Press to People: Take Serious Who We Take Serious

I watched the speech last night - Palin's that is; I had it DVRd. I thought it was a good speech and it was interesting hearing it in its entirety after hearing commentary on it through the day. From what I heard, the typical press guys are characterizing it as taking the gloves off, etc. This is because, shocker, she had the audacity to mock the man with the audacity to hope. How can you resist mocking this guy who unabashadly considers himself quasi-Messianic (is that a word?)? But she did it with a smile on her face, which galls them even more; they are only capable of the same with a sneer plastered on their mugs. Olberman is a perfect demonstration of this - comparing her to the Reese Witherspoon character in election while trying to maintain the demeanor of the anchorman with objective gravitas.

I would say the only personal aspect of her criticism of him regarded his saying one thing in Scranton and another in San Francisco, which of course he did. That's a personal swipe when you point out that a guy is a phoney populist even if you got the tape-recorded evidence. But there are 2 types of people in this world - those in the Harvard set (not restricted to Harvard grads of course) and those who (like it or not) need to be governed by them. And the hard part is the necessary pandering the Harvard set has to go through to get the yokels to vote for them. It is the height of impoliteness to call a guy out for such pandering, given that the pandering is for their own good.

You think about the differences between Palin and Obama, and then the differences in press treatment, and it really is amazing. The press position is that this man is to be taken seriously because we the press take him seriously. His entire launch onto the national stage was basically a creation of the press; he gets a pretty key speech at the 2004 convention, but again with really nothing that preceded it in the way of accomplishment and within weeks he was donning the cover of either Newsweek or Time as the guy who is going to make us purple instead of blue and red. With Palin, the press position is completely the opposite - if she was meant to be taken seriously we would have taken her seriously prior to her being announced the VP nominee.

There is no reason to believe that Obama will make the country purple, and I for one want to stay red, and I am pretty sure Professor Vic would prefer to stay blue. Bipartisanship is really not to be considered a worthy goal in and of itself; if a Dem wants more government spending, and a Republican wants less, what bipartisan solution will satisfy both. The only time you see real bi-partisanship is when you have some bill where the Congress is making it illegal to publish pornographic pictures of baby seals; it's easy to get on board for something like that and monstrous not to, but in the end no one's life turns on the legislation. But if for whatever reason crossing the aisle is to be desired for its own sake, McCain is actually the one who has the track record in this area; Obama would have to show up in the chamber in order to cross the aisle, and he has been a straightline partisan vote for the Dems.

This is precisely why the more leftwing of the Democratic party is so enthused with Obama; they don't want bipartisanship, they want their guy. It is the same for the conservative base of the Republican party - if they wanted bipartisanship, they would have been enthused with McCain from the outset. If Obama wins, and I don't think he will, that will be the irony: whereas he is being sold to independents as a bipartisan guy bent on reforming government, McCain is far more bi-partisan, and together with Palin, the ticket has a real record of reform and taking on corruption. Obama has nothing to point to as evidence of bipartisanship or reform. Nothing. Zero. Nada.