Deconstructing Sarah Palin

Joe Lieberman says “anyone who underestimates Sarah Palin as a political force in America does so at some peril because she is speaking for a lot of people out there.â€

Of course, the same was said about George Wallace in the 1960s, Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and Huey Long in the 1930s, earlier demagogues who preyed on fears and prejudices and spoke for a lot of people “out there.â€

“I think Sarah Palin for a lot of people has become a spokesman,†Lieberman told the right-wing Web site Newsmax. “People worried that government has forgotten them, has grown too big, that the deficit is growing too large and in some sense that we’re not being as strong as we should be in the world — Gov. Palin has spoken to those concerns as much as anyone. I don’t know what her future is, but everybody should listen.â€

This is the same Joe Lieberman who told us not to worry too much about Palin becoming president when she ran for vice president on the ticket with his hero, John McCain in 2008.

“Thank God, she’s not going to have to be president from Day One. McCain’s going to be alive and well,†said Lieberman of the 72-year-old McCain when asked if Palin was prepared to be president. Then, when some McCain handlers suggested that was a rather uninspiring endorsement for a McCain supporter to issue, he offered an amendment:

“Let’s hope she never has to be ready because we hope McCain is elected and lives out his term. But if, God forbid, an accident occurs or something of that kind, she’ll be ready. She’s had executive experience. She’s smart and she will have had on-the-job training.â€

Well, it turned out she proved then and continues to prove she isn’t smart, not as smart as Huey Long or George Wallace or maybe even Joe McCarthy, but given our tendency to turn to demagogues like them in difficult times, she’s potentially as dangerous. And Joe Lieberman should know that.

About the time Joe was telling the conservative blogger that we should listen to Sarah, the conservative journalist Kathleen Parker was declared the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor, for “perceptive, witty columns on an array of political and moral issues, gracefully sharing her experiences and values that lead to her unpredictable conclusions.â€

Parker was an early Palin admirer. “When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted,†Parker wrote in The National Review. “Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted.â€

But Parker quickly saw, when Palin took part in unrehearsed interviews, that she came across as “an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.â€

This was written during the Wall Street crisis that proved to be the Republican ticket’s undoing. Parker was especially depressed by Palin’s response when Katie Couric asked about polls that showed the financial crisis had boosted Obama:

“I’m not looking at poll numbers,†Palin said. “What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change and who’s actually done it.â€

“If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself,†wrote Parker.

Since then, Palin has abandoned her elected office as Alaska’s governor, become a best-selling author, a multi-millionaire and the darling of the Tea Parties and our junior senator. We have heard her irrational attacks on health-care reform, with frightening visions of “people standing in front of Obama’s death panel so bureaucrats can decide whether they’re worthy of health care.â€

But as Lieberman says, “she’s a very warm and likable person.â€

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.