Kevin Drum, echoing several emailers, argues that I'm reading liberal condescension into what's actually a "painfully straightforward" Times article on Sarah Palin's church and her religious beliefs. He may be right: There's a fine line between condescension and painful literal-mindedness, and sentences like "her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God's servant" and "Mr. Kroon ... a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native,
said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the
task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning" could be read either as attempts to make totally banal Christian beliefs sound exotic and peculiar, or as attempts to convey, well, totally banal Christian beliefs in the most literal terms possible. On the first read, I inclined strongly toward the former interpretation, but it's quite possible that I'm letting the bizarre hysteria with which reports like this one are being greeted elsewhere on this site color my reaction to the reports themselves, and I'll try to control that impulse.
A reader takes me to task for the "venom and sarcasm" laced into my response to Jacob Weisberg's piece on how social conservatives have supposedly sold out family values for the sake of pro-life absolutism. It's true - I was a bit venomous. Hopefully it won't become a habit. I generally try to steer clear of overheated rhetoric where abortion is concerned, since I know my own views on the subject are somewhat outside the American mainstream, and I suspect that many (if not most) of my readers don't share them; given these consideration, I don't think there's to be gained for anybody if I write about the topic in a constant state of moralistic dudgeon.
But sometimes a touch of venom is appropriate. Many defenders of the current abortion laws want to make a distinction between being pro-choice - a position that treats abortion as a tragic practice that can't be regulated without violating a woman's fundamental right to privacy - and being actively pro-abortion. That's fair enough. But Weisberg wasn't making a pro-choice argument; he was making the case for abortion as a positive social good, a necessary building block of a healthy society, a practice that makes stable families possible. Worse, he didn't have the cojones to come right out and say it; instead, he wanted to pass the pro-abortion buck to the pro-family Right, casting his argument as something conservatives ought to believe if they were really serious about the importance of the nuclear family. Worse still, he was using an actual, ongoing and very public pregnancy, as opposed to hypothetical one, as the context for his pro-abortion argument - which means that stripped to its essence, this was a piece about why Bristol Palin should have aborted her unborn child/fetus/whatever you want to call it, and why conservatives and liberals alike should have cheered her for doing so. I'm sure that child will be just delighted to learn, when he grows up enough to understand the circumstances of his birth, that the editor-in-chief of a major national magazine publicly argued that he should have been vacuumed out of his mother's womb during his first trimester of existence - all for the sake of family values, of course.
They pray! They read the Bible! They think God has a plan for their lives, and try to conform themselves to it! John Podhoretz has all the scary details.
Jacob Weisberg explains how conservatives supposedly sold out their pro-family principles for the pro-life cause:
... these two conservative social goals--ending abortion and upholding the model of the nuclear family--were always in tension. The reason is that, like it or not, the availability of legal abortion supports the kind of family structure that conservatives once felt so strongly about: two parents raising children in a stable relationship, without government assistance. By 12th grade, 60 percent of high school girls are sexually active or, as Reagan put it, "promiscuous." Teen-pregnancy rates
have been trending downward in recent years, but even so, 7 percent of
high-school girls become pregnant every year. And the unfortunate
reality is that teenagers who carry their pregnancies to term
drastically diminish their chances of living out the conservative, or
the American, dream.
... Give the anti-abortion extremists credit for living their principles.
If they weren't deadly serious, they wouldn't sabotage their party's
political prospects or sacrifice so many other values they hold dear
for the sake of denying exceptions in cases of rape and incest. But
Sarah Palin's pro-life extremism is as ethically flawed as it is
politically damaging to the GOP. By vaunting their pro-life agenda over
everything else, conservatives are abandoning one of their most
valuable insights: that intact, two-parent families are best for
children and for the foundation of a healthy society.
Let's boil this down to its essence: Weisberg is saying that if conservatives were really serious about wanting more intact families, we'd want young women to have many more abortions, not many fewer. After all, the steady rise in abortion rates from the '70s to the '90s correlated with a steady drop in teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births, and divorces, while the slow fall of abortion rates from the Clinton era to the present correlated with a spike in divorce rates and births to teens and unwed mothers.
Oh, what's that you say? In fact, roughly the oppositehappened? Divorce rates, abortion rates, and teen pregnancy rates all peaked around the same time (1990 or so) and then fell together, while out-of-wedlock births have inched up much more slowly in an era of falling abortion rates than they did in an era of rising abortion numbers? Why, maybe that's because the incredibly simplistic model of human behavior Weisberg is sketching out here bears very little relationship to reality. Maybe it's because the availability and perceived moral acceptability of abortion has an impact on how and when and with what degree of caution teenagers and unmarried people have sex. Maybe it's because lots of people who think of abortion as the birth control of last resort, and let that thought inform their sexual conduct, don't actually want to have abortions when it comes right down to it. Maybe it's because the availability and acceptability of abortion makes men, in particular, more cavalier about sex, even though the women they're having sex with may not share their "just get rid of it" mentality.
