Yes, But Which Experience?
Ross is right that conservatives have legitimate beef with the idea that a lack of a certain kind of experience is a deal-breaker for a candidate for, say, vice president. He is also right that the most relevant kind of experience in question, like it or not, is experience that has nothing to do with serving as a political executive:
She’s being judged, they complain, less on her record and her positions than on her ability to BS her way through “gotcha” questions from hostile interviewers, and she’s being found wanting because she isn’t as practiced in the art of the on-air dodge as more experienced politicians. […]
I think this view is wrong for several reasons: Because Palin’s relatively limited record in politics magnifies the importance of her public comments for anyone who’s trying to get a handle on who this woman is and whether she’s ready for high office; because her performance has been so comprehensively lousy that it has to reflect, to some degree, on her knowledge base and her understanding of policy as well as on her TV chops; and because like it or not, “proficiency on television” is simply a prerequisite for capable leadership in a mass democracy. But there’s a sense in which the apologists for her performance are getting something right: In the process of performing very, very badly on national television, Palin is holding up a mirror to the rest of the political world, and revealing how the mix of talking points, bluster, obfuscation and BS that nearly all national politicians traffic in as a matter of course sounds when it’s filtered through someone who isn’t practiced in it, and isn’t ready for the spotlight. Her performances reflect badly on her readiness for the vice presidency, no question – but they reflect badly on our whole compromised, spin-happy political class as well.
Obviously we are disgusted with this for the obvious reasons. But I think the reason why Republican critics of the high-gloss media machine are so upset about it vis-a-vis Palin’s flop sequence has less to do with the inherent disgustingness of political spectacle and more to do with their anger over the way the big-media format disables their much-loved candidate from providing them with the experience they get from her in other fora (like live speeches). The trouble is that “The Palin Experience” is grounded in cues and symbols that aren’t necessarily any less contrived, controlled, and even rigged than the ones that make you or break you on national television. Some of them are clearly more authentic — Todd Palin’s goatee, Trig Palin’s hairdo, Sarah’s own voice. The family’s size; the family’s moral and religious framework; their relationship with nature.
But Republicans are in the awkward position of celebrating The Palin Experience as something that transcends politics — when in reality, it can’t be anything other than a political experience. We can’t pull Palin out of the political skin of the relationship we have with her, and we can’t pull ourselves out of it, either. So Republicans are left yelling and screaming over Palin’s lack of media experience while urging the McCain campaign to “let Palin be Palin” — which affords a whole different kind of experience that still isn’t the political experience that’s supposed to be the better alternative standard to judging a candidate by their proficiency in front of the cameras. It’s one sort of spectacle-based relationship versus another, and it produces an awkward sort of conflict: not over which experience, but whose.
The experience question, finally, is less about the candidates’ experience than ours.
Yes, that a brilliant observation.
And exactly right.
It is always tribalism and identity politics.
The genetic and memetic signalling to the neo-cortex.
It is hardwired from the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Advantage).
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 05:36 PM · #
Let’s analyze last night’s debate in the context of this post.
Republicans gave Palin rave reviews….home-run, the palin show, etc.
Palin’s tribe was absolutely wow’d.
But only her tribe.
This is reflected in the polls.
http://mediacurves.com/
If you watch the viddie of the Lundt focus group, which is an outlier compared to the nat’l polls showing that pretty uniformly show Biden won, the visual demonstrates that those people moved by Palin are in Palin’s tribe also.
Yeoman farmers, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-waged, middle of the bellcurve. They loved her.
Now I am not in Palin’s tribe, although I am a Coloradoan and a hereditary republican. It was obvious to me that the only thing preventing a series of Couric moments was that Ifil could never ask the Second Question, due to the pre-agreed debate format. That is what killed Palin in the Couric interviews, the Second Question. Palin has enough canned material for one question, and for the follow on she just repeats, like a buzzword tapeloop.
Palin’s tribe finds her accent charming and down to earth— I thought it was more grating than a Mylie Cyrus guest appearance at a Jabberwockeez street battle. I also thought i might hurl if i heard the M word one more time….(maverick or mavericks).
Palin made a gaffe when she called Main Street a toxic mess…i think she meant Wall Street, but her tribe never heard it.
Several times she was unable or unwilling to answer the question, so simply read a bunch of buzzwords off her cue cards….for example….the Achilles heel question.
I think she just read the closest fit answer.
Her sentence structure and grammer is larded with filler, and she uses VSO constructs sometimes in order to slow her speech to approximate her thoughts. Pageant speech mannerisms I suspect.
But Palin’s experience, appearance, speech is all about appealing to her tribe.
I do not think the appeal extends to extra-tribal voters, so I dont expect any big swings in the electoral college.
I’ll answer the Achilles Heel question for Palin….I wonder if Palin has enough introspection or self-examination to see this.
She seems wierdly lacking in intellectual curiousity, almost impoverished.
But Palin’s Achilles Heel is the Second Question.
This has been the same Palin all along.
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 01:41 PM · #
Couldn’t agree more.
Palin was more coherent last night but only because of rhetoric implantations by McCain pros that knew the election could have been at stake if she behaved badly. The Couric interviews were troubling, but unlike Cheney’s convincing oratory and GW manipulation, probably a non-issue considering the fact that she will be of no use to McCain or the GOP if he becomes president, like most VPs in history.
I fear the worst for the country if she becomes president because advisors could lead her into making poor decisions and obstructing progress. Could anyone have predicted a year ago that a clueless beauty queen would be put in a position of altering the course of American history? It’s like being in the middle of a reality show!
— uncle sam · Oct 3, 02:34 PM · #
actually…the prospect of a Palin presidency fills me with horrified, incredulous loathing….not for poor Sarah….but for the partisan hacks that make up the psuedo-intelligentsia of the republican party, like Brooks and Douthat…who cannot bring themselves to put country first and acknowledge that Palin is exactly what the Founders defined as a demagogue.
O lente currite equus nocte
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 03:49 PM · #
zomg, the most horrifying thought just occurred to me…..what if Palin didn’t answer that question because she didn’t know what an Achilles Heel was??????????????
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 11:37 PM · #