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The response
to Sarah Palin's surprise resignation last Friday clearly reveals the
limitations of the American political class, right, left, or what have
you.
There's an old
academic joke, probably apocryphal, about Count Metternich, Austria's
foreign minister during the Napoleonic era. While attending the
Congress of Vienna, Metternich is sleeping off a banquet when one of
his aides bursts in at three in the morning. "Your excellency! Count
Nesselrode, the Russian ambassador, just died."
Metternich
jerks awake. "Died, you say? What a terrible thing! I was speaking to
him only tonight... Uhh... send a message to the Tsar -- Austria
regrets, and so forth..."
The
aide leaves. Metternich gets up and paces the floor. After a moment he
stops and rubs his chin. "So... Why did Nesselrode decide to do that now..."
We're
seeing the same thing today. Obsessive figures confronted with a simple
human contingency and, unable to comprehend what's right in front of
their eyes, retreating instead into irrelevant speculation about
whatever they know best.
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Dunn here
explains why Palin is doing exactly what any normal, rational,
un-driven human being would do under the same circumstances, before
moving on to her obligations.
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 And the GOP? Doesn't she
owe her party anything?
- Just a few short days after her youngest
daughter was humiliated on one of the most widely-watched late-night
shows in the country, an obvious hit piece appeared in that balanced
journal of the higher intellect, Vanity Fair, in which certain unnamed
GOP officials revealed the true Sarah Palin: Sarah as Michael Jackson,
Sarah the narcissist, who lived in a dream world and was overwhelmed by
"demons". The fact that GOP figures would cooperate with a rag like
Vanity Fair in the first place puts a period to any talk of a party
connection. The GOP obviously has an agenda. It is not Sarah Palin's
agenda. Nor, more than likely, ours either.
What about Alaska?
- Palin is one of the
outstanding governors of our time, possibly surpassed only by Rick
Perry, infinitely superior to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jennifer Granholm,
or Mitt Romney, to mention only a few members of a large crowd. She
went a long way toward cleaning up the Anchorage cesspool, wound up the
negotiations for a gas pipeline that had been languishing for decades,
and put her state on the national radar screen for the first time since
1958. But her usefulness as governor was probably drawing to an end. If
she were to show interest in a 2012 run, she could depend on Obama's
crew doing everything possible to drag her down -- and going through
her state to do it.
Her future?
- She will be back. Not
for 2012. The GOP has its plans already worked out. Very clever ones,
too. The Republicans will do what they always do when they're up
against it: grab an empty suit and run around shaking it in people's
faces while shouting, "Here's the man!" By 2012, after his policies
really hit home, as gas and home fuel prices triple and quadruple, as
medical rationing begins, as the renewed Axis of Evil runs wild across
Eurasia, Obama will be ready to drop. At that point he could be
defeated by a ticket consisting of Charley Manson and Jojo the Dogface
Boy. But the GOP will blow it all the same. Exactly as the party did in
'96, following the same script to the letter. They will, to coin a
phrase, Mitt it up.
Epilogue
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Democracies never stop
halfway, no matter what it is: good or bad, intelligent or stupid,
harmful or beneficial, they have to go the whole route before at last
changing course. The U.S. could not abandon Great Society liberalism in
1976, it had to wait until 1980. The UK could not put aside postwar
Labour policies until they were ground down to the last (the Brits went
so far as to elect Harold Wilson to two nonconsecutive terms --
something similar to re-electing Jimmy Carter in 1984. Talk about
desperation moves!)