Lucky Sarah Palin

Ever since I could remember I'd wished I'd been lucky
enough to be alive. . . when something big was going on-like the
crucifixion. And suddenly I realized I was.

- Ben Shahn, On Painting a gouache: Bartolmeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco

Sarah
Palin is one lucky dude. Under any other set of circumstances her
chances of becoming vice-president of the United States would have been
adversely affected by two recent events. As it is, the conservatives'
beloved Josephine Sexpack will in all probability be unaffected by
either.

The first event that caused Sarah Paliln's admirers
to swoon was her performance in the vice-presidential debate that took
place on October 3, 2008. To the astonishment of some and the delight
of many she demonstrated how good an ill-prepared and uninformed
debater be could be if properly attired and assertive enough to ignore
questions and instead address whatever topic the debater concluded
would please the audience and permit her to use prepared answers.

In
her debating style Sarah resembled the graduate student who, having
spent most of her academic life studying the mouse, is asked in her
oral examination to describe the characteristics of the elephant. The
graduate student responds by saying that the elephant is grey, like the
mouse, and with that opening, spends the rest of her time describing
the mouse. When asked by the moderator to "respond to what [Biden] said
about Sen. McCain's comments about health care" she imitated the
hapless graduate student saying: "I would like to respond about the tax
increases." Then, so as not to leave the viewer with the impression
that she did not understand the rules of the debate she explained:
"And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you
want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and
let them know my track record also." So much for debating protocol.

Of
course not everyone was put off by Sarah's performance. Prior to the
debate a number of conservative commentators had questioned Sarah's
qualification for the job for which she'd been nominated. David Brooks
of the New York Times said many conservatives
say that Sarah is qualified to be vice-president because "something
that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators,
like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat
demur, suggest in different ways that she is unready." Joining the
critics Mr. Brooks says Sarah "has not been engaged in national issues,
does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President
Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness
and excessive decisiveness." Seeking to temper his criticism of her,
however, he concluded by criticizing the "smug condescension that has
so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place."

Those
comments were made two weeks before the debate. After the debate, Mr.
Brooks, swooned. Sarah had acquired no new skills between the time Mr.
Brooks first wrote and the debate. Nonetheless, he was swept off his feet.
Ignoring "the elephant is grey like the mouse" he bragged about her
ability to "complete an extemporaneous paragraph." He described her
forcefulness on the subject of Iran, singling out for special praise
her ability to pronounce "Ahmadinejad", something, he said admiringly,
she does better than her running mate. Arising from swoon he said:
"[few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a
performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night." With that
level of adulation it is safe to say that the latest bump in the Palin
road will hardly be noticed.

On October 10, 2008, the report
on Alaska's "Troopergate" was made public. The report was commissioned
by a bipartisan Alaska Legislature committee and was written by Stephen
Branchflower, a former Anchorage prosecutor. Finding Number One of his
report says: "I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by
violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch
Ethics Act." In speaking with the Anchorage Daily News Sarah said
that she was "pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing. . . any
hint of any kind of unethical activity there." At first learning of
Sarah's response those who had read the report were unable to
understand how she might arrive at a sense of vindication from the
language in the report. The Anchorage Daily News described her response
as "either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian" Sen. Kim Elton
of Alaska said her characterization of the report was wrong and that
the first finding clearly stated she violated the ethics law.

For
those who are alarmed by the thought of someone with that kind of a
response to that kind of a report becoming vice-president there is good
news after all. Sarah's aides said she had not read the report but had
been "extensively briefed" on it. They had probably not gotten to pages
7 and 8 where the bad stuff is. We can be confident that after she's
read it she will issue an appropriate mea culpa. She probably won't
have time to read it before the election, however.