DUMMIES WE
Posted at 2:37 pm. ET
Dean Barnett has an excellent piece in The Weekly Standard, examining how the Democrats are likely to assault Sarah Palin. Very perceptive, I think:
In 1981, former Harry Truman consigliere and LBJ Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford memorably labeled the new Republican sheriff in town an "amiable dunce." At the time, Clifford was the living embodiment of the Washington establishment, and his glib analysis showed that while you can find the occasional memorable phrase on the D.C. cocktail circuit, facile conclusions delight the crowd more than serious inquiry.
And...
However obtuse, Clifford's summation of Reagan sat on the cutting edge of a new school of political partisanship. Starting with Gerald Ford, the inside-the-beltway class and its amplifiers in the media have routinely decided that Republicans who seek national office are dullards. Literally every Republican candidate for president since 1980 has had his intellect belittled.
That is correct. It's remarkable that many Democrats still refer to Reagan as "stupid," and regard the current president, who reads widely, as intellectually stunted. He is not. This really began, though, not with Ford, but with Eisenhower, one of the most thoughtful men ever to hold the presidency. Democrats sneered at him as a simpleton and an "Army man."
Of course, no such scrutiny greets Democratic candidates. Barack Obama can't make it through a 30 second extemporaneous statement on his campaign bus without a profusion of "ums" and "ahs." And yet Obama's stumbling diction has yet to interest his worshippers in the press the way that George H.W. Bush's periodic wrestling matches with the English language did.
But, dearies, our Barack is simply searching for the precise word, the way a true intellect would. Don't you understand that?
Because it's difficult to argue that Barack Obama has more experience or has achieved greater accomplishments than Palin, the Democrats are left to fall back on their old Obama standby--Judgment. As Judgment is applied in the Obama context, it means Obama can serve as president because he's extremely intelligent.
And went to the right schools, too, not like that Alaska person.
So in order to bring down Palin, her malefactors on the left will have to argue a lack of "readiness," which with the thinly credentialed Obama on the other ticket can only serve as a shorthand for lack of intelligence. Chances are, ink-stained wretches are plumbing Palin's every past public utterance desperately seeking the evidence that proves she too is an amiable dunce. Of course, any misstatement on the campaign trail will serve as prima facie proof of her dim intellect.
And...
In spite of her many and notable self-made successes, an entire intellectual industry has already sprouted up with the sole intention of proving that she's a moron. The left wants to Quayle-ize her, and their efforts to do so won't be half-hearted.
I'm afraid that's correct. But there's good news...
She controls how the American people will come to view her much more than they do. There's a reason her excellent speech on Friday set off such a firestorm of rage and irrational hissy-fits on the left. Speaking directly to the American people, Palin cut an attractive and intelligent figure. Regardless of the left's anger, the American people will believe their own eyes rather than a frustrated blogger's or haughty anchorman's blustery "analysis."
When Clark Clifford toured the D.C. cocktail party circuit with his "amiable dunce" assessment of Ronald Reagan, most of the assembled sippers agreed. History proved them wrong. But that's not what really has the left rattled as they set off in pursuit of Sarah Palin. The American people knew Ronald Reagan was no dunce long before the Clark Cliffords of Washington admitted as much.
Well said. Read the piece.
August 31, 2008. |