First off, allow me to congratulate the Republicans on their splashy “Hollywood” production last night. With Old Glory waving, and not one Greek Styrofoam column in sight, they thoroughly convinced me of Sarah Palin’s preparedness, at least on this score. From day one of a McCain administration, Sarah Palin will be ready to read from a teleprompter. Of what else I was to learn from her cynical speech last night, I remain unaware. That she can be snarkey and snide? Has there ever been doubt regarding that truth when it comes to the Republicans of our generation?

You know, it has always been part of the American myth to have our hero characters appear out the backwoods in whole cloth. Abe Lincoln splitting rails comes to mind, Paul Bunyan, Andrew Jackson as the unsullied defender of everyday folks. And now we have Sarah Palin appearing suddenly on the American political scene as if made from angelic robes and Lenscrafter glasses. Why, think of it. Just last week she was busy ‘raslin’ beaaars up in Skagit and locking up all those no good frontier rapscallions.

It brings to mind Christopher Lasch’s foreword to the ’73 edition of The American Political Tradition, where he addresses the progressive interpretation of American history popular at the time Hofstadter’s groundbreaking tome first appeared in print. As Lasch put it, a resurgent American cultural chauvinism had taken hold in American letters, a tiresome celebration of the American past, and quotes Hofstadter saying how this had helped bring into being a “literature of hero-worship and national self-congratulation.”

I am well aware of these delusionary notions about our founding fathers. I grew up having them spoon fed to me and have watched the Republican Party pawn off to the same myopic American mythology to public over the past thirty years, until I begin to feel like one of those hapless characters in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Always the flag waving with those folks, this longing to return to a once unsullied American past. It’s George Washington cutting down the cheery tree and Abe Lincoln splitting rails, and more recently, Ronald Reagan riding in on a white horse of conservative principles. Never mind that Reagan was once the head of the Actor’s Guild Union and one hair’s breadth removed from being a member of the Communist Party.

So it is with Sarah Palin. When she tells us adoringly of her sons and nephews going off to war, and speaks of that extra prayer she says for them every night, and gushes warmly about her three daughters, and notes how husband Todd is a lifelong commercial fisherman and a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope and a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union, just an everyday kind of guy, she conveniently leaves out Todd’s roughly decade long stint in Alaskan Independence Party  or her own fling with secession, or that when you peel away her cheap family veneer and their purported Christian values, Sarah Palin and the whole lot of them start to sound more like Desperate Housewives meets Northern Exposure than anything else.

Why is it, I wonder, that Republicans feel forever bound to disparage Democratic principles today, only to idolize one of our members who’s no longer around to defend himself? It wasn’t enough that Sarah Palin hearkened to the memory of her parents growing up in a small Missouri town, and how they had both worked at the local elementary school and how proud she was to be their daughter. No, that had to be a tie-in to a young farmer and habber-dasher from Missouri named Harry Truman, who happened to follow his own unlikely path from a small town to the vice presidency.

Well, to paraphrase the famous words of Lloyd Benson, you’re no Harry Truman, Sarah, and you can bet there was no love lost between our dear Harry and your beloved Republican Party. In case you have any doubts on that score, here’s a direct quote from his acceptance speech in 1948.

“Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it — don't forget that! We will do that because they are wrong and we are right, and I will prove it to you in just a few minutes.”

Yes, Sarah, we’ve all heard how you’re just an average hockey mom, who signed up for the PTA because she wanted to make her kids' public education better, but your claims about running for city council and the mayor’s office and eventually for governor without any thought of focus groups and voter profiles just doesn’t wash. As noted recently online, in your campaign for mayor of Wasilla, you were found to be a “highly polarizing political figure who brought partisan politics and hot-button social issues like abortion and gun control into a mayoral race that had traditionally been contested like a friendly intramural contest among neighbors.” Yep, by dragging in the state GOP and bringing “big-time politics into a small-town local race" your career as a politician in Alaska got off a lot more like that “pit bull with lipstick” you described in your acceptance speech last night than your friendly community organizer. Even Vicki Naegele, the managing editor of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, and a person who shared your Christian faith found your methods contemptible. As she recalled, the average friendly small-town race, "turned into something much different…" "I just thought,” Naegele said, “…she should concentrate on roads, not abortion."

And speaking of community organizers, they may not have actual responsibilities, as you suggest, but they do know the duties of a vice-president without asking, and I know one who’s not known for calling people dumbass behind their backs.

Yes, it all sounds very noble, this portrait you create of yourself not being a member of the permanent political establishment, and how you’ll head to Washington to serve the people of this country, not just mingle with the right people and to seek their good opinion. I heard your pledge to continue the same spirit you brought to the governor's office, where you took on the old politics as usual in Juneau and you stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network. But in truth, your politics were just the same old game of clashing parties and competing interests. The integrity, good will, clear convictions you swore to uphold went right out the window when someone got in your way.

