Sarah Palin, the evangelical candidate

Sarah Palin

"not the most photogenic angle"

(Image from Christianity Today)

With my mind on the upcoming election, I read this morning a moderately interesting editorial in Christianity Today, "Misunderstanding Sarah: Media reaction to Gov. Palin shows ignorance of evangelicalism," (October 28, 2008). Two issues are briefly treated, but I'll address only the first, which involves the assumption among nonevangelicals concerning the supposed puritanical views of evangelicals.

[This assumption was revealed in] reactions to news of Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy: liberal pundits gleefully announced that this was going to seriously undermine Governor Palin's standing with the Republican Party's evangelical base. Any informed evangelical watcher or evangelical believer could have told them that this is a non-issue.

Right. I knew immediately that the out-of-wedlock pregnancy wouldn't matter. Evangelical believers regularly deal with this situation. Almost nobody was shocked. Some might have been dismayed, but most empathized. Why? The editorial explains:

It is a non-issue because John Newton's famous line, "I once was lost but now I'm found," defines the evangelical ethos. We specialize in troubled lives. Stories of transformation from sin and degradation to righteousness and wholeness frame the way evangelicals see life. From the slave-trading Newton to the White House "hatchet man" Chuck Colson, God saves people from their slavery to sin and uses them to restore others. Indeed, those of us who never did anything particularly shocking sometimes have trouble fitting in.

That's my problem. I never did anything wrong. Just kidding. I've done plenty that wasn't quite right . . . very quietly. When I was home in the Ozarks last February, one high school friend remarked, "I never heard anything bad about Jeff Hodges." I could only smile in chagrin and say, "I just got away with it because I was quiet." Then, pointing over at my wife, I added, "If you want some details on my faults, just talk to her."

Actually, my wife doesn't bad-mouth me, and evangelicals generally accept a lot of awkward situations because that's the untidiness of life:

Evangelical pews are full of people whose family lives are untidy. If we get angry when a teen gets pregnant, it is not at the hot-blooded teens but at the fashion and entertainment industries that persistently sexualize the images of the young and set them up for bad choices. It's no wonder: One recent study showed that adolescents with a sexually charged media diet are more than twice as likely as others to have sex by the time they turn 16. Teen pregnancy is one of the situations in which it is easiest for us to hate the sin but love the sinner.

The evangelical reaction to Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy was thus one of immediate acceptance. Evangelical empathy for the Palin family probably even strengthened Governor Palin's personal support.

But as I noted yesterday in a conversation with my philosopher friend Dan Ernst over coffee at an Ewha campus coffee shop, although Palin may have personally energized the Republican Party's evangelical base, she put off many other conservatives. I mentioned Charles Krauthammer, George Will, David Brooks, and other conservative pundits who expressed disappointment at McCain's selection of a running mate so 'inexperienced'. By that, they also meant "ignorant" even if they were careful about not quite saying so.

In my own opinion as amateur pundit (if that's not a redundancy), Palin is highly intelligent but needs -- to put it generously -- at least four more years of exposure to national and international issues before she'd be minimally prepared to take on the responsibilities of high office. Evangelicals remain excited by Palin the person, in ways that surprise nonevangelicals, but I sense that many of these same evangelicals have some uncertainty about Palin the candidate -- though most will fervently pull the lever for her on November 4th and even more fervently pray that McCain lives a long, healthy life.

To be frank, however, I don't think that the evangelical vote will be enough to give the Republican Party this election, and Palin's untimely, national political career will be tragically over, fallen victim to the blame game as Republicans fight over who lost the White House.

Um . . . so he really is Obamessiah?

Stanley Fish

"smiling wisdom from the epicine . . . picine . . . piscine era"

(Image from NYT)

In his NYT column "Think Again" of October 26th, "The Power of Passive Campaigning," Stanley Fish reaches for a literary analogy to describe Obama's campaign style.

Fish reminds us of Obama's unusual calm -- what Charles Krauthammer calls a "first-class temperament" -- during the past few weeks' swirling chaos:

We saw it in the 10 days when the activity around the mounting economic crisis was at its height. Henry Paulson alternated between scaring members of Congress and scaring the public. Nancy Pelosi alternated between playing the responsible Congressional statesperson and playing the partisan attack dog. Media commentators went from one hysterical prediction to another. John McCain went from saying there's nothing to worry about to saying there's everything to worry about to saying that he would fix everything by suspending his campaign to saying that he was not suspending his campaign and that he would debate after all.

