Newspaper OpEd (2008)
Robert P. Watson
THE PALIN PHENOMENON
The selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee has accomplished what the party has not been able to do in four years – unify and energize the base and breathe air into the moribund McCain campaign. But it also gave the Republicans what they have been looking for in this campaign: a strategy.
Because of Bush's record deficits and debt and his mishandling of the economy, two wars, Hurricane Katrina, and just about everything else, Republicans are not able to campaign on the issues. They have been avoiding any discussion of the issues and any mention of Bush/Cheney by name. As a result, the McCain campaign was about little more than telling (over and over) his personal story as a POW and attacking Obama as inexperienced. Not much of a strategy.
But that was in the pre-Palin era. With a moose-huntin', pistol-packin' hockey mom on the ticket, McCain has a new lease on life and has reinvented himself as an outsider and reformer. The Republicans have found their strategy – to defend regular folks against big, bad Washington, which they claim is the cause of these tough times. Such "us versus them" arguments resonate with most Americans. Blaming the "Washington establishment" allows Republicans to shift responsibility from their own record. Never mind that the party has controlled the White House for the last eight years and the Congress for most of the past fourteen.
McCain – the consummate Washington insider worth millions – is now making a case for change on behalf of the little guy thanks to the fact that his VP is a former small town mayor and PTA mom from Alaska. On the stump McCain is even using the word "change" more than his two "isms" – patriotism and terrorism – and even more than Obama, who is no longer ridiculed as just inexperienced but as something far worse: an uppity elitist. Never mind that he is black and was raised by a single mother with modest means. So too are Republicans even crying "sexism" when Palin is criticized and McCain is presenting himself as the candidate for women. Never mind that this is the same party and candidate with an abysmal record on women's health, equal pay, family leave, and reproductive choice.
It all seems surreal to Democrats. But they forget that many Americans vote with their gut and not their heads. Palin is refreshingly new, one of us, and charismatic to boot. In short, she connects with people. Politics is all about making a visceral, gut-level connection, which Democrats rarely do. Many of Palin's supporters could care less that she lacks foreign policy experience or, during her belated first media interview, she hadn't heard of the "Bush Doctrine" (it has guided national security policy since 2002). She has great hair, five kids, and an interesting story.
Palin has become the Republicans' Obama – ironically the same inexperienced, flash-in-the-pan celebrity that McCain has tried to portray Obama as. Therefore, criticism of her isn't working and appears to be backfiring. After all, you can't rationalize why Palin is inexperienced to voters who have made emotional connections to her. Likewise, the hypocrisy of a "family values" politician advocating abstinence over family planning, even when she gave birth less than eight months after eloping and her teenager is pregnant, is lost on a public desensitized by tabloid gossip. The answer is simple: People like Sarah Palin and can relate to her.
Democrats must stop criticizing Palin and stop waiting for her to trip in the upcoming VP debate. Every day she is the headline, Obama isn't. Every day the conversation is on moose hunting or the PTA, it isn't on the economy or the debt. Obama is off message and the Democrats are dismayed and distracted. All this plays into the Republican strategy. To win, Democrats must ignore Palin and focus on the message that McCain is four more years of Bush and, because of them, we are worse off today than eight years ago. If the election is about Palin, McCain wins. If it is about Bush, Obama wins.