No, Sarah, there just wasn’t much of anything truthful in that venom you attempted to disguise with a smile last night. You spoke of your willingness to drill anywhere to get that oil, but dismissed your rival as an impediment to energy independence for our nation, when in fact Barack Obama stood up early with his support for a natural gas pipeline in your state, and when in fact you praised him for it. You said Barack Obama had never reached across the aisle and had not sponsored one piece of important legislation, when a simple Google of his legislative career would have proven you a liar.

To paraphrase your own invective, Sarah, you could give an entire speech about wars, and never use the word "humility". In fact, when the cloud of your rhetoric has passed, and the roar of the crowd fades away, and the stadium lights go out, and that Nazi like symbolism of flags waving behind your head is hauled back to some Third Reich studio lot, what exactly is your plan for this country’s future? You didn’t tell us one thing about what YOU plan to do to turn back the waters and heal the planet?

All we know for certain is this. While you’d like to make government smaller, you will without fail make the coffers of your fat cat donors bigger. You will raise the taxes on the poorest of us and lower the taxes on the rich. You will tell us victory in Iraq is finally in sight but never fail to leave the average American cowering in fear. You will make American weaker abroad by dismissing the importance of observing the constitutional rights of others around the world.

Yes, you are absolutely right, Sarah. There are those candidates who will change anything about their beliefs in order to get elected. Who will one day call the religious right “agents of intolerance” then go back and lick their boots the next year. Who will acknowledge the obscenity of giving the wealthiest people in this country a tax break in times of war and then come back and say it’s a great idea. As you so aptly said, there are those who will use their careers to promote change and those who put politics in front of leadership. There are those who have done great things, who are capable of great things and those who are simply in the hands of lobbyists and special interests.

It’s true that John McCain was once a man who did not run with the Washington herd, but that man is nowhere to be found today. He is a man who, unfortunately, lost his gift of "personal discovery" on his way to the American presidency.

The fact is, Sarah, in the cynical house of mirrors that is the Republican talking point machine, you and your minions have made a man’s ability to inspire others a liability. You have made hope an unwanted orphan. You have narrowed the criteria of worthy experience in life to only those who have so-called “executive experience”, thereby relegating to the trash bin half the men who have presided in the Oval Office.

Hey, come to think of it, in attempting to find some way, any way, to diminish the value of your Barack Obama’s life experience, you have left your own ticket open to an unthinkable charge. As the only with “executive experience” in this Presidential race, you’re more qualified than your own running mate.

Last night on the News Hour, and citing unnamed sources close to the McCain campaign, Mark Shields laid out this scenario for how the Palin nomination actually came down. It was Lieberman who was McCain’s first pick for Veep all along, but when the powers that be within the Republican Party learned McCain was actually daring to take that direction, he was told straight off. That’s not going to fly with us. So, ever the supposed maverick, McCain basically says, yeah? I can’t have Lieberman? Well try this one on for size.

 

Don't know if that's true or not, but one can rightfully ask, where was the maverick in McCain’s decision? Why didn’t he tell the party bosses to go ahead and shove it? Pick Lieberman like he wanted, or even Tom Ridge, a Republican with whom McCain is presumably cozy bedfellows? As with McCain’s pandering to the late Jerry Falwell, or his flip flop on the Bush tax cuts, wasn’t this Palin nomination one more display of a man who has no political courage? At the least it was some sort of Rovian ploy. After all, it’s certainly kept the Obama experience issue in play. That’s all you hear from the right wing anymore. You’re questioning Palin’s experience? Well, she’s got more executive experience than Barack Obama.

 

Still, the Palin choice is a gift that just keeps on giving…and giving…and giving. You got Troopergate, Preachergate, Bridgegate, Secessiongate, and lest we forget, Babygate in the oven. I love it. Don’t you? In the famous words of Lewis Carroll, things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser. Where will it stop? Who knows. I saw the betting line on recall was 18% this morning. It’s going to be hour by hour before the week is through.

 

But lost in all the kerfuffle, I suppose, is the question of what’s actually germane to our public discourse. Obama tells all his supporters on Monday. Just back off. Babygate is a private family matter, and under most circumstances I would tend to agree. Let’s take the high road. Certainly all the right wing pundits would gleefully go along. Yet a broader issue is at stake here that I suggest undercuts any attempt to dismiss this pregnancy out of hand.

 

Take Barack Obama’s genesis as an example. He was born out of wedlock to a white mother and African father, but as everyone generally agrees, a woman being pregnant out of wedlock is nobody’s business but her own. Also consider Barack Obama’s association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Rightly or wrongly, if Obama had ever espoused the same sort political views of America, he’d have been damned for saying it long ago. But apparently enough of the public could see through that ruse and decided it was not fair to hold a person accountable simply for sitting in the pews.

