Human nature leads most of us to search for logic and reasoning in a series of seemingly connected events. That has surely led many to try and uncover the strategic genius behind Sarah Palin’s recent maneuvers that will catapult her to the Republican nomination in 2012. You can stop, there is no strategy.
Palin is unquestionably a phenomenon with an instinctual ability to capture America’s attention. But even though she has influence, she is not a leader. There is no plan to manipulate the anger and paranoia on the American right to advance her political fortunes; she merely reflects the hysteria because she believes it. She is irresponsible, but not cynical. While even her limited success is a sad commentary on the state of the American polity, Sarah Palin is not going to be president.
Whether it’s because she is picking a fight with David Letterman, resigning as governor of Alaska, pushing for higher carbon emissions, or claiming Obama wants to kill her Down’s syndrome baby, Palin has spent the summer in the headlines. Any politician would love to get her level of media attention and it’s natural to think there has to be some kind of plan or purpose for the media onslaught. But if you look at it closely, it’s more luck than strategy, intuition rather than evil genius.
Palin couldn’t have picked a better time to capture days worth of headlines when she made her resignation announcement on a Friday afternoon of the three-day Fourth of July weekend. Not much else was happening – and if there was a ‘plan’, it would have been the perfect time for her to announce she was leaving the governor’s job to pursue another political office or to build a political movement. She would have been marked as the frontrunner for the Republican nod in 2012.
But there is no plan because she simply abandoned her post because she didn’t want to do it any more. She stumbled into all the coverage by happenstance after delivering an incoherent statement that led to days of negative analysis and headlines and even George Will [a controversial conservative commentator] labeled her a quitter. The criticism may have endeared her further to the fringe on the right, but she is finished as a viable national politician.
But she can still command attention. It is easier to think that Palin doesn’t actually believe that Obama’s push for healthcare reform is masking a secret plot to exterminate unproductive members of society because to think that she does is terrifying. But that’s how you have to understand Sarah Palin – she’s not using the wing-nuts, she’s one of them. What do you have to believe about your political opponents to actually think their objective is to kill old people and children with learning difficulties?
Palin is fascinating, but not in a ‘look at the silly Americans’ kind of way. Her predominance represents the chickens coming home to roost for a Republican party that has embraced an anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism run amok. If Barack Obama’s life story says that in America, anyone can be president, Palin’s story would have been everyone can be president. Fortunately, this summer has proved that’s not true.
Even Conservative Americans, like me, have to agree that some of Sarah Palin’s actions cannot be interpreted as anything other than somewhat rediculous. And although her comments regarding Obama’s health plan wanting to abort her disabled child are definitely a bit over-charged and sensational, I do think she is voicing a true concern conservative Americans have about state-run healthcare, although somewhat exagerated.
I know of someone in the UK who was told they had to have an abortion by her NHS doctor because their pregnancy was ectopic. This individual went through with the proceedure because she was told she would certainly die otherwise. She has been guilt ridden ever since, and wishes she would have had other option. The truth is that there were other options in her case, but her NHS doctor did not help her to consider htem. In the U.S., women give birth increasingly more often in ectopic pregnancy situations. There are many doctors who now specialize in these types of high-risk pregancies and enable mothers to have the choice to take the added risk of going through with the pregnancy. The option to proceed is expensive and risky, but at least individuals can have that choice in the U.S. It seems the person I know here in the UK was not given that choice by the NHS.
This represents a real fear that conservative Americans face — that state-run healthcare will be more interested in curbing costs than in providing the real choices that currently exist in American healthcare. Conservatives want to know that their doctor will explain all the choices available to them, even the more risky or more costly ones.
I feel for my UK friend who wasn’t given a choice and was seemingly forced to do something she was morally opposed to.
And American’s are right to be critical of Obama’s health proposal. I have met over a dozen Brits in the last few years who were flying over to the U.S. for treatments not available in the UK. If accepting Obama’s healthcare means a system like the NHS, every American should fight it. Government money would be better spent helping to understand and reduce the high costs that currently exist in U.S. healthcare and work toward fixing those so the 10% of Americans without health insurance can afford it. To socialise health provision would certainly result in a reduction in the high quality healthcare that most Americans value and that most of the world covets.
Gina – your friend obviously got bad advice. Are all USA doctors so brilliant that they never get it wrong? I say the number of law suits say otherwise.
In the UK we also have people come from around the world to take advantage of our health service, what you seem to forget is that whilst NHS treatment is available to all there is also a thriving “paid for” sector. Under NHS system you may have to wait a few weeks for a non-life threatening proceedure which, if you contribute to a “paid for” healthcare provider, will enable you to get done at a time to suit you.
I personally have considered moving to USA as I have job connections there but will not. I could not live with the thought that 10% of the population are thought expendable because they are poor.