” and they envision doubling the size of the world’s poorest economies within a decade. Fighting disease, they acknowledge, is as important as fighting poverty; indeed, it is a key to fighting poverty. And notwithstanding the emphasis placed on anticipatory unilateral action, the administration’s strategy statements acknowledge the importance of strengthening ties with partners, energizing alliances in Asia, and building and expanding NATO.

However comprehensive the strategy statements have been, the war on terror and the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan have consumed the attention of the administration and its critics. In the past few years, book after book has appeared discussing the shortsightedness and ineptitude of the administration’s actions in Iraq. So vast is this literature and so focused has been the administration’s defense of its actions in Iraq that most of us have lost sight of the larger issues of national security. Yet the larger context is essential for evaluating the merits of the case in Iraq. Probing questions have arisen about the centrality of that conflict for the war on terror in general. And even more fundamental inquiries have arisen about the logic of a war on terror when some commentators maintain that the threat has been hugely exaggerated, that the concept itself—a war on terror—unwisely conflates terrorist groups, and that it makes little sense because terror is a tactic, not an adversary. And in its second term, the Bush administration itself appears to have backed away in practice from the defining traits of its doctrine such as preventive action, unilateralism, and aggressive democratization. The puzzle that faces America is: what should come next?

ShareThis

Display Comments Add a Comment

By Cassie Ammerman, Publicity Assistant

D. Michael Lindsay is a sociologist at Rice University and the author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. With the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, the Republicans seems to have gained some points in the polls (as we can see in Elvin Lim’s piece, here). In this essay, first posted on Beliefnet’s Casting Stones blog, Lindsay explains one probable reason for that gain.

Sarah Palin electrified the Republican National Convention last week. The Democrats are still smarting from her one-liners, and senior McCain advisors have to be concerned that, while she excites the party’s base, she also outshines the candidate. They will, no doubt, continue using her as the campaign’s “attack dog,” but there’s another aspect of her rhetoric worth thinking about. Consider the following section from her acceptance speech in St. Paul:

…Politics isn’t just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason [for political involvement] is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it. No one expects us all to agree on everything, but we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart.

Palin offered these same lines in Dayton, Ohio, on the day she was tapped to be McCain’s running mate. Why would a person seeking the country’s second most powerful office talk about governing with a “servant’s heart,” and more importantly, why would she repeat such an odd phrase in the biggest speech of her life?

Quite simply, it is one of her main assignments—to mobilize fellow evangelicals for the religiously unmusical John McCain. Up until two weeks ago, 2008 was looking an awful lot like 1996 for the Republicans. Most evangelicals were going to vote for McCain, but they weren’t that excited about it. Their support was tepid at best. That is no way to win the White House, especially with the Democrats’ surging enthusiasm over the Obama-Biden ticket.

John McCain has many advantages for a year when Republicans are so unpopular, but he has been plagued by not being able to connect with evangelical voters. No matter how many times he recounts the story of the cross on the ground in the Hanoi Hilton, the Episcopalian-turned-Baptist cannot speak the evangelical vernacular like a native.

If there is one political lesson McCain learned from George W. Bush, it is that a Republican has to signal his allegiance to evangelicals early and often. However, it must be done with a measure of subtlety. To be truly effective, the politician has to communicate to evangelicals “I’m one of you” without being explicit. Once you know what to look for, though, one can see that public figures broadcast these signals all the time. As I showed in my book, entertainers who are Christians signal their faith commitments as often as politicians. For example, the cover of U2’s album All That You Can’t Leave Behind features an airport sign with “J33-3,” alluding to Jeremiah 33:3. In his 2006 co-authored book, Bono explained the signal as a reference to the Bible: “That’s Jeremiah 33:3. The Scripture is ‘Call unto me, and I will answer you.’ It’s celestial telephony.”

When Sarah Palin referred to governing with a “servant’s heart,” the phrase resonated with millions of American evangelicals who have heard that phrase all of their lives. It is a shorthand for the humble leadership Jesus admonished in the Gospel of Mark, and the term is so prevalent among evangelicals that it has become a punch line for sermon jokes.

