New Left Media Video Captures Sarah Palin Supporters
November 25th, 2009This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviews) and Erick Stoll (camera).
On November 20, 2009, Sarah Palin visited Columbus, Ohio as part of her book signing tour for Going Rogue. When her supporters were asked broad questions about why they why they thought she should be president, the responses were vague: She’s “real.” She’ll “stick up for America.”
THERE ARE UNINFORMED OBAMA SUPPORTERS, TOO
It has been said in comments that we would find similarly talking point-driven, substance-less supporters at an Obama rally, and we agree. But no politician has emerged on the national stage as undefined and unqualified as Sarah Palin, and her public persona — which is anti-intellectual by definition — discourages substance. Instead, we get winking. One could hardly imagine her giving a complex speech about race in America, or speaking eloquently about our country’s relations with Islam. Not just because she couldn’t write such a speech (Obama has speech-writers, of course) but because she wouldn’t — such necessarily academic discussion is antithetical to the persona she’s created for herself and that her supporters have come to love.
CHERRY-PICKING
As for accusations of cherry picking, which are commonly thrown at interview-based videos, it simply isn’t what we did. We interviewed only a few more people than ended up in the video, not hundreds, and what was cut was done for time purposes. The people were selected at random — some offered to be interviewed — and we were only there for about 90 mins (it gets dark early and fast in Ohio right now). What didn’t make it into the video was just more footage of people talking generically or about taxes/spending, drilling, and abortion, and we constructed blocks in the piece to represent those issues. Of course the piece was edited to be entertaining (this is YouTube, after all, where the currency is cat videos) but we don’t believe we misrepresented the attitudes of the people at that signing in any way.
November 26th, 2009 at 10:43 am
This reaffirms the old saw about how in America “anyone” can become president, given an appropriate set of circumstances. George W. Bush was not much better prepared than Palin, and we were treated to eight years of him, or more appropriately eight years of a nationalist junta run by Cheney and Rove more than anyone else.
They don’t give civil service examinations for the job of president – and maybe that is unfortunate. It was said in the 50s that if they did give such exams, Eisenhower’s two-time opponent Adlai Stevenson would easily have been picked over the former general.
Obama would be in like Flynn with an exam system, but W and Palin would not have much of a chance.
The founders set up the electoral college system with the idea in mind it would choose the president based on merit, so they envisioned an exam, of sorts, to get the job. However, within a few years the electors were being chosen based on party, and the president based on party politics, which Washington had warned against.
The electoral college system does not function, and has not since the time of Jefferson, to find the Ablest Person to be the country’s chief executive. Occasionally we luck out and get a Lincoln, but most of the time we end up with popular, attractive but otherwise clueless individuals dependent on the usual crowd of Washington insiders to run the government during their tenures.
Obama is an exception to that rule, and likely he is precisely the president we need at this moment in time. But don’t discount the fickleness of American voters. Like any president, he is one major catastrophe away from being a one-termer, as Ford and Carter quickly discovered.
Is there a better way? Simon Bolivar wanted presidents elected for life in the Andean nations, and nearly got his way in Bolivia and Peru. But later, long-term presidents in Latin American nations, while providing stability and experience, also provided repression of dissent and unprecedented levels of corruption.
Although risky, having presidents elected to no more than two relatively short terms is probably the best arrangement, although, as noted, we frequently run the risk of having figureheads manipulated by insidious cabals.
Does Sarah Palin stand a snowball’s chance of ever being president? Likely not, and likely the Democrats should want her as the GOP nominee in 2012, guaranteeing a landslide vote for Obama.
But stranger things have happened: hardly anybody outside Georgia had ever heard of Jimmy Carter when the New Hampshire primary was held in January 1976. A year later he was taking the oath of office in front of the Capitol.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:01 am
This shows how uninformed some Americans are about news and public affairs, and how celebrity matters. Obama is not only the president, he is a celebrity in his own right.
Palin’s celebrity actually helps Democrats, because the vast majority of mainstream, middle-of-the-road Americans reject her as unqualified to be president, while the wild right looks dumb, dumber and dumbest for supporting her.