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Sarah Palin & the Democratic Ideal

To listen to Ross Douthat, writing in yesterday’s Times, Governor Palin embodies the second, rarely-seen prototype of American success — the self-taught statesman:

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

Douthat’s very next paragraph significantly undercuts his valorization of Palin as some latter-day Jackson. But not nearly enough. I can’t contest the fact that, at many points in American history, we have held up as exemplars men & women who’ve obtained their knowledge and power through non-traditional means, outside of the academies. Hence the protoype of the farmer-statesman, embodied as much by Washington as by Lincoln.

But. When we hold up men like Jackson, Jefferson, and Washington as embodying the “democratic ideal” (from rags to riches and great power), we applaud them for coming to the same end as those who climb the formal ladder to power, and for overcoming adversity and acquiring unique outsider knowledge along the way. Jackson, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington were easly the intellectual equals of Wilson and Obama – they just came to their knowledge and realized their intellectual potential through a more circuitous, and differentially laudable route.

Sarah Palin is different. Rather than coming to knowledge & intelligence through an arduous alternate route like, e.g., Lincoln, Palin and those like her completely disclaim the value of intelligence in political decisionmaking, and evince an outright distrust of earned knowledge, regardless of its source. Her motivating principle is not that experience can supply the same intelligence found in elder, learned statesmen, but rather that intelligence is completely irrelevant to governance. To her, impulse, instict, and faith are all you need, and “book smarts” are worse than useless. She’s more Stephen Colbert, and less Lincoln.

Admittedly, the farmer-statesman is a curious type, and often trades on the perception of himself (or herself) as an ignorant rube. But this image is, in the end, a ruse. Think Lincoln, who relished the chance to benefit from others’ underestimation of his abilities. For Palin, it’s not. Don’t confuse the two.

So what is the motivation behind Palin’s popularity, and the persistent narrative, like Douthat’s, that holds her out as conforming to the democratic ideal? More on that later.

Abortion, Bongs, Jesus, and the Right Wing’s Continued Inconsistency on Speech Rights

Imagine, if you will, that you suddenly find yourself a federal appellate judge. Congratulations! Thirsty? Law Clerk #2– two mocha frappucinos, and make it snappy!

Much better. Now that we’re both hydrated, let’s take a look at the docket. Today we have two cases, both appeals from adverse judgments. In the first, we have High School Student #1, suspended for carrying a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” sign at a school rally. In the second, we have High School Student #2, suspended for wearing a shirt that graphically supports the “pro-life” position of the abortion debate. Both claim that the First Amendment protects their right to politically advocacy at their schools, even and especially if that advocacy includes shocking but non-profane words or imagery.

No matter what your instincts on these two cases, you have to admit, it’s hard to craft a rule of law that provides different outcomes for the two students. The only apparent difference between these cases is that, in the former, the religious overtones are purposefully ironic, while in the latter they’re sincere and deeply-held. But that shouldn’t really matter, should it? Either both students are entitled to their admittedly shocking forms of political expression, or neither are. There may be nuances that differentiate the two cases, but few will find them, and even fewer will find them controlling. Of course, one form of speech is “liberal,” and the other “conservative.” But one of the strongest mandates of First Amendment law is that the government may not favor one viewpoint over another. These political notes shouldn’t matter, at all.

Unless, of course, you’re the religious right. For them, the reverent subtext of the pro-life demonstrator’s shirt is inherently “good,” while the mocking subtext of the pro-whatever demonstrator’s banner is inherently “evil.” Furthermore, this political distinction should be given legal effect: pro-religion speech is good, and anti-religion speech is evil.

Increasingly, with their ouster from nearly all political offices, we see the religious right taking shelter in the First Amendment, to make increasingly frantic, increasingly violent appeals to religion or “conservative values,” whatever those are. How curious, though, that this strong form of First Amendment protection applies, in the right’s eyes, only to their speech — still more proof that, for the religious right, law is the game itself, rather than the rules of the game.