And Barack Obama? He didn't do much and he said less (O.K., he did say some reassuring, optimistic things), and his poll numbers went up.

Fish doesn't cite Krauthammer but does turn to another conservative pundit to make his point:

He just stands there looking languid (George Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always smiling and never raising his voice.

Meanwhile, John McCain gets angry -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- and ever more energetically attacks Obama, who does nothing. Fish asks:

What's going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John Milton's "Paradise Regained," a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he's not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) loses it, crying in exasperation, "What dost thou in this world?"

Fish assures us that he doesn't "mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that the rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the strategies employed by the two candidates."

Concluding his analogy to Paradise Regained, Fish gives Milton's explanation for why Obama's strategy works:

Toward the end, the poem describes the mighty contest in a metaphor that captures its odd and negative dynamic. Jesus is "a solid rock" continually assaulted by "surging waves"; and even though the repeated assaults result only in the waves being "all to shivers dashed," they keep on coming until they exhaust themselves "in froth or bubbles." The power Jesus generates is the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It's rope-a-dope on a grand scale.

In short, Obama need do nothing at all, but simply remain calm within the chaos that buffets about him, and he wins? Well . . . maybe. It's not over yet, and unlike in Paradise Regained, there's no predetermined winner.

But Fish is clearly onto something with this analysis, and it need only be turned around for some obscure Milton scholar to offer a new perspective on Milton's depiction of Jesus: "The Son's Rope-a-Dope Strategy in Paradise Regained?"

McCain: "a lifelong gambler"?

John McCain

Life's a crapshoot?

(Image from Stephen Crowley, The New York Times)

Yesterday, I characterized John McCain as a gambler, giving as evidence the three Hail Mary passes of his that Charles Krauthammer identified in a recent Washington Post column. But I had other reasons for calling him that, for I had read an article by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., "McCain wagers on gaming industry," pubished in the International Herald Tribune on September 28, 2008, nearly one week ago, so the issue was already on my mind:

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

Is this a problem? It used to be one for the evangelicals that the Republican Party has depended upon, but Sarah Palin has shored up that base for him, at least among older evangelicals. His gambling interests had hurt him back in 2000:

A lifelong gambler, McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party's evangelical base, opponents of gambling.

But the evangelicals now seem to have accepted this aspect of McCain's character, so it doesn't appear to be an issue that will hurt him with those voters this time. Does his love for gambling pose unacceptable risks for his decision-making? Not so long as he's winning like he was at the Foxwoods Resort Casino that night:

McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to McCain's campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world's second-largest casino.

Joining them was Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just McCain's affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

I can't help but wonder, given the lobbying connections, if losing at the tables were even a possibility that night, but I make no accusations. McCain was winning, and so long as a man is winning, we don't ask too many questions.

Personally, I dislike gambling, and I tend to agree with George Will and William Safire, among others, that gambling teaches people the wrong lesson on how to go about obtaining wealth, but let that argument be. The bigger issue right now, since McCain is a gambler, is this: Can John McCain walk away from the table at the right moment? Winning or losing, a gambler needs to know when to stop. Does McCain know? We've seen that Krauthammer would probably think not.

A lot of people don't know when the moment to stop has come, as we've perhaps seen in the excessive risks that a lot of distinguished executives in the financial sector have taken over the past several years. The resulting financial crisis has made them look like inveterate gamblers.

Whether or not McCain knows when walk away, even to be known as a risk-taker during this time of financial uncertainty might work to his disadvantage on November 4, when people are likely to pull the lever for the candidate who seems less likely to gamble with their future.

But we'll just have to wait and see what happens about one month from now.

Obama: "a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament"?

Charles Krauthammer

(Image from Jewish World Review)

Charles Krauthammer, generally considered one of Neoconservatism's proponents -- though he prefers his views to be known as "Democratic Realism" -- has some interesting remarks about John McCain and Barack Obama in a Washington Post column, "Hail Mary vs. Cool Barry" (October 3, 2008).

