No apology is needed for dwelling on the person of Sarah Palin. Her nomination as the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, and then her extraordinary speech to their national convention, was easily the most important world event of a week in which there was significant breaking news from Georgia, North Korea, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, and elsewhere.
The speech was tremendously consequential. It drew a television audience about equal with Barack Obama’s to the DNC, and the lady had her hour to speak, free of the intensely partisan Democrat “filtering” of the mainstream media. In that time she completely demolished the analysis they had presented of her. We had been told (by most American, and so far as I have seen, all Canadian media outlets) that McCain’s selection of Palin was simply “a mistake,” “a muff,” “proof that he is old and out of touch,” etc. We were led to expect a laughably inept performance by some wet-T-shirt queen of sub-normal IQ, backed by a family of drooling troglodytes.
And then we got what looked, sounded, and felt very like an American Margaret Thatcher.
Mrs Thatcher, incidentally, “the grocer’s daughter,” received exactly the same reception from the British Left when she first rose to prominence: the same sarcastic references to her class origins, the same suggestions that she was utterly unprepared, the same visceral misogyny, the same panicked search for domestic tabloid scandal, the same “why don’t you go home, dear, and take care of your children” dismissals. And likewise, this response played an important part in helping her flatten them.
The country and the generation are different, however, and as Barbara Amiel implied, in an excellent piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Mrs Palin has an advantage Mrs Thatcher did not. For the “old boys” of the Republican establishment are unlike the High Tory grandees who sabotaged Thatcher from within her own party, and finally brought her down.
The American Republican soul is populist, and has been since Lincoln—unlike the Democrat establishment with its Ivy League class affiliations, and of course, very unlike the nearly extinct baronial overpinnings of British Conservatism. In both countries, we may see the contrast between tofu-eating and red meat—but the American hunters dress and eat their prey.
Let us not look, however, beyond what can be seen from here, in time. It is very possible Mrs Palin will become, in due course, the first woman President, having among other things stolen Hillary Clinton’s thunder. But sufficient unto the day is the punditry thereof.
The immediate significance of all this, is that the Republican ticket, which had only an outside chance of defeating Obamania in this anticipated annus horribilis for Republican electoral fortunes, must now be considered more likely to win. For Sarah Palin is also ideally placed to release the air from Barack Obama’s balloon, and to expose Democrat “progressive” posturing as so much B.S. And it is Mrs Palin who, in addition to being the self-described “pit bull with lipstick,” has an extraordinary record of largely unassisted legislative accomplishment, in a relatively short political career.
Compare Mr Obama, who, starting from the promise of a superb showing at Harvard, and with crucial assistance from the Chicago wardheel machine, and then the national Democrat image-makers, has accomplished nothing at all, except self-advancement. That he is an intelligent and charming man goes without saying. But when Mrs Palin says that he has never written anything except two memoirs—i.e. zero even in the Illinois senate—she is telling the plain truth. He is a tapestry of pretty words, who seems to think words alone, such as “hope,” and “change,” can solve his nation’s and the world’s problems.
The election will necessarily be close, since the American people themselves are about equally divided between “conservative” and “liberal” assumptions about reality, and the swing vote between them is not very large. But in the campaign viewers’ oddly criss-crossed comparison—Obama versus Palin, and Biden versus McCain—the Republicans now have two winners.
The consequence, not merely to the U.S. but to the planet, of a McCain as opposed to an Obama presidency, is almost impossible to overestimate.
As I’ve argued before, the enemies of America and the West will tend to be cautious with John McCain, incautious with Barack Obama. (And with Palin behind him, they’ll be toasting McCain’s health.) It follows that a vote for McCain favours peace and stability, a vote for Obama, instability and worse.
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