mc-Cain & un-Able
Listening to the Republican Convention on Vermont Public Radio, I wasn’t particularly surprised by John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice-presidential running mate. Choosing someone out of the mainstream seemed to be a logical enough consequence of what the Republican primary race had demonstrated: that solid candidates were in short supply. Her statements seemed a bit flaky, but that seemed natural enough for someone thrust into the national spotlight. I was bemused, but not upset.
Then a weekly news magazine arrived in the mail, and my wife brought it in, and there it was on the floor, with Palin’s face on the cover.
I know what I am about to say can be dismissed as a superficial impression, a snap judgment. If I say that my main qualification for saying it is that I’m a poet, few will consider the statement anything but nonsense; for those who don’t, I recommend the preface Ted Hughes wrote to his book Poetry Is.
In that instant of recognition, I saw in Palin’s face immense depths of mediocrity, and the worst kind of mediocrity, the aggressive kind that in the end may doom this country to second-rate status in the world: the kind that says “I’m as good as anybody else,” and instead of meaning by that an equality of rights or opportunities, is speaking of an equality of outcomes and of viewpoints. The religious right condemns relativism, but in practice, those with a belief in a fixed moral universe of clear good and clear evil display person-to-person the reflex relativism of insisting that their ideas deserve equal respect, and consequently of time and attention, regardless of how limited the bubble world of that taught them may be, and regardless of the degree to which their convictions remain substantially untested.
All this took place in a split second, like the essential formation of a poem. As I recall, I muttered something to my wife about the Republicans having nominated a NASCAR barbeque queen to have her hand on the button if McCain’s health problems come due.
Nothing since then has even begun to make me change my mind. I am absolutely appalled that during an epochal clash with the Islamic world, we might have as our Commander-in-Chief someone with so many Crusader values. At a time when environmental secondary consequences rapidly are becoming primary, having someone so provincial as to disbelieve in human-caused global warming holding the gavel during Senate proceedings would send an entirely inappropriate “What, me worry?” signal to the countries waiting for us to shape up before they do.
Speaking of which, anyone who has five children, when American children has such a hugely disproportionate impact on resource use, pollution, etc. can’t have been thinking about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Never mind Down Syndrome—it’s the population increase that sets the wrong example. While the Republicans were chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” I was chanting “Z-P-G! Z-P-G!”
The degree to which the Republican Party has been guarding Palin, lest she reveal in some spontaneous comment just what a greenhorn to the political process she is, puts the stamp of unreliability on her more clearly than anything the Democrats could unearth. One way or another, the Palin nomination is a bad gag.
hello friends, I just want to emphasize the good work on this blog, has excellent views and a clear vision of what you are looking for
Posted by: generic viagra | January 13, 2010 at 10:46 AM