Back to School

I was going to write that I had thought Sarah Palin’s obvious weaknesses could have been converted to strengths.

I was going to write that her obvious inexperience in foreign policy—or, any real policy outside of Alaska—would be blunted by controversy surrounding Obama’s “community organizing”, either because of its purported lack of gravitas or the unsavory characters Obama associated with in these organizations. (This despite the fact that Obama’s Chicago “communities’” populations might have approached the total population of Alaska).

I has hoped that Gov. Palin’s sex would serve to a) reintroduce gender into the race after the Obama campaign thought it had cleared that hurdle by beating Hillary, at the same time that it would b) serve as a living breathing rejoinder to hard Left Marxist gynocentrism that remains a fundamental part of the current Democratic zeitgeist, in spite of—or even because of—her Assembly of G-d-driven outlook (vis-à-vis abortion, sex education, etc.).

I had surmised that her lack of policy experience, her relatively short political c.v. and her deeply held, unabashed belief system would be less vulnerable to generic political charges of flip-flopping, because she hadn’t had enough opportunities to do it.

I was going to theorize that the combination of these factors, and the fact that she (credibly) holds herself out as a working-class mom with a regular family (and, a certainly “imperfect” family, which could only work in her favor) and rising from the PTA to the governor’s mansion would resonate more widely with the American public than Obama’s tale of growing up with a single mother in, while not privileged, certainly a unique set of circumstances that relate to American life in much narrower (and, certainly his case, more “elite”) sense.

I hoped, once I had ceased being a swing voter and committed to the McCain-Palin ticket, that all of this would coalesce into a solid electoral asset for the ticket; especially with an economic crisis afoot where the conventional wisdom and general perception is that it is a Republican creation, her impression of a complete political and economic outsider could only help the ticket’s prospects.

I couldn’t decide whether she had handled, or been handled, in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. However, it was evident that she had been able, to q certain degree, deflect their obvious biases, if not highlight them, so those were, at worst, a draw for her.

Then I watched tonight’s debates and saw what exactly she was up against.

It was obvious that she is being kept on a short leash.

It was clear that the hope was that, unlike her appearance onstage in Minneapolis where she truly shined, that she would simply not screw up.

It was revealed that she was truly a national policy neophyte who needed her talking points scripted and that she, unlike her counterpart, was breaking her teeth selling them in an arena where the playing field was actually level.

More importantly, it was the first time the people running the McCain campaign were really in a no-win situation, realized it, but realized they couldn’t do anything about it.

Obama sounded like a Senator. McCain sounded like a Senator. Biden sounded like a Senator.

Sarah Palin sounded like a schoolmarm, or at best, a parochial high-school social studies teacher conducting a current events lesson.

Now I might be biased, because there was only one social studies teacher I ever liked/had a crush on, and she looked nothing like Sarah Palin. I don’t think that was the case, however; I didn’t get the impression that she was being overbearing. It made her look like she wanted to finish the lesson before the class became inevitably unruly.

This time, Biden took her back to school.

I have written off the McCain campaign before, even as I had been leaning to (and am now committed to) voting for the McCain ticket.

I’m not doing that now. Up until now, Palin was an unqualified asset to the ticket. And, now that she has been freed from this social obligation of the electoral season, its time for the ticket to take off the leash and let her do what she does best.

Attack.