Beyond the Palin: You got what you wanted. Is it what you really asked for?

"You got what you wanted. Is it what you really asked for?"

Spoke on the phone Friday to a local friend who reads the mumblings here. Said he'd enjoyed the recent posts and asked what I really meant about the above what you wanted/asked for statement in a Tuesday post preceding her Wed transformation into Joan d'Alaska. Maybe I should explain.

John McCain came across Thursday nite as the decent guy that, for the most part, he really seems to be. The McCain that many liked in 2000. Problem is, the John McCain of last nite seems an alien creature compared to Rudy, Mitt, Mike, Sarah and the other Storm Troopers who seem not to perceive or want to believe what their Brand (R) has been up to these last 8 to 30 years or so.

I'll get to the point. Right about now, I'd estimate 40% of Republicans--at least--are vaguely daydreaming if they can recall the primary vote result and flip their ticket, Palin-McCain.

She was that much good beyond what a worried and morose party ever expected. You got what you wanted. Is it what you really asked for? was me firing up the pattern language machinery and finding shot out the other end a collection of attributes equaling the Pleasantville Bijou showing Annie Get your Gun. In other words, another impossible but appealing figure like Reagan. In order to embrace her, one must find peace with some messy private and public facts that are counter to what defines Republican 'high ground,' defines its 'intergity' argument and is the basis for, yes, the ability of small town/heartland America to look down its nose at all those decadent, corrupt, undisciplined and immoral urban, minority and liberal Americans.

That's a tough assignment. And that, not heartless sexist journalists, is why she's MIA from actual interviews and real questions and only doing scripted rallies for the next two weeks.

Before I go any further, let me give you a snip of Marc Ambinder IM-ing with David Lat...

marc ambinder (2:59:31 PM): So -- David Lat -- why Palin?
DavidLatIM (3:00:22 PM): I was just floored by her performance at the convention.
DavidLatIM (3:00:35 PM): I was a bit skeptical about her selection at first.
DavidLatIM (3:00:44 PM): But when I saw her speak, I had the reaction that so many others did.
DavidLatIM (3:00:46 PM): A star is born.
marc ambinder (3:00:51 PM): She's a star. Is she a VP?
DavidLatIM (3:00:53 PM): This is my Obama - 2004 convention moment.
DavidLatIM (3:01:20 PM): Well, some of my reasons for supporting Palin are a bit idiosyncratic, and independent of the minutiae of policy platforms
DavidLatIM (3:01:26 PM): or her record on various issues.
DavidLatIM (3:01:50 PM): But I do think she would be a very capable leader.
DavidLatIM (3:02:02 PM): But it's like being in love -- reason flies out the window!
DavidLatIM (3:02:17 PM): You just have a visceral reaction to someone, and you're off to the races.

"[R]eason flies out the window!" "Visceral." Yeah, exactly. (Exchanges like these are how you can tell if someone who's read the work of Donald Norman gets the power of Visceral, Behavioral and Reflective or not.)

What was missing for those dutiful Rs up to Wednesday night in St Paul was love, and identification. The reason the POW stuff is being pushed so hard by McCain and other professional Rs is that they know that it's the only limbic thread of the man's existence, their primary hope of bonding us to him. He is a lonely warrior, a maverick, in the original and truest sense of the word: 1: an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf.

But, as Thursday night showed, it wasn't cutting it. Reviewing the speech, when Mac talked policies and initiatives, the crowd shots and reaction were of polite boredom and meeting requirements. The POW historiana evoked sympathy, some admiration, but not love. The two times he mentioned Maggie Croft? Delirium. And nobody gets delirious about resumes except maybe the occasional Physicist or Tax-Accountant.

But!--some say--but, he's a fighter pilot! We're supposed to admire him, want to be him (at least, that's the assumption of us men out there.) Yeah, we're s'posed to, but something ain't right: he doesn't have it. Beyond the mostly veiled prickly temperament, McCain dosn't seem Iceman or Maverick. He just seems affably lost, unsure. Maybe that's anecdotally proven by his yo-yo-ing between challenge and embrace of his party. Maybe there's something of this to his dalliance with Kerry in '04. Either way, he's a man in search of something besides a more comfortable skin.

His running mate doesn't have that problem. In fact, she's the very Freudian solution.

The truth is, we like who we like and reason or resumes are buzzkill, previous sacred truths are disposable, moral high ground becomes beside the point and beyond objective terms. Her imprintability--proof of current conservatism's idyllic potential despite all contrary evidence--this imagery was perceivable from a mile away. After her sudden Friday intro, my first reaction wasn't phoooey, it was uh-oh. Republicans lacked confidence. She had it. They were bereft of energy. She brought jumper cables. They lacked a compelling narrative. She was a mini-series of not-so-Desperate Housewives. (A not-so surprising must-see hit in "values voting" places like Mitchell, SD or Jackson, MS.)

There she was, in flesh and frames, the presentation that so many consultants would laugh at if you suggested it on paper: Female power in a package that's acceptable, affirmative, attractive and slightly, well, Oedipal. She is a Mom, -hockey variety. And, sorry, but it's important and relevant, she's a Mom, -ILF variety. Why's it important? Because she appears not to have had to make an "artificial" choice, or, at least, suffered for her choices. Because she appears to be ideal--feminine, fertile and powerful-- and to have done it by following a particular political philosophy of life that has, over the last many years, had some astounding failures of concept.

