Thinking about why the trolls flip out about Palin…
Obama ran as the new JFK. Many including myself predicted correctly that he’d try to rule like FDR. He’s from Columbia and Harvard (except he won’t release his grades). He’s a plastic patrician. He’s a 21st century cheap knock-off of FDR and JFK. He’s to FDR and JFK what the Ford Granada was to the Mercedes.
Sarah Palin resembles, more than any other American president, Harry Truman. Despite the fact that Truman was FDR’s veep, FDR never liked or respected Truman. He was forced to take Truman due to political considerations. It was all about class. FDR was old money, and Truman was a scrappy upstart from Missouri.
Palin is everything that Truman was – strong, smart enough for the job (which doesn’t require a MENSA), and of the people. She’s not a cheap knock-off of Truman; she’s Truman in a dress. Obama, OTOH, looks like JFK and FDR as long as you don’t look too closely, and as long as the teleprompter keeps working. But deep down inside, his supporters know he’s a cheap fake.
That’s why the left fears her so much. Given the choice between a real Truman and a plastic FDR, the American people will chose the real Truman. All this stuff about ivy league degrees is a smoke screen; we all know that if Harry Truman was good enough for America, so is Sarah Palin.
By trying to be a plastic patrician, Obama gave up the opportunity to be a plastic populist. That was probably smart on his part, because as bad a job as he’s doing pretending to be a patrician, he’s even worse at pretending to be common. The truth is, he’s neither. He’s a middle-class white kid from Hawaii who decided when he got to college that being black was more academically and politically profitable, if you know how to play the game.
What we have in the white house is a changeling, and not a very good one. Not quite black, not quite patrician, and certainly not of the American people. And as the cheap gold paint continues to peel, his ability to compete with someone who, if nothing else, is at least genuine, is in serious doubt.
The panic you hear has a lot less to do with Sarah Palin than it does with their plastic messiah. He’s peeling and fading, and they know it. Palin doesn’t have to be a particularly strong candidate; she just has to be real. That’s enough, and that she is.
