The Sword and the Olive Branch

 The biggest reason populist conservatives are so unpopular.

 (I’m determined to get through this one without using the “L” word).

George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are the most despised elected Republicans in recent memory.  Even though his Presidency is over, George Bush’s most extreme opponents are fantasizing about trying his administration for war crimes.  Sarah Palin is still kicked around in certain circles and falsely portrayed as the reason the disloyal, uncertain, and uninspiring presidential candidate John McCain lost the 2008 election.  

It’s plain to everyone that there exists a core group of Americans who sneer down at conservatives simply for the sin of being right of center, but Bush, Palin, and the populist conservatives just like them are hated with a vigor that would be more appropriately directed at someone who suffocates infants in the maternity ward.  Anyone strolling through the internet last fall would have found it difficult not to trip over mean-spirited hecklers purposefully spreading malicious rumors such as the lie that Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent.  There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that both of these Republicans are too normal.   Neither Bush nor Palin seem to make any effort to portray themselves as part of some insufferably articulate, tea-tootling ruling class. 

The historian Robert Greene shares a story in The 48 Laws of Power about the last King of France, Louis-Philippe.  He came to power during the 1830 July Revolution after Charles X was forced to go into exile to avoid being murdered by revolutionary zeal.  Louis-Philippe carried himself not like a king, but like the French middle class.  He constantly downplayed his status, treating guests in his palace as if they were in his position.  In addition, he wasn’t a friend of the nobility.  He didn’t speak their language or adopt their symbols.  He called himself the “King of the French” as opposed to the traditional title “King of France.” 

Eventually Louis-Philippe’s everyman act wore on the French, who started to look down on him.  It got to the point where the powerful banker James Rothschild publically berated the King for being late.  After riots broke out over electoral reform, the “King of the French” rewarded the rioter’s violent behavior by firing his prime minister and appointing a replacement with more revolutionary sensibilities.  Predictably, this emboldened the mob, and eventually they surrounded his palace.  In the tradition of French leaders confronted by political extremism, Louis-Philippe tucked in his tail and fled to England, leaving the country to fend for itself.  It turns out that even people clamoring for equality at all costs don’t want a ruler just like them. 

Flash forward to Bush and Palin now.  As a result of their plain-spoken manner, liberals like to pretend that George and Sarah are so dumb it embarrasses America.  This is simply poor man’s elitism.  Both Republicans were popular governors, far more successful on a state level than a national one.  After governing the lone star state, George Bush was elected twice as President of the United States, which took a lot of guile, especially considering that he was re-elected after starting an immensely unpopular war.  Even the stingiest parent would be proud of their child if he or she grew up to become president.  Surely being the son of another former President helped Bush achieve what he has, but no all rich children are smart enough to make the most out of their privilege.  Has anyone who doesn’t own a police scanner heard of Al Gore III? 

As for Palin, she led a complex proposal that ensured that when 35 trillion feet of cubic gas under Alaska’s North Slope comes to market, it would allow for competition and growth, have clear and objective measures of progress, and preserve Alaska’s sovereignty.  She then ensured that the proposal would get voted on.  And if that doesn’t convince you, even the Democratic feminist and former editor in chief of Ms. Magazine, Elaine Lafferty, concedes that Palin is “very smart,” and feminists don’t concede anything to the right.  Yet even though it can probably be demonstrated that Bush and Palin are more happy and successful than most of the population, their opponents are still able to portray them as barely one step up from Joy Behar. 

Of course Bush and Palin aren’t fantastically stupid, but they’re portrayed as such because they’re too much like the Americans we see every day.  More than even real tyranny, the mere appearance of commonality is something people don’t want in a leader.  People like to imagine they’re being led by the best and the brightest.  We don’t want to know that our presidents, governors, and judges are just like us, only more educated and driven.  We feel safer pretending that our elected officials aren’t capable of making the same dumb mistakes we make.  Politicians aren’t supposed to have ideological biases or speak like regular folk, because no likes to deferring to their equal. 

This is why being articulate is so important in politics.  The largest blow to Sarah Palin’s image hit home when the media exposed her lack of aristocracy, for the privileged class is trained to have a least talking points ready for all situations.  As for G.W., his speech flubs are proof that our politicians are human, which is why they’re called “Bushisms” and obsessed over by the mediocre masses.   How can the government be responsible for our well-being when our leaders are no better than we are? 

