THE THING THAT WOULDN’T LEAVE

7/5/09

We are currently winding up our mid-summer sojourn to Long Island, visiting my wife’s family. Out here on “the Island,” they don’t have a newspaper; they have something called “Newsday,” which, whatever it is (some have suggested a cross between The Weekly World News and The National Enquirer, only without quite as much national coverage and searing editorial content), it isn’t a newspaper.

Between the endless stories of Michael Jackson, which, in yet another fulsome display of the never ending and seemingly accelerating determination of our once great nation to thrust itself into the tar pits, seem to dominate every other media outlet in our long ago great country, Newsday had a few stories on the latest “big” development on the national scene, the resignation of Alaska Governor, and failed VP candidate, Sarah Palin. A few observations can be made on this development.

Why does anyone doubt that Mrs. Palin is leaving the governor’s office to run for President full time? The only reason for not suspecting this is the beginning of a multi-year presidential run from yet another Republican who will doubtless tell us we are too focused on politics and government solutions to our problems is that it is simply too obvious. Further proof can be gleaned from this characteristically incoherent comment from the intellectophobe Mrs. Palin:

“I am now looking ahead and how (sic) we can advance this country together (sic) with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed (sic) fiscal restraint.”

Besides the garbled syntax and gormless grammar (or perhaps because of the garbled syntax and gormless grammar), does this sound like someone who is planning to retire to a life of vigilantly sitting on the porch, scanning the sky for the waves of Bear bombers that Mrs. Palin and her supporters, in their most febrile and cherished fantasies, suspect are just waiting to initiate the next big one, WW III?

Admittedly, leaving the only job of any substance one has ever had in preparation for a job that at least in the past had monumental substance might not be the smartest move one could possibly make. As John Weaver, a (according to Newsday) senior strategist for John McCain’s (Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?) presidential campaign, intoned in the wake of Mrs. Palin’s announcement,

“A good point guard (Mr. Weaver was extending one of Mrs. Palin’s seemingly endless sports analogies; I suppose when one knows nothing about public policy, one must fall back on sports analogies from one’s high school days.) wouldn’t walk off the court midgame and expect a better contract two or three years down the road.”

All that is true, but since when can one legitimately accuse Mrs. Palin of being bright? Haven’t we all grown rather used to her doing what normal people would consider stupid things?

Speaking of Mr. Weaver, he is also quoted in the Newsday article as saying:

“If this (i.e., Mrs. Palin’s quitting her job.) is a launching pad for 2012, it’s a curious move. Policy is politics, and she has no real accomplishments as governor.”

Hmm…

Mr. Weaver was “a former senior strategist for McCain’s presidential bids,” and he thought that Mrs. Palin had “no real accomplishments as governor”? But that didn’t stop Mr. McCain (Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?) from putting this fatuous ingenue in a position to be president of the United States, with full access to the (perhaps now figurative) nuclear football. Mr. Obama is no prize, and Mr. Biden might be scary, but, still, when I consider the alternative, I feel slightly less inclined to reach for a Bromo when I hear Mr. Obama blathering on about things about which he knows little but cares very deeply.

Mrs. Palin’s behavior, and Mr. McCain’s willingness to thrust her upon an unsuspecting, but largely innocent (in a number of ways) American populace for what he, in his jumbled brain, considered political expediency, lends further evidence to a recurring theme in the Pontificator; to wit, politics is a silly sport engaged in by feckless, self-absorbed people. It’s a damn shame that we, the American people, by neglecting our duties as citizens, have put so much power and control over our lives into the hands of such vacuous, vain, and vapid people.