The Palin Issue
Mathew Lohr
A recent Harris Poll asked 2,634 adults in America to name the one person they consider an American hero. On the top of the list were Barack Obama and Jesus Christ, but the public sat in awe as number 21 on the list was former vice president hopeful, Sarah Palin. The vibrant Alaskan has been the subject of every American at some point in the past year. With her new memoir out, Going Rogue, and a new commentary spot on Fox News, Palin is getting more attention than ever. So the question comes to mind, just why is America so fascinated with Sarah Palin? Also, since this is a political conflict, one must also argue if Palin is good or bad for America.
To be good or bad for America can mean different things for different people and there are always two sides when it comes to politics. On one side, conservatives and others praise Palin for her charismatic approach to right wing politics. She combines politics and religion in a way that is tasteful and useful to everyday Americans. Her supporters also argue that she is the one true force for the 2012 presidential election and that she is a hardworking, plain-speaking American patriot, and a true hero.
On the other side of the Palin debate, democrats and Palin haters describe her as a complete embarrassment to the entire country. She has made a joke out of the American voting system and has made a mockery out of America to foreign leaders and governments. Many people say she was far too inexperienced to run for any official office and has used her media appeal to gain power in Washington.
The Palin issue, as I will refer to it from here on, warrants analysis because of the way Palin is changing politics and overall, changing America. If Palin is good for America, then our country prospers and a true icon and role model for the rest of the country to follow. If Palin is bad for America, then she is hurting our credibility and with such a huge ego, America cannot afford any more shame from the rest of the world at this time. The audience around the Palin issue is huge. Seeing that there are about 300 million people in the United States the Palin issue is on everybody’s mind because she is such a force to be reckoned with.
Palin is most recently back in the spotlight with her memoir Going Rogue. The interesting thing about the book is that the majority of her angry writing is directed at the McCain campaign. This is a bold move for it attacks her own party, but as Michiko Kakutani writes in his article for The New York Times, Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign, Palin is “a self-reliant frontierswoman who knows hot o field dress a moose; a feisty gal with lots of moxie and pep; a former beauty queen with a George W. Bush-like aptitude for mangling the English language (Kakutani).” According to Kakutani, Palin is a real woman and a real American and people can relate to her.
The people of America need someone they can relate to. According to Paul Harris of The Observer, it is God who has chosen Palin to lead our country. Harris preaches that “America is succumbing to the foreign ideology of socialism, and the lifeblood of the free market is being squeezed by Big Government. Who could possibly save America from such a fate? Sarah Palin of course (Harris).” The fact that Palin has never held a office position above her two years of governing Alaska points to an astonishing achievement of being able to stay in the hearts of many Americans. Last year, her loss for vice president could have buried her political career, but even when she is not holding office she is still the most talked about person in politics.
The appeal of Palin is her commonality. Her values are threefold: “faith, family and flag.” She relates to religious social conservatives as her views about gay marriage and abortion center on morality and that she is strongly against both. Her faith helps her shine in the political spectrum because she shares the same religion as the majority of America. Her family also makes her shine. Her son Trig was born with Down’s syndrome and Palin, who is strongly against abortion, is praised for sticking to her beliefs. “I am so happy that she brought that child into the world. That is such a statement (Harris).” As for her patriotism, Palin cannot get enough of America. She worships the military, believes Islam hates American freedom, and thinks America is by far the greatest God blessed country in the world. Of course following the September 11th attacks, the majority of the country is still on patriotic overload.
With the image of a patriotic everyday woman, it is obvious to see why Palin lovers want her to be the next President. She jokes and points to a possible run to the white house, but it is her combination of politics and celebrity that has turned her into a cultural phenomenon. She is more like a Paris Hilton now and less like a Hillary Clinton. This is a good thing for modern republicans who see her celebrity as collecting more power over Americans. That power has brought tens of thousands of people flocking to Palin on her recent book signing tour. Those people could completely change the way the next election goes because people will be wanting Palin’s causes in the white house. It can even be said that the Palin movement has overtaken the Obama movement. As she puts it simply, “In a funny way, we needed someone like Barack Obama to be elected to wake us up (Harris).”
The Obama movement certainly was the highlight of 2008, but do democrats truly believe Sarah Palin is more popular? Most certainly not, and on the other side of the Palin issue lie the left wing extremists, modern democrats, and even more republicans. During Palin’s bid for vice president, democrats began criticizing her for not being qualified enough to hold office that is so close to the presidency. Many thought that Senator McCain’s pick for running mate was an insult to America’s intelligence and a sour attempt to get the workingwomen’s vote. As Palin began her campaign with McCain, America began to figure out just what the left side of politics was referring to.
