The Metacandidate
Jim Henley has a smart observation on Sarah Palin’s inept method of connecting with ordinary people:
Palin seems to have a “Message: I Care” problem. She gets too meta with her answers, wanting to explain – “I’m going to talk straight to the American people and show them my etc.”; “I’m the new energy” – the symbolism of herself. For the apotheosis of Republican anti-intellectualism she’s determinedly postmodern, embedding the essay about her novel into the story as she tells it.
Millionaire television celebrity pundits seems to find this incredibly convincing but ordinary people don’t, probably because ordinary people prefer a candidate who talks about the problems facing ordinary people rather than a candidate who talks about how she’s a symbolic instantiation of the Idea of Ordinariness. But in Palin’s defense, it’s not really clear where else she can go. There was only one issue last night where I thought she really said something that engaged with a substantial national problem — her little talk on education:
You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It’s not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very, very concerned about where we’re going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.
I think that’s passionate and just about right on the merits. Unfortunately for her, it’s total bullshit that has nothing to do with what her campaign is proposing. Instead, McCain’s tax and budget policies have the following inflation-adjusted consequences for education:
- Cuts in Head Start.
- Cuts in Preschool.
- Cuts in elementary school.
- Cuts in college aid.
And that’s in aggregate terms. In per capita terms, the cuts will be bigger. And of course beyond the narrowly educational, McCain will also cut back on S-CHIP and his health care tax changes will result in a decrease in the level of prenatal care in the United States. At the same time, we’re heading into an economic slowdown that will force state and local government to cut back on their investments in early education, primary and secondary education, and higher education. In principle, the federal government cut step in to fill the gap, but McCain has no plans to do so. The result of all this would be to kneecap efforts to improve education at the very time, as Palin said, our commitments in this area “have got to be really ramped up.” Under the circumstances, “meta” is a good option.
46 Responses to “The Metacandidate”
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October 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?
I’m sure “her reward is in heaven” is a total commonplace among her kind of Christian, meaning “she’s underappreciated in her lifetime”, but it’s kind of startling addressed to a man whose first wife is dead.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 am
Damn right, Matt. I’m a full-time math tutor at a public high school in Minneapolis. Yesterday I was watching two kids make up their midquarter exam, and one of them literally could not finish the exam because he has a toothache. He’s had it for a week and went to see a dentist (probably free) who could only give him Oragel, which he forgot at home that day. He told me he wanted the tooth to fall out so it would stop hurting but it has too important a job in his mouth. Goddammit, that breaks your heart. Here’s a 15 year old kid who never did a thing wrong a day in his life but he can’t do well in math because he has a toothache that he can’t afford to have fixed.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
“Her reward is in heaven.”
My first thought was “Yeah, because she’s certainly not going to be appropriately rewarded in real time for doing it down here.” Palin would have her banging her head against the wall until retirement “teaching to the test” while we import PhD candidates from Asia.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Great post.
There are so many questions Palin would have to answer if she ever gave a press conference… it would probably have to last about 2 days to adress all her lies and fibs.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Listening to Palin last night, I was reminded of the surprise I felt when I found that my friend who owned a parrot had been telling me the truth: indeed, it could actually talk. Regarding her remarks about education in this country today, she could stand in for the poster child of its failures.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:56 am
My mom called me during the debate and asked me if she could trade her heavenly reward in for employer contributions to her 401k.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 am
The debate I would like to see would be two researchers standing there telling viewers the proposals put forward on each issue and any related track record of the candidates. The moderator names an issue and each side spits out what has actually been proposed with any non-partisan scoring included. Probably have five viewers.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
How many times did Gov. Palin give answers which directly contradicted Sen. McCain’s policies? So far I have:
1. Education
2. Gay Rights
3. Foreclosure
Am I missing anything?
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
My take:
She was happily praising that we’re building schools in Afghanistan and ‘hoping’ to build them here.
That’s laughable but God Bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
I’ve also been confused by this whole shtick where McCain and Palin answer debate questions by talking about the ineffable qualities they possess and applying cutesy labels to themselves. This is the way teachers talk to special needs children, not the way adults speak about themselves.
As a friend put it during last week’s debate, what sort of man calls himself a maverick?
