New York, 3 Nov 08, 3.15pm:

The Beast
Tina Brown’s Daily Beast ran an article by Elaine Lafferty which has piqued a lot of interest (see, for instance, Slate’s women-only blog The XX Factor). Its title is “Sarah Palin’s a Braniac”. Lafferty is a Democrat who for some reason has worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since just after the Palin pick.

‘I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart,’ she writes. Close up, Lafferty says she found Palin to be,

‘a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.’

And yet, the American people (perhaps not all Republican-defined “real” ones, as no doubt some are city folk) have judged that whatever else she is, Sarah Palin is not ready to be President, ie not ready for the job for which John McCain selected her.

Palin vs Pauline
Judging Sarah Palin may be one thing that Australians down under can do very well — watching Palin while thinking of Pauline Hanson. One thing that Our Pauline did and Palin does is to strike a ringing note in the heartland. They seem to be authentic, themselves the grassroots they claim to speak for.

But Pauline did not get to climb up onto a prepared stage before a teleprompter in front of a vast live and TV crowd. She arrived, shockingly and suddenly, on her own. The things she had to say seemed to blurt from her, stuff that came out of internal pressure without polling or media wrangling.

Contrast that with the managed revelation of Palin as a maverick choice and prefab icon. Her first address to the nation was with a speech that she did not write; that was, in fact, adapted from one that had awaited McCain’s choice of running mate. Still, Palin delivers a mean teleprompter.

The Real Thing and The Idol
Anyway, the point is that Pauline was that real ‘rarity’, the real thing: someone who became a politician because she had powerful feelings and understandings that could not be contained. The more one reads about Sarah Palin the more she comes across a dynamic character who is very capable in the service of her own, grand ambitions; which is to say, a careerist. This New Yorker piece makes clear that Palin is not the anti-elitist she pretends to be — and how indeed, she depended upon rightwing elites to advance her cause.

In the most essential way — the way of the prophet who must speak the truth — Palin cannot compare to Pauline. Pauline’s  “truth-telling” was hard to ignore during her brief time in the limelight; a time cut short by John Howard’s co-option of her program. (It was poor Pauline who gave Howard the permission to act in a manner that would rob herself of her unique position.)

Palin has said that she is not doing all this campaigning “for naught”; thus, all those banners proclaiming Palin 2012 (which poisoned joke even John McCain got to join in on Saturday Night Live last weekend — and, perversely, very funny he was). But she will only ever be an American Idol candidate — lured by the spotlight that has deserted Pauline. She has a talent for entertainment: Palin may have nothing original to say, but hell, she’s gonna say it with cuteness and confidence. In contrast, Our Pauline was never very entertaining; she just had things to say, and they were seldom pleasant things.