Friday October 3 2008
Guardian.co.UK
Flirting her way to victory

Sarah Palin's farcical debate
performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US
political discourse. At least three times last night, Sarah Palin,
the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at
the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for
attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into
the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally
noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so
lowered the standards both for female candidates and American
political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in
more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed
acceptably last night. By any normal standard, including the ones
applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did
not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no
intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. '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, she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the
subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of
scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating
references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity. It was an
appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as
such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the
truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are
paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as
interpreters of a mythical mass of 'average Americans' whom they
both venerate and despise. In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't
try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to
existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about
subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the
devolution of the war in Afghanistan .

The criteria are far more
vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly
humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators
would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as
ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission
accomplished. There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with
her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force
of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting
emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the
transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre
much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded
to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been
short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will
continue Bush's policies:

'Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again.
You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush
administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans
what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned
education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are
passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and
god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I
think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out
to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School , you
get extra credit for watching the debate.'

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of
speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to
her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised
talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to
play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of
shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her Achilles heel is -- a
question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore -- she
started in on how McCain chose her because of her 'connection to the
heartland of America . Being a mom, one very concerned about a son
in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to
college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?' None of
Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her
son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is
engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described
'fuckin' redneck'. Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never
mind about matters of major public import. In her only
vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney.

What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick
she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce
doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008