WASHINGTON — In this election year, “change” has been the
catnip of the liberals. It renders them blissful. Change will put
an end to the dominance of American politics by the “Washington
insiders.” And the instrumentality of that “change” will be a
first-term senator of unassailable probity, Senator Barack H.
Obama, who curiously enough began his career a decade ago in
Chicago as a cog in the political machine of Mayor Richard Daley.
To the critics’ charges that Prophet Obama is short on experience
his supporters respond that he has enormous experience, which is
obviously untrue. Also he has chosen as his running mate Senator
Joe Biden, a six-term Washington insider, who is a rough and tough
Irish guy from the hell’s kitchen of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which
is about the first time that the public has heard that
stretcher.
Yet these palpably absurd claims have taken on the dimension of
commonplace truth in the political media. A presidential candidate
running on the claim that he is new to the dirty game of politics
can claim he is sufficiently experienced to hold the highest office
in the land. What is more, he can claim that he is unencumbered by
Washington insiders, while boasting of his Washington insider
running mate, whose record, by the way, as an airhead and
occasional plagiarist is apparently going to be officially
overlooked. All these contradictions trouble not at all, that
institution that columnist Tony Blankley calls
the mainstream moron media. What does trouble the morons is Senator
John McCain’s choice of a running mate.
The liberals’ complaint is that she, Governor Sarah Palin, is
inexperienced. Further, with five children — one a pregnant
teenager, another a child with Down’s syndrome — she has too many
domestic responsibilities to be in government. She also has a son
who is going off to war, and frankly I am curious as to how this
young man will be held against her. Now you might recall that of
the last five presidents four became presidents after serving as
governors. Until just the other day, Washington’s political experts
would tell you that it has been a governor’s mansion not the United
States Senate that has served as the training ground of the modern
president. Further, you might recall that feminists were exhorting
their sisters to “have it all.”
Have a career and a family. Domestic chores were to be shared
with one’s husband. Governor Palin has a husband. So why can she
not serve as vice president? Congresswoman Geraldine Ferrara had
children and actually got to be a Washington insider before running
for vice president. The feminists never ordered her back to the
house and hearth. Well, maybe the problem for Governor Palin is
that troubling matter raised by the investigative reporters of the
New York Times this week, to wit, her husband was arrested
on a DUI charge 22 years ago. If any of you ever runs for public
office, be sure you know your spouse’s police record going back,
presumably, to the age of reason — that would be age seven.
There is a huge whiff of hypocrisy here. That it comes from
practically every outlet of media should remind us of our
insistence at The American Spectator that so polluted with
liberal politics is the political culture that it is rightly termed
a Kultursmog. The workings of the smog have
rarely been as visible as in the aftermath of Senator McCain’s
selection of Governor Palin to be his running mate. She, with her
political career and lifestyle values, is a perfect blend of
feminism and traditional womanhood. Yet, with astonishing speed,
she is being depicted in the mainstream moron media as an
unacceptable vice-presidential candidate. The salient charge is
that she lacks experience, though one would have to be pretty thick
not to notice that she has more experience in governing
than the Democrats’ supposedly experienced yet somehow innocent and
untried presidential candidate.
Also being pumped into the Kultursmog is the canard
that McCain showed bad judgment and haste in choosing the governor
of Alaska. Actually McCain’s campaign reveals plenty of evidence
that its seasoned political operators researched her carefully and
the media’s supposed exposes were no surprise to anyone but the
morons. As for McCain’s judgment, this is the guy who in late 2006
when the roof was falling in on us in Iraq sent President George W.
Bush a three-page letter arguing for what has come to be called
“the surge.” With years of military experience (some of it
firsthand) behind him, and having read recently scholarly reports
on conditions in Iraq, McCain argued that an additional 30,000
troops would create the security to allow a political solution.
Almost everyone was against McCain, including Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some field commanders,
the Iraq Study Group, members of the mainstream moron media, and
the Prophet Obama. Now we know McCain, the agent of change and
bedeviler of Washington insiders, was right. Alas, there is no
applause in the Kultursmog.
