By Wes Pedersen
The pundits and the late night comics may be having great sport putting down the notion of Sarah Palin running for president, but the joke could be on them.
Palin, the pundits say in one of their mildest criticisms, could not win the presidency because she doesn't "know policy."
So? Who cares after 10 years of the Bush-Obama policy vacuum? Bush functioned at belt level, launching a war because his gut, Dick Cheney and a coerced CIA told him there had to be weapons of mass destruction hidden in the Iraqi desert. The cerebral Obama spent much of two years pondering two wars with such stupefying indecision that leaders overseas and many voters at home have written him off as an ineffectual clown.
For the late-night comics, Palin is a patsy, a shoot-from-the-lip Annie Oakley, a bull-ahead Mrs. Malaprop, impervious to embarrassment and able to ride along with a gag and win the shafters over, as she did on Saturday Night Live.
For the edgy "Oh, God, not her!"commentators and the preening GOP hopefuls, she is the political equivalent of Alaskan trailer trash.
To the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, she's a "nincompoop"defiling the institution of the presidency. For interviewers like Katie Couric, she was a prize "catch," valued for her ability to make her research-primed questioner look good. ("Was" is the operative word here. Palin has vowed never to set foot in Couric's "biased"tent again.)
Palin's stand-up, fight-back quality endears her to Americans who work hard, often at two jobs, to ensure livelihoods for their families, and who hate the bully boys in business and government whom they see forcing them and theirs deeper and deeper into hardship.
She doesn't back down. She can call North Korea "our ally" on the extremist Glenn Beck show, then correct on cue without a hint of blush or regret. She can claim she can see Russia from her home in Alaska, and stick with it no matter how many geographers insist her stylish glasses need retrofitting.
None of this seems to matter to a large share of Americans. To them Palin is at once The Divine Miss Sarah plus a strikingly female reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider who defied the elements, physical and nature-made, and told it like it was. She is just the right person to head a new party's ticket. Or, in any popularity contest, perhaps, walk away with the Republican nomination.
She doesn't need to know a sweeping range of policies or be able to boast a family of wealth as could Bush or an elitist education as did Obama. She can, as presidents do, buy the insights and guidance of policy wonks, PR advisers, and veteran speechwriters. White House retreads are a nickel a dozen in Washington.
She is Sarah. No last name needed now. She is unique. There has really never been anyone over the years quite like her.
She is not lacking in executive or political experience. She was, after all, governor of Alaska for two years. And she endured a brutally tough campaign as a candidate for the vice presidency, supporting a certified war hero cum veteran of political and party trenches.
She is a Conservative free of the restraints of accurate definition but frontier-certain that government does not owe the public anything, that it's into the forest and on to the tundra for us as foragers if we want to survive.
There is substance there of an unknown density. She's a quick study and capable of ready flashes of wit. That doesn't make her another Ronald Reagan or, for that matter, another schmoozer like Bill Clinton, but she can hold her own in a critical test situation. After her speech at the convention of tea partiers in Nashville in February this year, the Washington Post's notoriously left-hugging Dave Broder shocked the capital with a column proclaiming it time to take her seriously. Her speech, said Broder, proved her "a public figure at the top of her game – a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself,"and who showed a command of national security issues, economics, and fiscal and social policy.
So far Broder's take is holding up. Does it matter if Palin often cannot connect the dots in interviews? Not a bit. She can bring the crowd to its feet if she gets a good speech to read. Sometimes she can hack it pretty good on her own.
She doesn't need to consider running for Second again. If we get down to hard pan, she doesn't have to run for anything. She is hot on Fox and she is making a mint from her books and gotcha talks.
But you know she has to want the keys to that big White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. She has in her time built houses of pure snow on the wild frontier and she would not be human if she did want the chance to try her hand at shaping up the presidential digs.
It will take a lot of doing, of course, before she stands a chance of planting the Palin totem on the White House lawn, but she has demonstrated that she is a can-do lady and has access to plenty of savvy backup. Look at Dancing With the Stars. Palin supporters spent hours voting and re-voting for young Bristol in a strenuous, if unethical, effort to put her at the top of the list of contestants. That, even though gritty Bristol, trying mightily for Mom, demonstrated a total lack of talent.
The money from supporters is already coming in and it will start flowing for real as soon as Palin announces a decision. Not just from the little leagues but from the majors. Business might prefer another moldable Bush, but there will be a rush to cover all bets.
Look for a full-fledged, no kidding, PR campaign to bring Palin forward as a potential candidate for president.
Here's a suggestion the image people behind any Palin for President campaign are free to borrow: create a catchy country tune singing her worthiness as an official candidate. Something like that hit years ago about Davy Crockett. Change the names and we could have "Sarah, Sarah Palin, Queen of the Wild Frontier, kilt her a bear when she was only three. Goin' to the White House to serve a spell, fixin' up the government and laws as well."
Corny? You betcha. But corn sells. Let's get on with it. Let Sarah work her touchy, feely magic on the crowds. We haven't had a truly gifted demagogue to track in a campaign in years.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C. |