Friday, September 5, 2008

Hypocrites and Yahoos

Bill Clinton was derided by the right for having tried pot. But George Bush, a cocaine addict and alcoholic, was accepted without hesitation.

John Kerry was derided for being a flip-flopper. But John Mccain has flipflopped spectacularly on a number of issues.

Obama was derided for his lack of experience. But Sarah Palin, whose entire foreign policy savvy stems from having run a state bordering on the USSR, is to be installed a mere heartbeat from the presidency.

I always try to understand all sides, resisting the urge to think like a knee-jerk partisan. I don't like the polarization in our society, so I try to adopt the more reasoned, conciliatory attitude I'd like to see in others. So while I realize that the blue state-ish answer is that they're just all a bunch of hypocrites and yahoos, I'd very much like to see a deeper perspective. The best I can come up with is that, yes, they are hypocrites and yahoos....but so are the Democrats, in their own way. 

So I suppose my aversion is to hypocrites and yahoos rather than any certain political stripe.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's my theory that Palin is a Rovian Sacrificial Lamb. She's being trotted around to give a chance to highlight how bad lack of experience is. They'll keep her around for a few weeks to get all the right sound bites and quotes to support that position, and then will pull her from the race and stick in someone with more experience. Then they can use all that in the attempts to discredit Obama, and can also show that the Republican Party has finally learned how to acknowledge its mistakes and respond to concerns. It's a big chess game and she's a pawn.

Jim Leff said...

If so, the plan's failing miserably. She's completely energized the base, and there even seems to be some leak-over among independents, some of whom deem her feisty. She appeals to that sizable segment that innately recoils from Obama for the same reason they did from Kerry and Gore: too elitist-seeming.

Like it or not, the flipside of American mothers telling their children they can grow up to be president is that many of us fail to see value in superiority among our leaders. To vote for someone superior-seeming would call into question our innate cultural need to project ourselves, Mitty-style, into roles for which we decline to admit our intrinsic unsuitability.

Unknown said...

After her speech, $1M was raised for the Republicans.

And $8M was raised for the Democrats.

If she keeps getting those kinds of results, I'm all for her :-)

Jim Leff said...

The Dems are actually claiming $10M since Palin's speech. But it's awfully soon after.

Jim Leff said...

OTOH, this counts for more than money does:


"Convention rejuvenates GOP"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-07-Inside-poll-GOP_N.htm

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