The Palin Principal

There is an understandable complaint from Democrats, and probably many independent voters, that the Palin obsession which has gripped both the media and ardent Republicans is a distraction of major proportions. It is a distraction of course, but the complaint from Democrats has as much to do with attention diverted from Barack Obama as it does with the suspension of discussing critical issues that currently face this nation. I would argue that the affect the Alaskan Governor has had on both campaigns is an issue unto itself, not a distraction, and maybe more important (in terms of our electoral process) than the debates that have and will take place over energy, healthcare, abortion, education, and several other important domestic issues.

Lost in all the rhetoric that surrounds Presidential campaigns is the fact that the President of the United States has limited power over many of the policies they emphatically suggest will occur once they are in office. Somewhere around middle school, each citizen should have successfully learned that the President has direct control over the State Department, the Military (National Defense), and the direct spending of resources allocated to the administrative branches of government (headed by the various cabinet secretaries), and also the power to nominate the members of the Judiciary for consideration by Congress. Beyond that the President only acts as a check against legislation, and also influences national opinion from, as Teddy Roosevelt coined, the “bully pulpit”. Therefore, on matters other than foreign policy, the Presidential campaign rhetoric is like witnessing a hen house full of roosters… plenty of clucking, but not much yoke.

Does that make “debate” worthless, or worse…deceptive? Not at all. Foremost is the fact that foreign policy is much more important than the average American believes or understands, and that debate needs to take place. The importance of foreign policy in this shrinking and dangerous world, which includes the Military, cannot be understated, but that does not relate to the affects of the Palin nomination. Leave it to say that if a series of plausible events took place leaving Sarah Palin as President of the United States, the detriment to our foreign policy would make George W. Bush look like Winston Churchill. Her semi-candid description of our relationship with Russia, for example, quickly throwing military action on the table left me to believe that she has no concept of “mutually assured destruction”, by which both our countries survived the 40 year Cold War. She is a small town mayor and short term governor in a state where her understanding of Russia is based, she says, on its physical proximity. Perhaps Alaska’s lack of proximity to the continental United States explains why she is challenged by US foreign policy. Bottom line is we shouldn’t be expecting anything more.

The Palin issue is not about foreign affairs or even her competency to take the highest office in the land; it’s about how today the collective psyche of this country decides how we choose our leaders. It is an issue of determining what governance over ourselves means. Sarah Palin is not the first, but I can’t recall when a candidate has exposed a certain national mindset of leadership approval so quickly, so clearly, and so completely. Therefore, I herewith forever dub it the Palin Principal (and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that or some similar phrase eventually finds its way into our lexicon).

In listening and observing the Palin Principal I have been struck by the fact that she not only usurped the attention Obama had successfully cultivated with the media, but she also blew past McCain in popularity almost immediately. In fact, to hear at one point on the road McCain’s address to the audience being drowned out (rather rudely) by chants of “Sarah…Sarah…Sarah”, was the motivation for me to write this article. She is clearly the first choice between the two candidates representing the Republican faithful.

Sarah Palin was virtually unknown nationally prior to September 18th for a reason. There was nothing this woman had accomplished in her life that elevated her to a level of national attention… period. So why then was she accepted by so many people as being a person for whom the mantel of leader of the Free World could rightfully reside? Why was she accepted by so many people…fully accepted, when they knew practically nothing about her, and were not particularly interested in learning more? That’s what the Palin Principal looks like, but what exactly is it?

Definition: Palin Principal – The immediate acceptance of an individual to political leadership based on a perceived emotional empathy by the constituents.

The idea that an individual could garnish a following by things as simple as gestures, appearance, swagger, emotional issues (abortion) and simple language (lipstick and pit bulls) is hardly new, quite the contrary it is ingrained in our anthropology. In the purest sense we often call such followings cults. But leadership derived from intangibles is not only common, it is also appropriate. Barack Obama would be hard pressed to make his case for leadership based solely on his historical background and one must consider his knowledge and skills for leadership. Still in most all cases there is a courtship, a growth period where a bond is developed and a rationale for leadership is merged with more basic emotions. That is true even when there is the commonality of religious beliefs or social activism. That is not, however, the Palin Principal. Why is it then that Sarah Palin was accepted quickly, so quickly in fact that within just a couple of days of her coming out the Republican base would have replace John McCain with her without (as Sarah puts it) blinking an eye?

I believe the Palin Principal is different than the ascendency of past political leaders because the reason for it did not exist in the past. The Palin Principal has been born of Information Technology and the new demographics, our new ability to use lightening fast communications to invite someone into the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and then, just as fast, reflect on the emotional reactions of a subset of those people. That subset may only be a fraction of the population, but when the original numbers are in the hundreds of millions that fraction can still represent a huge number.

In the case of Sarah Palin she was trucked out one day and by the second most all of us had seen her attractive demeanor, her folksy charm, fed the generalizations of her record (80% approval rate, etc), and (most importantly) listened to the unflinching and excited approval of a small group of people. However, the size of the crowd whooping it up is not perceived as small. For those whom an emotional identification with Palin could be made, those devotees being broadcast on TV and internet represented the millions of people with which they identified. The problem of course is there wasn’t millions of people, but because of rapid communications, within days or even hours that small group of people, like a nuclear reaction, mushroomed into a national following.

The day after the Sarah Palin gave her first speech the Friday before the Republican Convention, my 86 year old mother (a lifelong Republican) called me. She said with great animation in her voice, “I’m so excited. I wasn’t sure I was going to vote for McCain (she’d been mulling about it for weeks), but now that he’s picked Governor Palin I’m definitively going to vote for him”. I asked her what she knew and liked about Palin (note: I talk to my mother gingerly on political matters). She knew virtually nothing about Palin except that she sounded great, the cheering was wonderful, and how dreadful the Democrats were in claiming Palin’s Down syndrome child was really her daughter’s.

I’m not sure how much risk the Palin Principal represents to the American people. When something or someone like Sarah Palin is placed on a pedestal made of ice cream, it doesn’t take long for even modest heat to make a rather unsightly mess on the floor. Given her first interviews it’s very hard for me to imagine that she will retain any but the blindest of devotees. But it is not a principal for us to taken lightly. In a free democracy in this day in age, a given set of circumstances might elevate someone to control this nation and, quite literally, have the ability to alter the face of the planet. If the reasons that place an individual in a position of authority don’t have the time to self-correct through public awareness (or enlightenment), then Representative Democracy will have lost its way from the beginnings of the American experience, the ability to accurately reflect the will of people.