Archive for September 8, 2008

Palin Shares Her Boss’ Weak Grasp of the Economy

Although Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac aren’t taxpayer funded, as Palin seems to think, they’re about to be. Since McCain’s economic knowledge amounts to Alan Greenspan’s book – and an optimism undisturbed by facts – it’s clear that Mrs. Palin will not shore up McCain’s weaknesses.

Electoral-Vote.com Narrows: Should We Worry?

Generally I concern myself with substantive discussion of the election; my shattered nerves can hardly stand the crush of polls and analysis. I have a minor coronary every time I check the more extensive polling sites (electoral-vote.com, and fivethirtyeight.com), especially with predictions that McCain is likely to get a +10 bounce.

That said, comparisons with last election cycle give me hope. This is how electoral-vote projected the election in 2004: it had Bush ahead throughout the summer, with Kerry grabbing momentary leads depending on whether he’d win Ohio or Florida, or both. Those states were, throughout the cycle, his only hopes, and of course he lost them in November:

Kerry conclusively lost leads in those states – and never regained them – after critical ads ran claiming that the Democrats would ban the Bible and, of course, mocking Kerry’s Vietnam service. No matter how ridiculous the claims were, they resulted in Bush’s first monumental leads (14 – 17 September) and broke Kerry’s momentum.

There’s good reason to think that the same needn’t be Obama’s fate. First – and most obviously – the electoral map has drastically changed. Plenty of scenarios show Obama winning handily without either Ohio or Florida, and fivethirtyeight gives Obama a 30% chance of winning the election AND losing Ohio. His fate needn’t be tied to two states. Second, 2004 gave the election to the candidate who dominated the polls throughout the late summer & early fall: Bush’s lead rarely failed. If continually polling ahead is a good predictor of victory, the candidate with the most continuous lead this time around is Obama. Third, and finally, we should thank Hillary Clinton for this: Obama’s election-breaking scandals are, as far as I can tell, in the past. McCain’s spate of negative ads managed only to secure a momentary blip above Obama, a blip that has long since faded.

To this novice, then, things are looking good. While Obama can’t rest on his laurels, and needn’t necessarily start picking his Supreme Court Justices (may I suggest one of my favorite professors, NYU’s own Burt Neuborne?), McCain has cause to worry.

Good Luck Clerkship Candidates!

Today is the first day that federal judges can call & request interviews with law students applying for judicial clerkships; myself among them. Best wishes to everyone who finds themselves similarly situated, and congratulations to everyone who has secured/will soon secure their first interview!

Just a Small Town Girl…

...living in a lonely world. (©)

In her speech last week – abhorred by some, embraced by others, but watched by all – Sarah Palin managed to leverage her shocking inexperience into an embrace of “small town values,” loosely defined as, Sarah Palin’s values.

By trying to set our towns against our cities, Palin makes the vital mistake of imagining that, despite our differences, we don’t need each other, and the equally dangerous mistake of pigeonholing our towns & cities into pre-determined antagonistic roles. If we’re stuck in a culture war, it’s because people like Palin insist on re-digging our trenches when it’s beneficial to their political career. For shame.

We hear the words “small town” six times in her speech (transcript), and in the course of her paragraphs upon paragraphs devoted to beatifying the small-town life, Palin manages to appropriate everything good about America, and define it as exclusive to her and her way of life. Not content to simply extol the virtues of her hometown and its cousins across America, Palin takes the extra step of turning her praise into a sneering insult to the rest of us: her lofty rhetoric – “[small-towners] love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America” – barely manages to conceal the implied, “unlike the rest of you.” Of course, her disdain leaks through elsewhere: Palin’s slap at community organizers lifts up the rural poor while simultaneously slapping down the urban poor. In Palin’s world, small towns are great… but the rest of America needs work.

Certainly this rhetorical approach succeeds on the electoral front, by using Palin’s “small town” background as a conduit to transmute her dangerous inexperience into (ostensibly) laudable anti-elitism. But it also reveals her lack of perspective. Many Americans’ horizons may end at the borders of their small towns; but the vice president’s horizons must not.

In many ways, we are a “nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos” – or, at least, we tell ourselves we are. But the real picture is significantly more complex, and referring to small towns as the only “American” part of America is just as myopic & dangerous as assuming all small towners are bitter fundamentalists. America needs our cities just as much as it needs our small towns, and to set one against the other for a cheap political thrill ought to be a one-way ticket off the political stage. Our towns give us repose, relaxation, define our free spirits, and power our way of life with grain & steel; our cities bring different views together, and propel our markets & technologies to the top of the world. We need each other, and we can’t always be fighting the culture wars. Some politicians get that; either Palin doesn’t or, like an arms dealer, she hopes to profit more from the war than the peace. Both should disqualify her.

I don’t doubt that Wasilla is great, but small-town life just isn’t for me. Nevertheless, I respect those who think it’s the only way to go, and I’m glad Sarah’s happy there. Just so, maybe she wouldn’t like Manhattan, but I – and a few million others – like it just fine. And if that makes me un-American to her, then Sarah Palin isn’t ready to lead America.