Politicians signal messages to all kinds of audiences when they are speaking to large, diverse crowds. Signaling allows the speaker to communicate certain messages subtly without risking full disclosure. When overt reference is inappropriate or might draw unwanted attention, evangelicals use signaling to reveal their faith allegiances without even mentioning God or Jesus. The effect is blunted when, as Barack Obama did in concluding his acceptance speech, the speaker explicitly states “in the words of scripture…”

And it happens not just with biblical allusions. Seemingly secular phrases can be endowed with religious significance for evangelical audiences. That is what made Sarah Palin’s reference to the “common good” even more intriguing. After John Kerry lost the 2004 election, Mara Vanderslice, Kerry’s religious outreach adviser, established Common Good Strategies, a political consulting firm for Democrats interested in connecting with people of faith. Within a few years, “common good” had become the mantra of left-of-center believers. The slogan for Faith in Public Life, an initiative housed at the Center for American Progress, is “a resource center for justice and the common good.” Bill Clinton lectured at Georgetown on the topic in 2006, and devout Democrats such as Senator Bob Casey regularly incorporate the rhetoric in speeches and on the campaign trail. In fact, BBC News noted in 2006 that Casey mentioned the phrase 29 times in a single talk.

Could it be that Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase is coincidental, that it was not intended to tap these religious sensibilities? Not likely. The same person who helped President George W. Bush master the art of signaling to the faithful—Matthew Scully—wrote most of Palin’s speech. Moreover, the was address vetted extremely carefully; it was, after all, her national introduction before 37 million Americans. McCain advisers knew enough to realize she was far more fluent in the evangelical vernacular than the Arizona senator.

Critics may claim these are only rhetorical flourishes. Nothing guarantees that signals translate into votes. That may be so, but politics is largely about symbols. Political symbols mobilize the masses. No Republican has won the White House in modern history without the staunch support of evangelical voters. When John McCain began his bid for the Oval Office, observers thought he didn’t have a prayer of winning their support. With this “Hail Mary pass” of enlisting the Alaskan governor as his running mate, John McCain’s political savior may just turn out to be a pit bull with lipstick.

ShareThis

Add a Comment

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com.  In the article below he Palin’s nomination. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

John McCain’s campaign has turned a 7 point deficit into a 4 point lead according to the new USA Today/Gallup poll. This post-convention bump did not come from McCain’s acceptance speech, which only received an “excellent” rating from 15% of those polled, compared to the 35% Obama received. The bump came from Sarah Palin. Here is the poll’s most important result: before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-19%.

The new McCain campaign message is that change is about reforming Washington, aided in no small part by a Number 2 that has developed/created quite a reputation for reform. This new configuration appears to be overshadowing Obama’s definition that change requires a change in party control of the White House, because it has tapped into the anti-Washington sentiment felt among the Republican base.

Palin is running not as the back-up plan (as most vp candidates have), but as right-hand woman, and this is why Barack Obama took the risk of appearing unpresidential today by attacking Sara Palin directly himself. But Obama’s response - “You can’t just make stuff up” - sounded like a petulant kid crying foul rather than an effective counter-punch. As the campaign fumbles for a working riposte, it will become clear that the answer was always right before their eyes. By an ironic twist of fate, Hillary Clinton, though unsuccessful in her own presidential bid, has become the queen and kingmaker. Sarah Palin would not have risen from political obscurity into national prominence but for the schism generated by Clinton’s candidacy within the Democratic party. Yet Joe Biden cannot perform the role of attack dog as viscerally as he would if Palin were a man, and so ironically, Clinton will have to be dispatched to play this traditionally vice-presidential role. The question is whether the media will give Clinton the time of day now that the primary season is decidedly over.

Safe for the October surprise still to be discovered, the tectonics of the match-up are now mostly settled. With the VPs now selected, two previously toss-up states have moved into the “leaning” category: PA has moved in Obama’s direction because of Biden, and MO has moved in McCain’s direction because of Palin. The only vice-presidential debate sceduled on Oct 2 will be more critical than the first of three presidential debates on September 26. There’s been a lot of talk of Gallup polls conducted immediately after the conventions only getting it right fifty percent of the time, but less acknowledged is the fact that by the first week of October - the week the vp candidates shall debate - these polls have gotten it right almost every time since 1952. On October 2, Biden and Palin will have their one chance to get it right for their respective campaigns.

ShareThis

Display Comments Add a Comment

We're kicking off our new Monday/Wednesday posting schedule on the Ypulse Books Channel today with a new feature called AudioFile. In our first AudioFile, Alli muses over the experience of "reading" or "listening" and comes... Read the rest of this post

Add a Comment

Sarah Palin is also an attempted banner of books! In this Time article, we learn:





"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor. "

Love the bathing suit, though.

Display Comments Add a Comment