The Cost of Looking Electable

Sarah Palin's bills are once again in the news, as the New York Times reports that Palin's hair stylist made $42,000 and her makeup artist was paid $68,000. Add to that $55,000 for a fashion stylist and the now-infamous $150,000 for clothes, and you've got a very expensive vice-presidential candidate.

In general, I think this is a bullshit issue. I don't feel too badly for Palin because when her campaign chose a dishonest, anti-intellectual, faux populist strategy, spending more money her hair than many of the voters she was trying to woo made in a year left her open for a karmic whip.

There hasn't been any double standard here since John Edwards was called out for the cost of his haircuts, but the whole issue's phony because it presumes candidates are just like us, which they're not - certainly during campaigns. They can't easily arrange their campaign schedules around the availability of their stylists' at home; they likely pay their stylists to make themselves available at the candidates' convenience, and that costs more. And they're not making the choice between Supercuts and an Aveda salon; people running for office are likely getting their hair cut by top professionals, who cost more under normal circumstances.

There are ways where they are like us. When we apply for important new jobs, we dress the best we can and if necessary, spend what we realistically can to look like the person our prospective employers would want. They do too, but they can afford more (or get others to afford it for them).

The whole issue is part and parcel with the "Who'd you rather have a beer with?" notion of voting, where the president's just another average chucklehead like us. But he's not, he shouldn't be (as we learned in the last 8 years), and busting him or her for spending more than we would on clothes ignores a host of realities that we ought to deal with and get over.

The Real America

I don't live there, so I suppose I'm not a real American, but I can't imagine anyone who lives there feels anymore love than I do right now for someone who spent more than their annual income in one trip to Neiman Marcus.

Ugly in the Echo Chamber

The video of McCain and Palin appearances and the hostility and suspicion toward Obama is appalling, but it's hard to imagine that playing well outside of the party faithful. This campaign started absurdly early, so people have spent more than a year seeing and hearing Obama. Are the moderates and undecided going to really decide that this calm, seemingly measured guy is really a terrorist? An enemy of the state? Similarly, it's hard to imagine that Ayers and Wright will have any traction outside of the faithful because the stories themselves are old news having first come up months ago during the primary season. McCain and Palin don't have fresh news, or even fresh spin on them; all they have is greater volume and urgency, brought on by the nearness of the election.

Who are moderates and undecideds going to go to - the guy who has seemed on message and engaged in issues for the last year-plus, or the guy who has skittered erratically from crisis-oriented decision to crisis-oriented decision in radical steps? And will they really believe that the guy who thought Palin was a good idea, who gambled and tied himself to an economic crisis that's likely to get worse before it gets better, and who runs as an outsider despite a quarter-century in Washington when he tries to tell voters they don't know the real Obama? I think the polls are telling us the answers. Desperation is sad stench, and it's strong on him.

Word of the Week

Thankfully, the "Main Street/Wall Street" variations have worn that hackneyed phrase out already, but "pivot" seems to have become the political verb du jour, used to describe what politicians do when asked questions they don't want to answer. It seems like I heard it two or three times last week, and the Huffington Post quotes Sarah Palin using it to criticize Katie Couric's interview:

"The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed," [Palin] said. "It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too."

What should Couric have asked her? In an interview with Fox News, she said:

"In those Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars. Some of his comments that he's made about the war, that I think may, in my world, disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of the comments that he has made about Afghanistan -- what we are doing there, supposedly just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That's reckless. I want to talk about things like that. So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside the Washington elite, outside of the media elite also. I just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter and let them know what we stand for."

Evidently in Alaska, "interview" means "opportunity to say whatever shit you want to say without question."

The Truth as Comedy

It's a bad sign for Sarah Palin that Tina Fey's impression of her has become so popular. Gerald Ford admitted after he left office that Chevy Chase's sketches showing him to be a bumbler changed the way people thought of him, and George H.W. Bush says he never said, "Naat gonna do't," but the phrase and Dana Carvey's almost absurdly consonant-deficient Bush pronunciation became the starting point for anyone who wanted to mock him. In their cases, Chase and Carvey presented extreme versions of their subjects; this weekend, fuly half of Tina Fey's lines as Palin came directly from the debate. Palin at her best was the butt of a joke, and it's not a reach to expect that something radical will have to happen to keep her from being seen as anything but a version of Fey.

