I just got through reading Todd Purdum's nearly 10,000-word
Vanity Fair
piece on Sarah Palin, and the most frustrating thing about it
is that it doesn't break any new ground on a woman who has been
scrutinized more heavily over the last ten months than any
politician other than President Obama. Sure, there are a few
gossipy nuggets, such as the fact that candidate Obama "believed
Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides
that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national
candidate, and added, 'I don’t care how talented she is, this is
really a leap.'" There are also a lot of anonymous complaints
from former McCain campaign staffers, the gist of which we've
already heard at one time or another.
The rest of the piece is mainly a rehash of everything we've been
reading for months:
Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin
raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say
about the nature of modern American politics that a public
official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not
only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about
the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement
in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the
Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in
presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election
even after they privately realized she was casual about the
truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most
painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in
contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s
injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history,
and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever
have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for
her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?
I happen to believe Palin deserves neither to be vilified nor
made into a heroine. I always thought the instant comparisons to
Reagan by conservatives after her convention speech went
overboard, as did the demonization of her by the left. Every
treatment of her ever since has followed the same sort of pattern
-- uncritical adoration by her supporters, followed by
vilification, followed by over the top defenses.
Purdum had the time and magazine space to break this cycle and
deliver a more nuanced portrait of Palin. At one point of the
article, recounting her surprising victory in the Alaska
governor's race, Purdum wrote, "Palin’s victory that November was
one of the flukiest successes in modern American politics.
Rebecca Braun, the publisher of the Alaska Budget
Report, a respected nonpartisan newsletter, describes the
result as something 'far beyond anything you could explain in
terms of intellect or training.'"
Well, it might have made for an interesting article if Purdum
explored the mystery of how "the flukiest successes in modern
American politics" came to be, or more broadly, described the
political talents Palin actually displayed over the course of her
apparently inexplicable rise. Instead, we just get a recycled hit
piece that is sure to reignite the worst aspects of the Palin
wars.
UPDATE: Alex Massie offers some
worthwhile thoughts, noting, "The shame of Paln's emergence
last year isn't that she blundered so badly, it's that there
was something there but that, after her convention
speech, that something was lost in the tumult that
engulfed her and, in the end, helped destroy the McCain
campaign."