Bush and Palin’s penchant for regular, unpolished communication not only sounds dumb to some people, but it seems inauthentic.  Again, the presumption that politicians are better than everyone else is the culprit.  When political figures make obvious attempts the act like someone they’re not, let’s say they pop out of tanks even though it’s obvious they’re not military types, it gives the impression that they have no self-respect.  Instead of selling you their ideas in their language, they pretend to be in tune with people they share little to nothing in common with.   So when Sarah Palin speaks in plain English, as opposed to iambic pentameter, it seems as if she doesn’t respect her position.  George Bush’s casual approach to the speechmaking (he’s often glib and tends to speak in platitudes) made him look un-presidential.  They both ignore when I now humbly deem the first rule of democracy: no one wants to give power to someone they can’t pretend is better than he or she is. 

In addition to that, no one likes being talked down to.  If a politician starts adopting your southern accent when they never had one before, their appeal to regional ties is so obvious they may as well be using baby talk.  “HOW Y’ALL DOING?  I SURE HATE THEM RICH PEOPLE.”  Thus, Bush and Palin’s plain language risks offending people because it seems condescending.  Regular Americans don’t know politicians well enough to trust that their common lingo is sincere.  Ironically, this pretty much guarantees that a working-class person will never be elected by the working class.  No one believes Barack Obama is representative of his constituency, unless they’re only counting professors who make six figures.

The lessons conservatives can learn from misguided populism are many.  One, don’t act as if you’re a lower class than you really are, it’s condescending and smacks of insincerity.  People don’t mind if you’re true to yourself and your own culture, as long as you demonstrate a respect for their values.  Two, don’t be inarticulate, it convinces people you’re dumb even if all the remaining evidence suggests otherwise.  To have any chance of winning the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, Sarah Palin will have work hard to convince Americans she’s not the dope her opponents gleefully portray her as.  The most important part of that will be learning how to act like part of the ruling class.  I’m no advocate for shallowness, but when it comes to persuading the masses, appearances may actually be everything—who a politician is isn’t nearly as important to his success as who the people think he is.  Three, if you ever become King of France, don’t preclude Elvis’s look. 

Cross-posted at Modern Conservative

Tags: Bush, communication, palin
Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »

…may surprise you.

One of the reasons conservative commentators focused on Barack Obama’s associates during the 2008 election season is that they’re so obviously radical.  The Big Blue O’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, preaches flame-throwing liberation theology.  William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist whose violent past is such a casual part of his identity even conscientious citizens don’t raise an eyebrow to it, has hosted a fundraiser for Obama and donated to his campaign.  Like her husband, Michelle Obama is not particularly unpleasant, yet she’s vulnerable to the siren song of victim politics.  More than once she has claimed:  “Every woman I know, regardless of race, education, income, background, is struggling every day to keep her head above water.”  If I were foolish enough to take Mrs. Obama’s words to heart, I would be forced to conclude that Oprah Winfrey is a misstep away from some sort of breakdown.  

Yet President Obama isn’t guilty by association.  For all of his boring, conventional liberalism, Barack Obama won’t be the most terrible leader our country has endured (America’s future presidents would likely have to sabotage the economy to surpass the downward spiral of Jimmy Carter’s reign).  As much as an Obama presidency would lurch the country leftward, the most disturbing prospect of his rule is not his executive power, but the worst behavior of those who voted for him.  I’m afraid that a victory by Obama will legitimize the hatred, arrogance, and aggression of not Obama or his cabinet, but Obama’s most vocal supporters.  Now that a relatively young idealist has become the President of the United States, it could be seen by his constituents as a four-year mandate to act out. 

Once liberals see one of their own in the oval office again, what will become of American culture?  This isn’t an abstract question.  In between the economy, the Middle East, and the millennial generation’s corny communitarianism, the nation won’t be able to return to the tranquil 1990’s, so what kind of culture will Obama’s rule inspire?  Will those who think the government created AIDS to get rid of black people start to be taken seriously?  Will our educators be trained by more people like the aforementioned professor Ayers, who won’t concede that bombing the U.S. capital is terrorism?  Will it empower the immature activism of people who vandalize property in democracy’s name?  Barack Obama’s presidency will be a victory for the deepening politicization of American culture, which will please the “vote or die” crowd.  But as anyone can observe every time an election draws near, this isn’t a good thing, as it invariably leads to political strife and the further institutionalization of resentment. 

This was clearly demonstrated through the misbehavior of many Obama supporters during the 2008 Presidential election, particularly in their treatment of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after John McCain announced her as his running mate.  Because she’s a conservative woman, one left-wing entertainer called her a traitor, and commented how Palin would be gang-raped in her neighborhood.  Another liberal actor condescendingly compared her achievement to a shallow family film.  Many uninformed citizens believe that Palin wanted to ban books from public libraries, even though many of the books on the supposed blacklist hadn’t even been published when she purportedly tried to censor them.  Even the twenty-year old son of a Democratic representative has been indicted for breaking into her e-mail account and attempting to distribute the contents for the entire world to see.  Most embarrassingly for her opponents, aging feminists complained that Palin isn’t authentically female because she isn’t liberal.  This is only the tip of an iceberg full of outlandish editorials, bad comedy skits, and weeks of internet message boards filling to the brim with anti-Palin talking points, all fed by the unrelenting production of shallow objections to a stunning range of topics spanning from tanning beds to her personal faith. 

