Sarah this, Sarah that. Sarah Schmarah.

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Sarah this, Sarah that.

Sarah Schmarah.

The question is really this:

If, because of a long, "jobless recovery", a large number of America's 350,000,000 people would enjoy listening to a demagogue, then finding a very effective one among 350,000,000 people won't be all that difficult.

Is it Sarah?

Well, at the moment she is the most known and commented contender.

Is she "too dumb" to succeed?

Being a successful demagogue really doesn't take that much of a "brain", it takes a talent mostly.

Palin's convention speech showed that she had that talent.

Examining the "brain" thing in demagogues:

Remember that the most successful demagogue of all time, Adolph Hitler, was dumb enough to declare war on the USA, when he was already at war with the Soviet Union. They don't come any dumber than that.

However, so that there be no confusion, unlike many of history's demagogues Sarah Palin is certainly not an antisemite, in fact, she is a staunch friend of Israel.

This from the Washington Times:

Sarah Palin displays an Israeli flag in her governor's office in Juneau, even though she has never been to the country, and attends Protestant evangelical churches that consider the preservation of the state of Israel a biblical imperative.

Her faith makes her a favorite with the staunchly pro-Israel neoconservative elements in the Republican Party.

A couple of general rules of thumb when considering demagogues:

1.) The people who follow demagogues aren't interested in thinking, they are interested in feeling: demagoguery is a form of political pornography: up and on, who cares about the "plot"?

2.) The rational people who use demagogues do plenty of thinking, in fact, they don't want anybody else to think very much at all.

That is the whole point of demagoguery, to eliminate rational thought.

That is the whole point of fascism for that matter, to replace objective, individual thought with mass emotion.

The question remains: is there a market right now or in the foreseeable future for someone like this?

That is the real problem, not, for the moment, a lady named Sarah Palin. DS

It doesn't matter that *we* don't like Sarah Palin

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Several commentators, notably David Brooks, have been comparing Sarah Palin to Richard Nixon. Here is Brooks:

No one thought Richard Nixon — a far less personable commodity than Palin — would come back either after his sour-grapes “last press conference” of 1962. But Democratic divisions and failures gave him his opportunity in 1968. With unemployment approaching 10 percent and a seemingly bottomless war in Afghanistan, you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.

From the point of view of those who sympathize with neither Nixon or Palin, what should worry us about Palin is her natural charisma. Nixon had none. Nixon had to work harder and hustle more than anyone to get where he got, everything about him was forced, sweaty jowled and unnatural. Palin on the contrary irradiates whatever it is that makes (some, a lot of) people like or identify with her.

That we don't like her is nothing for her to worry about. That, despite the Republican establishment's disparagement, Palin's base still supports her gives the GOP a lot to worry about and should probably trouble the rest of us too.

I think that Sarah Palin is frightening many Republican "realist" (read pro-business) commentators because they realize that she is a monster that the party has been creating since Nixon's "Southern Strategy". The fiscal conservatives have been using the social conservatives and the just generally resentful and racist elements as cannon fodder to win elections and now they finally see what Nixon hath wrought.

The Republican rage against her is because they see that they have fallen into a trap of their own construction: the party of the rich, which catered to the yokels is now in danger of being taken over by the yokels... which could be catastrophic for American business interests all over the world.

Certainly continuing high unemployment with no relief on the horizon is the recipe for populism. Since left wing populism is out of the question in America, then it would have to be right-wing populism. Palin would be a perfect poster girl for such a movement.

The rise of socially conservative populism would be a joker in the deck that could derail globalization and interrupt the pantomime of American politics. The idea sounds fun, but the reality could be pretty terrible. DS

If it isn't Sarah, it'll be somebody like Sarah

Every mom we know multitasks. And I am one to believe I can use an all-of-the-above approach, too. I can abandon Alaska and ambition myself for the presidency. I can get bored with my job and fight apathy. I can take the easy path out to work hard on a path for fruitfulness. I can move on selfishly and call it altruistically. I don’t need a title now when I can shake up the good ol’ boys and get a better title in the end. Maureen Dowd - Sarah’s Secret Diary - NYT

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Sarah Palin's fine adventure is a sign of things to come.

We are looking at a scenario that could produce a serious mutation in the system, which, even if it doesn't make it all the way to the White House, could seriously warp America's political landscape.

Although there is much talk of "green shoots", most observers seem to concur that high unemployment is here to stay for quite a long time. That the number of white, working poor is growing exponentially and that this group, very large although unhyphenated, with all of its former left wing populist fervor long since extirpated, is bereft of any ideology except charismatic Christianity; with its critical faculties dulled to disappearance by a brutish corporate entertainment culture and drugged with sentimental, xenophobic patriotism and with nowhere to go except toward racism and paranoia.