Krauthammer sees McCain as a gambler. He doesn't call McCain a gambler in the column, but he compares him to a quarterback repeatedly throwing a Hail Mary pass -- first with his support of The Surge in Iraq, then with his choice of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, and most recently with his suspension of his campaign to help solve the financial crisis -- and each of these throws was a quarterback's desperate gamble.

Unfortunately, there's something called "Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game."

McCain's gamble on the financial crisis lost him the ball. Barack Obama, whose temperament is to leave nothing to chance and whose intellect is suited for calculating every possibility, intercepted and laconically observed that a presidential candidate ought to be able to do "more than one thing at once."

Krauthammer grudgingly acknowledges that Obama's campaign strategy is working. After McCain's second Hail Mary pass, which Sarah Palin caught, the Republicans looked situated to win, and Democrats -- in panic -- were urging Obama to get passionate, to turn on the charisma. Instead, he made himself ordinary:

Obama understood that the magic was wearing off and the audacity of hope wearing thin. Hence the self-denial perfectly personified in his acceptance speech in Denver. He could have had 80,000 people in rapture. Instead, he made himself prosaic, even pedestrian, going right to the general election audience to project himself as one of them.

This wasn't how "Spengler" -- commenting in the Asia Times, "How Obama lost the election" (September 3, 2008) -- saw the speech at the time:

On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats . . . . The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The often insightful "Spengler" couldn't fathom why Obama would choose to be so boring, but I think that Krauthammer has nailed it. Obama knew that the moment to be ordinary had arrived.

Neither "Spengler" nor Krauthammer supports Obama. Both prefer McCain. But they acknowledge Obama's intellectual gifts, albeit differently, for "Spengler" adds a slap: "Obama . . . is long on brains and short on guts." Krauthammer gets in a few slaps as well, but concludes rather differently:

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

Mixed, but more positive than "Spengler" on Obama. As for Obama lacking 'guts', on that point, I also have to differ with "Spengler" and side with Krauthammer, for no candidate lasts this long in a presidential campaign without 'guts'. What "Spengler" took as 'gutlessness', Krauthammer understood as intellectual calculation and temperamental coolness.

In my opinion, the financial crisis has sealed McCain's fate. The great bailout is an act of a big, interventionist government committed to managing the economy. Whether this proves a good or a bad thing, only time will tell, but for now, the bailout undercuts what the Republicans ordinarily stand for and supports what the Democrats have long believed.

Listen, I'm just the messenger here.

And make me your Secretary of Education . . .

McCain locating a man of the people...

(Image from Mike Luckovich)

I can't say that I care for all of Luckovich's satire, but this political cartoon made me laugh out loud. Chiastically speaking, I'm not one of Sarah Palin's detractors, but I don't think that she's qualified to take over as president for McCain if the need should arise. David Brooks put it well:

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

As Brooks says, "Experience matters" (International Herald Tribune, September 16, 2008). One might also want to check out Charles Krauthammer's article, "Palin's Problem" (Washington Post, September 5, 2008), for he makes a similar case that Palin lacks experience, which undermines McCain's strategy agains Obama:

McCain's strategy: Make this a referendum on Obama, surely the least experienced, least qualified, least prepared presidential nominee in living memory.

Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack. This is through no fault of her own. It is simply a function of her rookie status. The vice president's only constitutional duty of any significance is to become president at a moment's notice. Palin is not ready. Nor is Obama. But with Palin, the case against Obama evaporates.

My sense is that Palin gave McCain a boost in the polls, but some of that will fade, perhaps for the reason given by George Will in his recent article, "McCain's Closing Argument" (Washington Post, September 18, 2008):

Palin is as bracing as an Arctic breeze and delightfully elicits the condescension of liberals whose enthusiasm for everyday middle-class Americans cannot survive an encounter with one. But the country's romance with her will, as romances do, cool somewhat, and even before November some new fad might distract a nation that loves "American Idol" for the metronomic regularity with which it discovers genius in persons hitherto unsuspected of it.

But should this romance fail to fade, we'd better hope that Palin is gifted in accumulating years of experience faster than anyone we've ever known.