Sarah Palin has been on the national stage for a year and a half now, and she seems no closer to bringing her Aw-shucks political diva act to a close. In fact, she seems more energized than ever.
Like a lot of people, I was hoping that she’d take the drubbing McCain-Palin got in ’08 to heart, and go back to Alaska where the damage she could do to our nation would be decidedly limited. Obviously, we don’t always get what we want. But as the Rolling Stones tell us – sometimes you get what you need.
When Palin got the nod from John McCain in 2008 she was clearly unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. She had virtually no significant political experience (not that Obama had a hugely long resume in that regard either..) – but most troubling, she very clearly lacked the intellectual chops to take on almost any national office.
Holding an office like Governor would have given Palin, at a minimum, two years to “hit the books” on issues of national and international importance. To finally craft, and master, a worldview that she could present to potential voters in the run up to the 2012 elections. She could use the time to choose and build a team of experts to manage her campaign strategy and message. Americans are not particularly demanding of their Presidential candidates intellects. Adlai Stevenson, probably for all time, gave “the smart guy” a whiff of political nerdiness. But with that said, Palin’s performance during the campaign was so head-slappingly awful that one had to be either delusional or truly moronic to think that she’d make a good President.
Palin didn’t do that. She reminds me a lot of the worst sort of clients management consultants deal with: those who are so bad, they just don’t realize how badly they need help. So instead of keeping quiet, she has kept herself in the news: A badly reviewed ghostwritten book. A puzzling “quitting” of the Governors office. A self-defeating public fight with the father of her grandchild. A gig on Fox News. And a paid speech at the Tea Party convention.
This endless barrage of quests for attention ought to tell us something about Sarah Palin: She’s desperate for attention. Most probably because, at heart, she lacks self-confidence. She knows, in her heart, that she isn’t as smart as Obama. She ought to know she isn’t as smart as McCain, Romney, Pawlenty, or just about any other national politician.
The Tea Party speech probably won’t be the final nail in Palin’s political coffin. But, factually dubious talking points aside, the biggest tip-off to her eventual doom has to be the handwritten crib notes on her palm. They tell me that whoever is making decisions for Sarah Palin, Inc. doesn’t have a clue. If Palin had referred to index cards for her notes – that would have looked, if not necessarily “Presidential.”
Instead, she came across looking like exactly what she is: the failing student who hasn’t done her homework.
Technology and Media 
Word of the Day: Procrustean
Procrustean
adjective
Marked by arbitrary ruthlessness and disregard for special or extenuating circumstances.
In Greek myth, Procrustes was a son of Poseidon with a stronghold on Mount Korydallos, on the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith’s hammer, to stretch them to fit. In later tellings, if the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length; nobody ever fit the bed exactly because secretly Procrustes had two beds. Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, travelling to Athens along the sacred way, who “fitted” Procrustes to his own bed.
Procrustean is a useful word to describe many of the “mandatory minimum”, “zero-tolerance” policies of modern-day American institutions. A grade-school that suspends a nine year old for carrying a tiny plastic raygun in violation of its “zero tolerance” policies is an example of “procrustean” policy run amok.
Media
Politics
Vocabulary