The McCain camp wanted to paint Palin as a reformer and a pioneer for the American public. However, in a series of interviews, especially the infamous Katie Couric interview, she started feeling the pressure from an unsure America. The Couric interview read like a question to question back and forth interview. By this I mean that Palin was unable to answer any question with valid evidence or substance. One of the questions that became a huge mockery for Palin was her answer to “you’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as apart of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that (“Sarah Palin CBS Interview”)?” Palin’s answer became a huge laugh fest as she responded by saying Alaska and Russia are merely next-door neighbors which makes Alaska and Russia’s proximity a national security issue. The joke began to spread to late night sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” where Tina Fey portrayed Palin in a very humiliating way. Palin began to feel the pressure and mockery from America and the McCain team also started to get very annoyed with Palin’s lack of respect for politics. She even stated that she had no idea what a vice president did, but she was up for the task of learning.
After Palin lost the run to the white house, her opposition hoped she would disappear forever. This definitely did not happen. She again became a mockery in the state of Alaska after she unexpectedly resigned from her governor position after just 2 years of serving. Many believed it was because her personal life, her ex-son-in-law Levi Johnston became a very talkative man to the tabloids, and that she just couldn’t face the pressure from an embarrassed state. Soon, it wasn’t only America, but also the world that was making fun of Palin. Bill Press talks about Palin not only as a national joke but also as a world joke. He writes, “Since Palin believes so true heartily that she is the image of hard working women, the entire political world now looks at us with disgust (Press).”
Disgust is not in Palin’s vocabulary, however, and at the release of her book she wanted to attack all the haters. Her biggest mistake was attacking her own party for they were the ones giving her the chance to shine. On a rebuttal to the book, the McCain team said that Palin’s attack on McCain is “in poor taste to a woman who does not hold true to her own ideologies.” Democrats also attack Palin’s book by responding to allegations that Obama will inevitably destroy the American economy. Bill Press responds by saying “For such a patriotic ‘pioneer’ she truly has lost faith in a country that has made her what she is today. How ungrateful.”
The allegations from anti-Palin Americans are that she is a complete embarrassment to such a great country and over-all is bad for America. She has made a mockery of American politics and government. She has used celebrity to insult the intelligence of a voting nation and on the world scene has put America in the top spot of humiliation.
In her most recent stint in politics, Palin has personally initiated the “tea party.” It is a coalition that wants the growth of government to stop as well as more budget control and are firmly anti-Obama. Palin did the key note address at the first formal convetion and she talked about a limited government and strict adherence to the Constitution. What is so fascinating about her approach to the tea party is that she is going against the two major parties at the same time. She denounces both democratic and republican beliefs. Some could say she is pioneering her way through a new form of politics and others will believe she is just jumping on the next bandwagon to keep her name in the papers.
It is interesting to note how one person can be seen as either good or bad for an entire country’s image, but when you have accomplished as much as Sarah Palin has in the past two years you see just why this is a major debate. The Palin issue centers on her strong followers and fans that believe she is truly the hardest working woman in America and that she contains the elements of a true American hero. Her politics are centered on family, faith, and democracy, which is exactly the image people want for the country they live in. On the other side, there is a sense of embarrassment when Palin’s face is plastered all over the place. She has barely any political experience, is a mockery to America and its citizens, and puts a bad image out to the rest of the world that she could actually hold the top political position.
The best way to debate about the Palin issue is to open dialogue about the future of Palin. We cannot change the past and so we must focus on the future. We must ask each side what Palin can do for America in a good way. Some may say nothing, while others will want her to go away completely. To further discussion, there must be dialogue about Palin’s appeal to those who follow here. Is she merely another celebrity or does she really have the drive and beliefs of pursuing the white house? Then, there must be discussion toward the reasons of why she is good or bad for the most powerful job in the country and with that knowledge we can figure out the outcome of the Palin issue. It will be challenging to engage in discussion from both sides because of the strong stance that many feel Palin is embarrassment to the stance that many feel Palin is a hero. Her complexity is what has kept her in the forefront of American politics. It seems, just like in politics, that there are mild to wild extremists in this issue. Whatever the case it seems for now Palin is here to stay, whether for the good or the bad.
Work Cited
Greenbaum, Mark. "Sarah Palin and Fox News: a match made in heaven." Christian Science Monitor 11 Jan. 2010: n. pag. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
Harris, Paul. "God has chosen her to lead our country." Observer (2009): n. pag. Web. 6 Feb 2010.
Kakutani, Michiko. "Memoir is Palin's Payback to McCain Campaign." New York Times (2009): n. pag. Web. 6 Feb 2010.
Press, Bill. "Sarah Palin: A national joke." WorldNetDaily (2010): n. pag. Web. 6 Feb 2010.
"Sarah Palin is a Hero." The Sarah Palin Blog. 23 Feb. 2009. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
"Sarah Palin CBS interview." youtube.com. Web. 2 Feb 2010.
Saturday Night Live. Tina Fey/Sarah Palin Sketch.
Shapiro, Walter. "How Palin Could Win the 2012 GOP Nomination." Politics Daily 16 Nov. 2009: n. pag. Web. 3 Feb 2010.
Thomas, Evan. "Gone Rogue." Newsweek 14 Nov. 2009: Print.
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