(Originally filed on September 16, 2008)
“It’s like a really bad Disney movie. The hockey mom, you know, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska and she’s the President and it’s like she’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd, it’s totally absurd and I don’t understand why more people aren’t talking about how absurd it is.” Far be it from me to suggest that the American public take its political cues from an overpaid actor, but Matt Damon does have a point. It’s been bandied about from George W. Bush’s first run for the white house that the American people want a common man in office, someone that they can imagine having a conversation with over a pint of beer. Personally, I want my President in the White House solving this country’s numerous problems, not hanging out at the local pub. In fact, I don’t want him drinking ever. And frankly I’d rather he not be a “commoner.” I want the President to be much smarter than me and way above the 99th percentile for the country. I don’t need to have a conversation with the President, but I need him to be able to converse with heads of state around the world cogently and with a firm grasp of the stakes at hand.
Sarah Palin, a very likely candidate for President in the future, has been lauded for her sharp glasses and her witty retorts. Is this really all it takes to be a McCain heartbeat away from the highest office in the land? Damon is prescient when he calls Palin an actor and her candidacy a fanciful production. It is as though she has been concocted by a screenwriter to placate an anxious, conservative base. Palin is currently playing the role of dutiful sidekick, but has the GOP blessing to become the main show. She is the superficially new, not for her beliefs which are just right of McCain/Bush, but for her genes. Tom Gunning, in his famous article, “The Cinema of Attraction,” describes an early film industry which attracted consumers by peddling in illusionistic prowess, voyeuristic catharsis, close-up images of people and objects, and actors looking back at the camera. The lack of narrative was not a concern as long as the audience got a respite from the doldrums of the grueling, modern existence. Well over one hundred years later this impulse has never left us. Indeed, it has been amplified by the 24/7 news cycle. Sarah Palin: The Politician is a modern day spectacle—ascendant thanks to the ease of the façade. However, the public knows very little of her heart. Her recent interview with Charles Gibson helped to expose all the fault lines that GOP spinmeisters have been trying to keep tamped down.
Gibson seemed embarrassed for Palin on occasion and woefully took time to re-state his questions to focus the discussion after her “blizzard of words.” It appeared that she was reciting from a carefully crafted script prepared by McCain’s advisers. The most damning moment was Gibson’s necessary explanation of the Bush doctrine which must have collectively made millions of viewers blanch. Moreover, a vice presidential candidate who thinks that being able to see Russia from an island in Alaska gives her insight into foreign policy imperatives is fantastical.
Putin as Cruella de Vil indeed.
If this farce was indeed a movie it would be far more entertaining. However, this is not just about good vs. evil scripted for the under ten demographic. This election is about sons and daughters dying in Iraq, hard-working individuals losing their jobs in a withering economy, making our country less susceptible to catastrophic attacks, ensuring healthcare for future generations, reducing our dependence on dwindling, foreign oil reserves, and giving every child the opportunity for a decent education. I don’t want to see Sarah Palin: The Movie. I want to see America: The Movie, where the health of our country is the only protagonist.
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