Or maybe Weisberg is right, the evidence of the last thirty years should be thrown out, and we should just persist in the assumption that the two-parent family can only survive on a foundation of large-scale feticide - starting, one presumes, with Bristol Palin's unborn kid.
I don't have any problem with the McCain campaign steering Palin away from hard-hitting interviews and press conferences for a little while, but David Frum is spot-on about this:
A question I am often asked when I give talks or lectures is: Why
did the Bush communication effort end so badly? How did an
administration that once commanded such public support end by losing
all ability to make its case?
My answer is that the ultimate
failure was encoded into the initial success. The president's
communication team - of which Nicole Wallace was an important part -
shared the same disdain of "elites" that permeates so much of my
pro-Palin correspondence. It was not just the media elite that they
disregarded. (Who could blame them for that?) It was the policy elite
too. When the president wished to advocate, eg a tax cut, he did not
argue his case before the Detroit Economic Club or send a surrogate to
Jackson Hole. He made a rally speech before cheering supporters. That
made for effective soundbites and exciting images. But it abdicated any
effort to make an argument that could convince people who were not
predisposed to be convinced.
At first, this abdication did not
much matter. The president was popular, the public was united. But once
the administration encountered trouble and adversity, it discovered -
it found itself disarmed. It had no advocates other than its own
in-house communicators and the most committed partisans. There were
pitifully few respected independent voices ready to join the discussion
on behalf of the administration's policies. They could not convince,
because they had not been convinced.
... If you want to win a debate, you have to come prepared to debate for
every audience at every level. We can all understand that it is unwise
to refuse Oprah. But it is equally unwise to do only Oprah. It's not
just Jay Carney who wants more. As President Bush's current numbers
suggest, so does Oprah's audience.
Sarah Palin, as you may heard, is pro-life. You may have also heard that Sarah Palin's unborn child was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome, and that Palin went ahead with the pregnancy rather than procuring an abortion. This, of course, makes her ... wait for it ... a hypocrite:
We could ask, given that Palin had no doubts about seeing her
pregnancy through, why she bothered to take a genetic test. Why not, as
you might expect a woman in her position and with her outspoken beliefs
to do, decline any testing or counseling? Of course, it seems very
reasonable to want to know about the health of your baby and to have
time to prepare (emotionally and otherwise) for a baby that may have a
genetic disorder. But that doesn't negate the fact that by having a
blood test, Palin was given a choice about what to do.
... Her supporters say that Trig signals that she
practices what she preaches. But her decision to have him is also a
sign of her hypocrisy.
... what was most impressive was her speech's freshness. Her words
flowed directly from her life experience, her poise and mannerisms from
her town and its conversations. She left behind most of the standard
tropes of Republican rhetoric (compare her text to the others) and
skated over abortion and the social issues. There wasn't even any
tired, old Reagan nostalgia.
Instead, her language resonated
more of supermarket aisle than the megachurch pulpit. More than the men
on the tickets, she embodies the spirit of the moment: impatient, fed
up, tough-minded, but ironical. Even in attack, she projected the
cheerfulness of someone confident about the future.
Which gets me to the most important element of the
speech, and that is the startlingness of the content. It was not modern
conservatism, or split the difference Conservative-ish-ism. It was not
a conservatism that assumes the America of 2008 is very different from
the America of 1980.
It was the old-time conservatism. Government is too
big, Obama will "grow it", Congress spends too much and he'll spend
"more." It was for low taxes, for small business, for the private
sector, for less regulation, for governing with "a servant's heart"; it
was pro-small town values, and implicitly but strongly pro-life.
This was so old it seemed new, and startling. The
speech was, in its way, a call so tender it made grown-ups weep on the
floor. The things she spoke of were the beating heart of the old
America. But as I watched I thought, I know where the people in that
room are, I know their heart, for it is my heart. But this election is
a wild card, because America is a wild card. It is not as it was in
'80. I know where the Republican base is, but we do not know where this
country that never stops changing is.
Can they both be right? Well, no, not entirely, and to the extent that their readings can't be reconciled I incline slightly more toward Noonan's take. But I think these dueling interpretations capture a real duality in the speech. Palin's tone, her self-presentation, were as Brooks describes them - fresh, unpretentious, cheerful, forward-looking, and blessedly unencumbered by the burdens of Reagan nostalgia that hung so heavily over the GOP primary campaign. Her substance, though, was much more as Noonan describes it: Palin mainly hit old-time conservative notes on taxes and size of government, and it was left to John McCain to talk, with his characteristic uncomfortability, about health care and education, globalization and job retraining, and the other issues the party's base doesn't want to talk about, and the Democrats do. This may have been the right call for the convention; going forward, though, I don't think that division of labor plays to the two candidate's strengths. And for the sake of Sarah Palin's long-term prospects, especially, I hope the Vice-Presidential debate showcases a different side of her conservatism.
