Beauties: Sarah Palin
September 5th, 2008 by 
But I get Sarah Palin. I will, I am sure, come to like her either less or more as I learn more about her, but based on what I have read about her record, and on her performance at the RNC, I now think of her as a fine example of her type: she’s a natural, so comfortable in a position of leadership as to be quite organically fearless. Setting aside the specifics of her positions, or her party’s positions, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t, even setting aside the words and phrases that she did or didn’t write in her speech, I saw in her demeanor what I took for the rarest brand of fearlessness, the kind that comes of complete immersion in a calling, from being in that flow state that I myself have only felt a few times here and there (in my case while writing a novel or editing a newspaper). She was in her element, and it was a thing to see. There are different forms of fearlessness. Psychopaths are fearless, and you want to avoid putting those in office. Stupid people can be fearless when they don’t know any better, and stubborn people sometimes seem to have Novocaine in their veins. Then there’s the kind of fearlessness that is acquired through repetitive risk taking, met with repetitive success. That’s the kind I saw in Palin last night, and that I read in her record as a reformer who isn’t afraid to be hated. There’s a down side to this kind of fearlessness; it can become rote and insensitive–the fight can become habitual and knee-jerk. It can lead to premature judgments–a history of triumph naturally leading one to think of oneself as being right all the time, of trusting one’s instincts over facts. It can be messy, as reformers can’t reform without stepping on toes and leaving a trail of disgruntled bureaucrats and outright enemies. And what happens when the natural reformer has reformed everything, do they just keep stirring the pot disruptively? Sometimes they do. This is a woman who probably learned what it felt like to lead on a high school basketball team. Her next stop was the PTA, and from there, the City Council. I used to be a small town journalist, and I’ve met politicians just like her. There are a surprising number of them out there, people who step up and put one foot in front of the other and do the one right thing at a time, for one right reason at a time; in whom the necessity of ambition unfurls slowly, naturally, indistinguishably from the issues themselves. They are rarely partisan. I’ve also met the incumbents, cronies, gadflies and critics who take up an awful lot of space in local politics, infusing them with incompetence, apathy, the most pedestrian forms of corruption, and even a taint of actual lunacy. Challenge them and you will get a lot of grief. Palin puts me in mind a bit of Kevin Johnson, the NBA star and community activist who is now running for mayor of Sacramento. He too is a controversial figure, with as many detractors as champions, and he is being turned inside out publicly while taking on an incumbent mayor whose main shortcoming seems to be that she’s no Kevin Johnson, ie, she is a mediocrity. I admire Palin’s purported aggressiveness when she took the reins in Wasilla, where she asked several key officials for their resignation letters as a show of support, and her later willingness to fire early and fire often in Anchorage. In running for mayor and later governor, each time she picked off an incumbent and rode into office with a mandate to reform. And unlike Mayor Carcetti on HBO’s The Wire, that quintessential callow compromiser, she followed through. There is also a longstanding tradition of leaders asking for mass resignations. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom asked hundreds of city officials for resignation letters in 2007. The willingness to be disliked is one of the only clear signals that a politician is sincere. And according to Matt Welch, on Reason Hit and Run, Sarah Palin is roundly despised by close to 100% of Alaska’s Republican establishment. She also has something like an 80% approval rating with Alaskans. Taken together, those are about the best numbers any politician could have. If the election were taking place today, I would cast for Obama (can’t say for sure until I’m in the booth) in part due to Welch’s McCain debunking, but of all the humans on the ticket, Palin is the one I’d vote for to be my mayor, or governor. I also admire the good people at Hillary Green Mountain (linked by Tammy Bruce, another fearless individual), who have come out in support of Palin’s candidacy (as opposed to supporting the candidate), out of sheer disgust at the shrill, vulgar attacks on her, and the silly clamoring to condemn her for being either a bad mommy, a scary churchgoer, or an incorrect feminist. I’m not bothered by Palin’s anti-abortion stance, and I say this as a staunchly pro-choice woman who has exercised her rights in this arena. I believe in real choice, which means that I have as much respect for law-abiding pro-lifers as I have for the people who run planned parenthood-you can be a good and honorable person and embrace either position. I find a great deal of consistency and integrity in Palin’s backing up these beliefs with actions, both in her support of her pregnant daughter and her decision to carry her disabled son to term. As a parent of a teen myself, I am angered and saddened by cries that her daughter’s pregnancy reflects badly on Palin’s parenting–these things do happen, and they can happen to anyone. Obama is absolutely right on that score; it is a personal matter, involving human beings with entirely private motivations and feelings. When Al Gore’s 6 year-old son was hit by a car after running into the street right in front of his parents, did we viciously attack Gore for being a bad parent? Of course not, because he isn’t. And neither is Palin, that we actually know of. For some emotional intelligence on the issue of reining ourselves in on this front, try Megan at Jezebel.com. I share most of her sentiments. I haven’t said anything yet about Palin’s beauty. I love her Elizabeth Hurley hair, and she carries herself like the marathon runner that she is. She is a charismatic person, comparable in that regard, as I mentioned in a comment on Nancy’s blog, to Bill Clinton. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Barack Obama. An Obama/Palin ticket, now that would interest me a great deal…
I don’t "get" Obama, even though I may well vote for him. I’m not even talking about the politics, just the phenomenon of the personality cult. I see others digging him so soulfully, and I find their belief credible, but he holds no magnetism for me. I don’t hate but also don’t get Elizabeth Taylor either, the Beatles or Star Wars (give me Marilyn, the Beach Boys and Battlestar Gallactica).
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