These people have no defense against globalization and the new technologies except fear and resentment. And having an African-American in the White House has destroyed the last citadel of their precarious, tattered and battered self-esteem: the thought that, no matter how far down they were, there was someone they could look down on... black people.

Incoherent, celebrating violence, sentimental, paranoiac and resentful: it's all there cooking on the stove of high unemployment.

Along comes Sarah.

Many commentators, while admitting that Sarah Palin is attractive and charismatic, quickly discount her because little that she says will stand up to even the most cursory examination of its sense or nonsense. They fail to realize that this mixture of charisma and incoherence is precisely her most powerful political tool.

They fail to realize that mindless energy combined with carisma, the "just do it", is exactly what distinguishes and empowers "fascism", a word which most Americans throw around with enormous imprecision until it has become virtually meaningless.

I don't claim to have any preternatural knowledge of the subject, however, the country where I reside, Spain, as you may recall, was officially a fascist country for nearly forty years and when I first came in contact with the country Franco still had a black mustache. Since I was a young man I have known quite a few official, card-carrying, fascists, upper level servants of the fascist regime, their children and grandchildren: in short, I know something about them.

In my experience they often have energetic, brilliant, charming, personalities and they have no guiding principal that I have ever been able to discover other than following their whims and humors wherever they might lead them and the devil take the hindmost. A la carte amorality is the best description of their take on life. The rules are more or less, "I want, I take, I possess. If someone is weaker I crush them, if they are stronger, I worship them." It is amazing how far these simple rules can take some people.

Thoughtful progressives have trouble understanding that it is precisely this mindlessness vitalist energy, which Sarah Palin incarnates, that the ultra-right celebrates, and if you try to pin them down to rationality, they can suddenly stop being charming and turn very ugly, very fast.

I have seen Spanish fascists go from being anti-American to canine-ly pro-American, from being rabid antisemites to unswerving "friends of Israel", from favoring nationalized monopolies and the corporate state, straight to being Thatcherite privatizers: all without ever skipping a beat.

All this during years when people of the left were tying themselves in knots trying to find some way of adapting to all the changes in the world without violating the basic coherence of their fundamental principals, principals which of course, were things that the fascists never had had in the first place.

While the left tried to make some sense of the situation, the fascists just said the first thing that came into their heads and the people who vote for them, like them, couldn't care less. What they go for is the vivacity, the energy the voracious quality expressed in the Sam & Dave classic, "I take what I want, I'm a bad go-getter, yeah".

I would maintain, having observed both societies closely, that thoughtful people who care about things like coherence and ideology can differ greatly from place to place, but after removing a few superficial cultural markers, the impulsive, selfish, energy of the sociopath is much the same everywhere.

The United States is getting ripe for someone just like Sarah Palin, a perky, "down to earth", George Wallace with large breasts. If she burns out, there will soon be another one, if she doesn't make it, she'll be the next one's Joan the Baptist. DS

Palin's "Bush Doctrine" answer

"Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend, and that's what a McCain-Palin administration would do." ABC News

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Many commentators on the left are playing "gotcha" with Governor Palin's reply to the "Bush Doctrine" question. I think they have misread the mood of the country.

Essentially most Americans reading of the "Bush Doctrine" is probably "In 2004 I voted for fascism and all I got was this lousy T-shirt".

A Republican has to walk a fine line on this issue. I think she understood that the question could be dangerous... But really not that dangerous.

At this point, I think it is fair to point out that the American people, by reelecting Bush in 2004 gave their approval to and a mandate for "preemptive war"... "the Bush Doctrine"

Sadly enough, Bush's disapproval ratings are more about his faulty execution of what he did than about what he intended to do. So a Republican can logically run saying, "I will do the same things that you voted for in 2004, but I will do them better, so that they work". And enough Americans, to get him or her elected, will vote that (they already have) if he or she can convince them that he or she is not such an insufferably, incompetent, clot as George W. Bush is.

In fact Palin avoided the "trap" in a very nuanced, "old pro" fashion. She avoided associating herself with anything named "Bush", while at the same time expressing traditional American bellicosity. This lady is much more dangerous than the Democrats are giving her credit for... not because she is dumb, but because she is very, very smart.

The issue is Bush's incompetence not his "ideas". If McCain is not seen as "McSame", then he can repackage most of Bush's "ideas" to his taste without fear... Americans have been voting for them in one form or another for decades.

This is all pretty simple, but I don't think a lot of Democrats have it figured out yet. DS