As written, I thought it was a strong speech - striking chords of economic populism that the McCain campaign desperately needs, repeatedly promising bipartisanship and distancing the ticket from the last eight years of GOP rule, balancing hawkishness with promises of wisdom and caution in foreign affairs, and building to a moving climax. As delivered, I thought it was somewhat flat, at least until the end - stepped-on by too much applause at times, running up against the convention hall's desire for redder meat at others, and hampered by McCain's own halting, none-too-fluid style of speechmaking throughout. It'll be interesting to see whether it draws as many viewers as last night's Event (doubtful), and how it plays with voters overall; for now, though, to bed.
I've heard a fair amount of morning-after caviling from conservatives
that Sarah Palin didn't spend more of her speech talking about public
policy and issues. David Frum,
for one, asks: "Where does she stand on immigration - an issue to which
a President McCain will surely return? How reliable is she on free
trade?"
Okay, let's grant there is natural curiosity about her political
philosophy, particularly among people who care about political
philosophy. But, as Gov. Palin might phrase it: Here's a little
newsflash for all those reporters and commentators: She's not going to
Washington to implement her political philosophy and her
agenda. She's going to Washington to serve as John McCain's vice
president. And the position of any good vice president is that he (or
she) supports the president.
George H. W. Bush didn't give a convention speech in 1980 on how
Reaganomics was Voodoo economics, even though that was where he stood
on that issue, as everyone had learned earlier that year.
My prediction: Sarah Palin will stand on immigration and free trade
where John McCain stands on those issues, and if she disagrees with
him, I can imagine a spirited, private discussion between the two of
them in the Oval Office. But it would be highly unusual, not to say
inappropriate, for her to be announcing any positions on issues except
the positions of the McCain-Palin campaign.
This is all very true. But Palin didn't have to make the case for her own positions last night in order to talk about policy; she could have made the case for her running mate's positions, especially in those areas where voters want to hear something from the candidates, and where McCain seems uncomfortable talking about his actual stances on the issues. As I said, I can see why the speech needed to tack in a different, more combative directions. But as much as this suddenly feels like a culture-war election, all of those kitchen-table concerns are still out there, and so are the Obama campaign's issue-by-issue advantages on domestic policy. The nomination of Palin, who's a potential kitchen-table candidate in a way McCain can never be, ought to be a clarifying moment for the McCain campaign - a chance to hit reboot on their domestic agenda, and find a way to at least poach some of the domestic-policy terrain the Democrats currently own. The McCain health care plan and tax plans, in particular, should be either defended or rewritten - and either way, the subjects should find their way into Palin's speeches going forward, if not into McCain's. (Though no, I'm not holding my breath ...)
I've watched Palin's address on television twice now, after seeing it live last night, and I think that it's being just slightly overestimated - out of relief among conservatives, and perhaps out of guilt among the cable-news talking heads and CW purveyors. It's not that it wasn't a good speech; in fact, I think it was precisely the kind of speech that Sarah Palin needed to give at this juncture. It helps her immensely, and it makes me more confident about her future in national politics than I was 48 hours back. I'm just not entirely sure how much it helps John McCain.
A lot of people have commented on Palin's smilingly sarcastic style, her willingness to go straight after her ticket's opponents, her "I'm not giving an inch" approach to the firestorm of the past few days. If you leave aside the extraordinary hubbub surrounding the evening, this was in certain respects a very conventional speech for a veep nominee - albeit one delivered with a steel-in-velvet style that Spiro Agnew would have given anything to be able to project. And for a female candidate who's been brutalized in the media for the last few days, I think that this was exactly the right approach. As I tried to suggest the other day, there's no greater danger for Sarah Palin, Polician, Mother and Soon-to-be-Grandmother than the impression, stoked by days of breathless media coverage, that she isn't in control, that she can't handle pressure, and that she somehow does not have her shit together. And there's no better way to undercut that impression than to give the kind of tough, combative speech that a male veep might have given - except to do it better than any male veep has done in a long, long time.
But John McCain didn't pick Palin because he needed an attack dog for the stretch run. He picked her because he has a domestic policy problem, because he needed to shore up his reputation as a reformer, and because he needed to chart a new direction for his party, and suggest a GOP future that isn't just a parade of old white guys and a re-run of Reagan's greatest hits. As far as symbolism goes, this speech helped him on that front; on substance, not so much. Instead of opening new vistas for conservative politics, it reinforced the perception - which is unfair, but not all that unfair - that the only thing John McCain's GOP has to offer on the domestic front is a big yes to drilling, an end to earmarks, and a big no to Obama's tax increases. It's possible that this is enough of a message to win this Presidential election; it's definitely not enough of a message to rebuild the GOP over the long haul. Sarah Palin gave the kind of speech she had to give, and good for her. But I hope she has some other kinds of speeches in her.
The tension between conservatism and evangelicalism has been in evidence throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, and it's nowhere more apparent than in the divided soul of Michael Gerson.
American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, which attempts to do for the American Right what the 1911 Britannica does for the rest of God’s creation, sometimes feels like a compendium of cranks, an almanac of oddballs, a parade of “beautiful losers."
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Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream
Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class