Governor Palin was blackballed for being a normal, imperfect American woman living a normal, imperfect American life with a normal, imperfect American family.  Everything from her daughter’s pregnancy to her sister’s (all too common) ugly divorce became a distraction from genuine issues.  Republicans and Democrats alike rightly criticized Palin’s poor performances in her post-nomination interviews, but the malice directed at her by Obama voters would have been more appropriately reserved for pedophiles and slave owners.  This behavior wasn’t limited to anonymous internet trolls, but professors, generally likeable actors, and even the occasional figurehead of an entire movement (Gloria Steinem).  Given the Obama campaign’s ambivalence for free speech, the prospect of such intolerant citizens having a representative in the White House is understandably creepy.  Bald partisanship, not judicious compromise, will be the hallmark of Obama’s America. 

Case in point: When Barack Obama chose the moderately conservative Christian Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, a substantial part of his base lost their emotional bowels.  Gay activists felt “betrayed” by his selection, which only makes sense if fidelity means refusing to associate with social conservatives.  The gay community’s political fringe feels disrespected by Obama’s choice, which suggests they believe the world revolves around them—what else can one to make of their insistence that Obama stop talking to Rick Warren so they can feel more secure about his affection for them?  Predictably, some LGBT activists have angrily pleaded for Warren to step down.  Surely the Stonewall Reenactment Club will stage at least one small protest at today’s massive inauguration. 

It’s gotten to the point where entertainers have been forced to become more sane and even-tempered than the masses who worship them.  But Obama never promised to blacklist everyone to the right of him.  In fact, he campaigned as a pragmatic centrist and talked endlessly about reaching across the aisle.  Surely his supporters were aware of this.  Obama has pleasantly surprised me by living up to his word (Don’t jump to conclusions, it’s only his first day), but somehow this has disgusted much of his base.  Did they think he was lying?  Are they mad now that it appears he wasn’t cynically mouthing platitudes to the rubes just to get elected?

Yet President Obama is not completely innocent in this matter.  In his two-year tour for the Presidency, Obama implicitly encouraged the same self-righteous crusading he’s now bedeviled by.  In September, he told his followers “I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors.  I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican.  I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”  No report on whether or not he expects them to dress in white shirts, black slacks, and black ties while traveling door to door, carrying copies of A People’s History of the United States.

If President Obama keeps living up to his word, he will only create more extremists on his side.  Consider the President’s roundabout plan for mandating 50 hours of community service for middle and high school students (100 for college students).  There’s nothing wrong with community service, but anyone familiar with the way activism works knows that non-profit organizations are vulnerable to politicization.  Non-profit groups such as Campaign for America’s Future are so plainly anti-conservative that the prospect of a student being compelled to serve time under one of their “community leaders” is essentially an engine for turning students into left-wing activists.  Obama’s plan risks mandating young Americans to participate in partisan politics before they’re mature enough to resist emotional appeals and other types of indoctrination. 

Obviously one must take into account the predictable counter-argument that conservatives aren’t all winners, either.  Certainly some small-minded nutballs on the right are fixated with Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name, or strangely insistent that he’s not an indigenous American, but they don’t set the tone for the right like the MSNBC crowd does for the left.  Part of this is because Republicans don’t generally call on their supporters to be more obnoxious.   

In the end, the most disturbing part of Obama’s rise is that it indirectly affirms a worldview shared by the left’s most extreme voices.  It gives credence to the idea that America is fundamentally unjust and needs to be remade, not merely reformed.  It confirms the thoughtless assumptions of young neophytes, who seem to imagine that all conservatives are irredeemable liars, hypocrites, and dopes.  It gives more seasoned liberal lawyers and judges a green light from the highest office in the land to contort the Constitution around the myth of modern American oppression.  It rewards the hateful mob who went out of their way to call Sarah Palin “stupid” in their collective attempt to sway the election.  Perhaps worst of all, Obama’s rise to power sends the message to aspiring community organizers that harassing complete strangers with unsolicited political commentary is something commendable, rather than juvenile.  Make no mistake; Obama’s America will never be as bad as Obama’s Americans.  Maybe he’ll learn that the more he contends with them. 

Parce parce precor.  

-Afghan Whig

Tags: ayers, inauguration, Obama, obama supporters, palin, wright
Posted in Current Events | 2 Comments »