The Breaking Point

There are any number of basic problems with the McCain candidacy starting with someone with 26 years of experience in Washington - most of it in the party in power - running as the outsider. But the moment last night when I had to stop my TV and yell (thanks to the miracle of DVR) came when Fargo Palin told Joe Biden that sometimes the government can't solve a problem; sometimes it is the problem. How can McCain and Palin seriously run for office when they view the office and the government as a bad, intrusive thing? The current financial crisis and the post-Katrina Gulf South illustrate the product of a government driven by a self-hating ideology.

One last thing - today the press is giving her credit for having better answers and a better command of the details than she did with Katie Couric. That was easy, but would she have done as well without her notes, which you could often see her refer to? Even with them, she got the name of the commander in Afghanistan wrong twice, and her vice presidential answer was one of a few that still had some Miss South Carolina in it.

Details, Details

For the last week or so, we've marvelled at Sarah Palin's remarkable inattention to details. She can't name Supreme Court decisions, magazines and newspapers she has read, or regulatory stands McCain has taken. Contrast that with Barack Obama's appearance this morning on ESPN's "Mike and Mike." He casually and comfortably talked about the teams he grew up watching, the White Sox pitching rotation and ABC's The Superstars. It's not genius stuff, but accessing a memory really shouldn't require finals-like cramming for anyone, and certainly not for someone in one of the most important jobs in the country.

Wearing Out a Point

Today, NPR's "Morning Edition" included tape from a McCain/Palin appearance, and during it, a woman gave Palin a chance to explain her foreign policy bona fides. I'm paraphrasing the answer - but not that much - and said she's ready because she believes you have to be ready and we have that readiness. If I, a writer by trade who last took science classes in Grade 11, argued that I'm ready to remove your appendix because I believe I am and I have to be ready when I put scalpel to skin, would you let me cut?

One of the more insidious ways that the Bush White House has injected spirituality into public policy is to reduce everything to a matter of belief - the central tenet of Christianity. Facts are the things he believes; the things he doesn't believe are subject to debate, and Palin is more of the same in so many ways. Thankfully, every time Palin opens her mouth on foreign policy, the emptiness of that approach becomes evident.

Don't Stop Believin'

I've attributed Bush's election and re-election to the fact that no voter feels stupid next to him - a variation on the idea that people voted for the guy they'd most like to have a beer with. I understand comfort and how it's a more driving force than anybody would like to admit, but seriously - are you qualified to run the country? Are any of the people you drink with at the bar? At the coffee shop?

Today's transcripts of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin show the shortcomings your buddy, the candidate. The news today is that she doesn't know the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive defense, and how she inadvertently put America's foreign policy in the Middle East in the hands of Israel, and by admitting Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO drawn America into war with Russia. But let's go beyond such trivialities as details. Joan Walsh at Salon.com made this connection:

Talking to Charles Gibson tonight, Palin sometimes reminded me of poor Miss South Carolina, who, asked why many Americans can't find the U.S. on a map, famously said: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And I believe that our education, like, such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

This statement from Palin about Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is better, but not hugely: "I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nucular weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes. We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nucular weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran."

I thought more of another, more generic sad sack when I read this transcript:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I'm ready.

GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"

PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.

GIBSON: (INAUDIBLE -- Didn't that take some hubris?)

PALIN: I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink.

The gobbledygook logic of that last statement - her rationale for believing she's ready to be vice-president and if necessary president - boils down to, "I believe in me because I believe, and I have to believe." Usually we hear some variation on that logic from a teenager talking to Ryan Seacrest just before he or she walks into the American Idol tryout room to be crushed and sent to therapy by Simon, Randy and Paula. Or on the tryout show for America's Next Top Model, where the poor underfed dears explain that they're going to be America's next top model because they really want to be America's next top model. Not surprisingly, the women who actually win have more reliable attributes like good bone structure, a consciousness of their bodies and a sense of how they present themselves for photos.

We've just spent eight years with a president who reduced every issue to a matter of belief; another candidate who believes because she believes really isn't change.

Here's the interview.