 

Conversely, Sarah Palin has demonstrated that she not only embraces her personal pastor’s end of the world revelations, but has taken to the pulpit and espoused virtually the same apocalyptic visions. And just as the Republican Party has preached to us endlessly on the matter of moral issues, laying themselves open to public scrutiny on the subject of moral rectitude, Ms. Palin’s intolerance on personal morality has laid her and her family open to a public scrubbing. When the seemingly placid façade of Sarah Palin’s home life is peeled back and we find it more resembles Desperate Housewives than Ozzie and Harriet, we have a right to inquire more thoroughly. This isn’t a matter of sleaze. This is a matter of holding people accountable to their own standards. And it that’s not possible, we can rightfully ask them to shut up.

 

So, the cry comes from all quarters to leave Bristol Palin alone. Her pregnancy is a personal family matter. Okay. I find that to be admirable, and even appropriate as a political standard. Your teenage daughter got knocked up out of wedlock and you want to keep it from the public domain? You want to railroad this unfortunate young father into a shotgun marriage? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. It’s no one’s business but your own.

 

Conversely, Ms. Palin, I’ll assume you to apply that standard to all and every private decision. A woman gets pregnant and decides she wants an abortion? Don’t come around telling us a woman’s right to choose is any of your business. If one personal trial and tribulation warrants privacy, so does the other. And if you don’t agree, then don’t be surprised to see us go for the juggler on you. After all, we’re being gracious enough as a political body to allow you to set the standard. Now please obey your own rules.

You have to give John McCain credit. He won the news cycle on Friday. Unfortunately, he royally shot himself in the foot while doing it. There went the mother of all political trump cards. The so-called “experience” factor, which for the past two months he has never tired of reminding us.

It has been oft said that the choice of a vice-president is the first presidential decision each candidate will make, and I’m not even going to bother with links and footnotes here. Everyone already knows the story about Palin. McCain met her once. He subsequently spoke to her once on the phone, then made his choice. What does this say about McCain, that he was willing to put this relative novice one heartbeat away from the presidency? I am reminded of Bush’s early comment about Putin. He looked into the man's eyes and could see the man's soul. Well, the ability of John McCain to look into the soul of Sarah Palin has the same incredulous quality about it.

Just as a mind experiment, imagine Sarah Palin to be a man instead, but with the same lack of knowledge in  international affairs. Wouldn’t there be fireworks then? This may not represent the very first case of reverse discrimination in politics but it sure rates right up there. A guy could feel slighted. All women should, to have this sort of patronizing bone thrown in their direction.

But more on all that later…

I had been purposely sitting back this past week, allowing events at the Democratic convention to play themselves out and thinking it was probably best to hold my tongue. There were already enough talking heads picking at the “as yet to be born” carcass. The Clintons were sure to make mischief. That seemed to be the primary refrain, followed closely by is Obama ever going to punch back?

Of course, once the convention actually got under way, the ensuing laments were all too predictable. The whole thing was dull, uninspired. Where were all the balloons and waving flags for God’s sake? And as if to have their cake and eat it too, the pundits couldn’t help but note how the entire affair was short on substance.

Well, lo and behold, though the many hours of speechifying were indeed plodding at times, the seeming chaos slowly progressed towards a measured and well thought out crescendo. From the down to earth chutzpah of Montana’s Governor Schweitzer to the roar of elder statesmen Al Gore, from Hillary hitting it out of the park to former President Clinton’s ringing endorsement, you couldn’t have scripted a more thorough healing of the rift within the Democratic Party, or a more thorough staging for Barack Obama’s speech on Thursday night. And finally, there was Barack, standing astride the world’s stage, the fulfillment of the Martin Luther King’s “promised land” unfolding before our eyes, that more perfect union to which Abraham Lincoln had alluded finally coming to pass. I must confess, I got a little something in my eye.

In all that stunning imagery and historic pageantry, it was all too possible to overlook the most compelling aspect of Obama’s speech. That for the past several months, as the right wing droned on and on about his lack of experience, and everyone on the left wrung their hands over Barack’s unwillingness to fight back, he had been patiently waiting, knowing full well a dramatic moment  awaited him wherein to answer those attacks in an imcomparable fashion.

I marveled and thought. Now, isn’t that the sort of long range strategic thinking we’re looking for in a President?

To those in the center, and even those on the right, I would say, weigh Obama’s measured demeanor against McCain’s desperate Hail Mary in picking Sarah Palin for a running mate. In a sad attempt to shake up a moribund campaign and steal the fire from the Democrats’ thunder, McCain recklessly proposed to a political bride like a drunken sailor in a waterfront tavern. And for that, we got Harriet Myers with beauty pageant credentials, Gale Norton with a chirpy countenance, George Bush in high heels.

There is much giddiness in the air today on the part of the evangelicals, but they may want to stop their gushing long enough to hear the more sober voices in their own party. Gone is McCain’s most important political leg to stand on, that white-haired father figure role, which so comforted all those who trembled at the specter of another 9/11 and would rather their sacrifice constitutional rights than to embody the very ethos to which they hearken as a constituency. Home of the brave. Land of the free.

They might also want to consider, while allowing themselves to wax so giddy. The real possibility exists. After a few more unseemly revelations about Sarah Palin, McCain, the drunken sailor, may be forced to ask his new political bride for that five dollar ring back.