A look at some of the pundit estimations of spans the archtypal theater: She's the 7th Grade teacher/librarian you crushed on, or the unflappable mom of a friend you wished you could trade yours for, or the unstudiedly pulled-together and snappy wife you'd like to have or imagine yourself to be. She really does bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Probably field dresses the hog, too. And, oh, yeah--she's had some jobs in government and doesn't take shit, or so we're told. But even if we weren't told, we'd fill in the blanks to our satisfaction.

Phew. A hell of a bundle of exposition and improbability, eh? Well, as they say, love, comedy and frogs tend to die when you dissect them.

And that's Palin's problem, and the reason for: You got what you wanted. Is it what you really asked for? In order to embrace Palin for short-term electoral advantage, Republicans are torpedoing their own rhetorical and brand platform of the last 30 years. Let's summarize.

With her Mayoral stint, we're asked to believe she's the Jack Welch of town government. Yet, she bombed in the first 9 months and was 'encouraged' by her State Republican Party to hire a Town manager. A town of 5000. One that previous Mayors had no trouble running without a chaperone. The WSJ has already shown that the one project of significance she touched in Wasilla (Sarah's Sammy Sosa Moment) remains a debacle that boosted town debt and remains a drain on very limited resources due to shabby management and poor foresight. Plenty of pitbull, little lipstick, but a lot of red.

As Mayor, and Governor, in a state that depends on getting $1.87 back for every 1.00 it pays in federal taxes, Palin is well schooled in lobbying for earmarks. And, again, what knowledge she didn't have, she bought. Palin hired Wasilla's first lobbyist. And he was good, as Sarah's note to council at right shows.

"Thanks, but no thanks" on The Bridge to Nowhere as well as other reformist fictions (Jets sold at a loss, not profit, etc) are available out there via the Google, but I'm sure folks who laughed at "I was for it before I was against it" by Kerry are not likely test Palin's factually challenging yet homey persona. After all, he was only on a boat in the Mekong Delta, Palin dispatched some Guardsmen to fight a fire and lives right across the sea from Russia.

Like much of small town rural America, Palin's and McCain's narrative is an example of hope over experience, facade attempting to overpower fact. And while nobody can be faulted for wanting to believe in home, so much of our practical experience requires exaggerating, importing and adopting negative imagery of others to soften the reality of our own failures.

Wasilla is the seat of Matanuska-Susitna Borough (like a county of parish.) As it turns out, Alaska State Police have a less than flattering name for the 25 miles of Parks Highway (Rt-3) book-ending the Towns of Houston and Palmer with Wasilla bang in the middle: they call it The Meth Capital of Alaska. Did concerened mother Palin do much about this? The public information is sketchy but her primary M.O. was cutting, not adding programs. Social services just werehn't her bag. Tom Anderson, ex-Mayor of the Mat-Su borough itself, seems to have a different view of "having responsibilities." He's working with those pathetic and elitist dabblers called Community Organizers to tackle a meth problem that boiled up under Palin's Council and Mayoral terms.

Just about the only bullet point of "Give 'em Hell, Sarah!" that holds up is her "taking on big oil companies." But even that doesn't exactly shimmer with canny acumen. Palin's claim to have "began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence" just ain't so. She's awarded a $500 million (Wow!) feasibility and logistics study. As this article from Andrew Halcro, actual Republican Maverick notes, Palin's earlier Mayoral project-mismanagement talents bump smack into another underpublicized thread of her mythology: building her own legacy ($20 mill small town sport complexes or hypothetical $40 billion trans-national pipelines), often gets funded by floating public debt or by picking pockets shallow and deep--regressive sales tax increases on retail and staple foods and (progressive, no less!) taxation of windfall business profits. That's so un-Sarah!™ So un-Republican™ So, well, Socialist™.

Even though many AK Republicans have called her a liberal menace because of her crappy business acumen and schizophrenic, taxophilic style, they're holding off saying that now for the current media record because they too know that Sarah Palin is just what Republicans wanted--and needed. But given all the smells drifting southward, I somehow think she's not exactly what they asked for.

The word from Wasilla and AK republican circles is that "Sarah Palin will look you straight in the eye... and tell you that black is white." Many fired employees seem to suggest that arguing back is not a wise thing to do if you value your integrity more than your paycheck. It's not nice or wise to fool with Mother's Nature Governor. Speaking of which, did you notice we left Bristol and Levi ("Weren't they cute together?!") out of our proceedings above?

That is intentional and, mostly, because I'm under-qualified to offer a judgment that women and mothers themselves are already wrestling with. The disconnect, or hypocrisy if you like, are obvious. Palin made some dumb choices that directly affected a minor who probably wanted a second chance and forgiveness and calm more than a slot on prime-time TV and jokes from Leno and Letterman. I know my wife is wondering what the hell she was thinking--the mom, not the child. Time will tell, but I'm doubtful that Sarah's banishment from interviews is going to
add sheen to her Supermom persona. You got what you wanted, John McCain, a People Magazine celebrity-phenom as a running mate. Let's see if you got more than you asked for.

Well, you've been very patient as I spun out my Sunday ramble. I have to go to a fundraising picnic at my (Republican) Councilwoman's house. No doubt the conversation will orbit heavily around Palin and the National election. I'm staying out of it and strictly poking fun at disillusioned supporters of my ham-handed Mayor and ex-Governor, Doug Wilder.