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Monday, Jul 6, 2009
Liberals underestimate Sarah Palin's vitality and -- yes -- smarts at their own peril. Plus: Obama's presidential air, Biden's condescending mugging, feminism's lost sisters.
Editor's note: Read all of Salon's coverage of Sarah Palin
By Camille Paglia
Read more: Camille Paglia, Germaine Greer, Opinion, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin
Oct. 8, 2008 |
Dear Camille,I was actually leaning towards Obama before he stated his willingness to enter negotiations with Iran with no pre-conditions. This is frightening stuff here. My wife and I lived in Germany for five years until late 2006, and I worked in Baghdad during the better part of 2006. His offer is reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain, but I don't think Obama's motives are as sincere as Chamberlain's. Like most politicians, I believe Obama says what the people want to hear. He doesn't come across as a change agent.
Sincerely,
Philip Steelman
Your concern about the foreign-policy world-view of liberal Democrats is certainly justified. The university culture at Columbia and Harvard through which Obama passed has been drenched in a reflexive anti-Americanism for several decades. Armchair blame-America-first leftism is the default mode. Disdain for the military is rampant, and conservative voices are rarely heard.
However, your invocation of Neville Chamberlain may be a bit alarmist because there is no Hitler on the horizon -- just a series of regional petty dictators who, in my view, can be contained or neutralized through joint international efforts rather than open war. But the Chamberlain parallel cannot be entirely discounted, because British and European artists and intellectuals during that highly creative first generation of avant-garde modernism did indeed drift away from national affiliation into a chic, passive cosmopolitanism.
As an Obama supporter, however, I was not particularly troubled by his rather carelessly phrased response about negotiation without preconditions during a primary debate with Hillary Clinton. I don't believe that would in fact happen during an Obama administration, when the new president would have time to reflect and to absorb State Department briefing books. Surely the standard, prudent diplomatic protocols would kick into action.
I am well aware of the widespread conservative view of Obama's naivete and lack of preparation (Rush Limbaugh stingingly calls him a "man-child"). But I am one of the many who regard Obama as authentically inspirational -- as a leader appealing to our better nature rather than armoring us in eternal fear and paranoia against our fellow human beings. I remember how John F. Kennedy (the first politician I ever campaigned for) electrified young people and transformed our political reality, which was about to emerge from the long, grey slog of the Cold War.
What would concern me more about an Obama administration, given these rampant doubts, is the possibility that he would jump more readily toward war in order to prove his toughness. We don't need more foolish military incursions, bogging us down in regions whose vicious factionalism has boiled irresolvably for 3,000 years. Where our national interest is not directly at stake, we should mind our own business. Israel, on the other hand, whose very survival might be menaced by a nuclear Iran, would always have the right of preemptive self-defense.
You asked, "How do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century?" Well, a man who chooses torture over freedom based on his principles is a man who is committed to his principles. That is the point, and you weren't the only one who missed it.This is a man of unusual fortitude, which his campaign should emphasize because it is his strongest selling point and reinforces his image as a man who will cross his party to do what's right (and sharply contrasts with his opponent, who talks endlessly about bringing people together but whose record is highly partisan). I agree the number of allusions at the Republican convention to this biographical episode was redundant and most were inarticulate, emphasizing the difficulty and discomfort of being a captive. Simply suffering as a prisoner of war is not a qualification.
How much more effective would it have been if McCain's lead-in would have been his war biography with the closing tag line, "Question John McCain's policies if you must, but you never question John McCain's commitment to his country and his principles"? Then follow with McCain's acceptance, thanking his presenters, acknowledging his co-prisoners, but disavowing the praise and then apologizing for failing under torture. It would have been an incredible moment and if done right could have brought the audience to tears.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge McCain fan. I could write a much longer letter critiquing him, but I find this personal attribute incredible and heroic.
Michael Bakalars
St. Louis Park, MN
Thank you very much for your rousing defense. However, I still fail to see the connection between McCain's unquestionably heroic choices under terrible duress and his suitability for the presidency, an administrative post. First of all, McCain's political career has hardly been one of adherence to principle. He seems like a gruff, spontaneous, seat-of-the-pants guy, making decisions subjectively without regard to larger consistency. What are his principles? They seem to drift and change with whim and circumstance.
Yes, McCain is profoundly patriotic, as were his military forebears. Patriotism, rather than race, may indeed prove to be the determining factor in this election. But I simply don't see that McCain has the basic managerial ability to run the complex Washington bureaucracy. Obama lacks executive experience too, but he has shown a shrewd ability to captain a national campaign. And Obama's sober, deliberative temperament seems to me genuinely presidential. In contrast, McCain's bizarre grandstanding during the Wall Street crisis (such as his embarrassingly unprofessional call for cancellation of the first debate) suggested that he lacks the steadiness of behavior and expression that we have a right to expect in a president.
Would you care to justify your view that "Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude"? I am sorry that John McCain spent years in prison. But I am even sorrier that the U.S. ever went into Vietnam. I am an American, and I do not feel that I owe Mr. McCain "an incalculable debt of gratitude" for his participation in that stupid, unnecessary war. If he willingly went to a war which was unjust and uncalled for to begin with, then I, as a American, definitely do not owe him a debt of gratitude. In such a case, a resistance to such an unjust war would rather be the act of patriotism for which we should be grateful.I remind you that the USA was not attacked by Vietnam, neither did I nor the rest of Americans consider them our enemy, nor did the Vietnamese present any threat at all to the United States. Therefore it is entirely illogical to make such a statement or to concede that I, or any American, owe any special thanks to Mr. McCain for his suffering, which obviously was his own fault. There is nothing worse than a "blind patriot," so why aren't we allowed to say so? If we do, we may very well lessen the possibility of such folly in the future. Insofar as it involves him becoming president, his own decision certainly calls into serious question his political judgment then, as now.
Sincerely,
Will Morgan