Maybe I’ve watched too many spaghetti westerns, but the sort of person one might call a maverick is the sort who rides quietly into town, lays waste to scum and villainy, and then rides off… leaving the discussion of his maverickiness to the awestruck and grateful townsfolk. Mavericks do not go around giving speeches about their maverickiness and hire PR firms to brand them as mavericks.
John McCain is not Maverick. He is English Bob.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 am
I like your handle, Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Palin’s core cruelty is evident, even in the way she tortures sentences.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
I thought the “her reward is in heaven” line was the most condesending statement I have ever heard. My wife, a school teacher, actually said “fuck you” out load when she heard it. Also, her accent and folksyness seemed to come and go. In the end she is a pathologocal liar trying to hard to please, a totally irresponsible, gimicky chioce.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
With this post Matt has restored my faith in him.
With his long string of short Atriosian posts for a few days I was beginning to wonder.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 am
I have to admit that when I heard the “her reward is in heaven” line, what came into my mind was the whole the 72 virgins thing.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Matt, you should win the Nobel Prize for Liberal Blogging for invoking “the symbolic instantiation of the Idea of Ordinariness.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Palin deserves a lot of credit; she’s an excellent representative of the McCain campaign. John McCain’s policies are every bit as harebrained and incoherent as Palin makes them sound.
Their solution to global warming really is to drill, baby drill. It’s not man made. Their solution to Wall Street corruption really is to tongue lash its CEOs and hire its lobbyists. Their solution to education really is to talk about teachers’ rewards in Heaven because their earthly funding is going to be cut across the board.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“Her reward is in heaven, right?”
That was the point when my wife, a teacher, and the daughter and granddaughter of teachers, screamed “Fuck you!” at the television. That is not what teachers want to hear from the people who control the funding streams, believe me.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I watched the debate on CNN. They had this focus group graph at the bottom of the screen that showed realtime reaction from some undecided Ohio men and women. Several times Biden had the women all the way at the top of the chart. The only time that happened for Palin was during the above quoted education blather.
I guess Matt is in touch with Ohio.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I hear you on the meta thingie – was telling my girl last night during the debate, when Palin started on about ‘how the media would look at this the next day and decide’ in response to Joe’s, tbh, dissembling about his war vote. I compared it to when Zack on ‘Saved by the Bell’ would freeze time and break the fourth wall during numerous episodes. Just a bizarre tactic, no doubt meant to compliment her earlier dig at the MSM.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
LaFollette Progressive is right. The worst part is when McCain praises his own humility with “I don’t think I’m the Chosen One!” remarks.
I don’t think reading, say, Lincoln’s speeches you’d find him effusively praising his own honesty much. The whole self-aggrandizing aspect to this brand of “character politics” is more evocative of Honest Iago than Honest Abe.
As for “the pundits are going to start do the who said what at what time and we’ll have proof of some of this,” heh. The “History will absolve me!” line (on which Republicans now seem to be more dependent than Castro ever was) is always weak, but “pundits tomorrow morning will absolve me” is even weaker.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
She even wants to cut the syntax, bless her heart.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
McCain’s taxing of healthcare benefits is also something that will hit schooldisticts and teachers hard. Health benefits are a big and expensive part of education. My understanding of the plan is that both the empyee and employer will have to pay more in taxes. Lots of teachers are old and insurance premiums are rising pretty fast. Oh well, at least I will have my reward in heaven.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
sounds a bit like Kerry ‘04 “we’re the optimists!”
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
This smart essay says otherwise, Matt. Snark aside, give it some thought:
Democrats will vote for the Democrat. Republicans will vote for the Republican. That’s how it has always been.
John McCain and Joe Biden are politicians. They know their numbers, and they know Washington.
What is different about this election is culture. Where is America going, culturally?
This is where Barack Obama and Sarah Palin come in.
Some say race is a factor against Obama, but I say it is the opposite: Obama has been propelled upwards by his skin color. The positive ‘racism’ (Black-Americans supporting him, White-Americans feeling guilty about the legacy of slavery) far outweighs the few remaining pockets of negative racism (traditional bigotry) that still exist in our country.
Whereas Black-Americans account for 12 percent of America, women number about 51 percent.
This is where America’s reaction to Sarah Palin gets interesting. It is not only sexism at play, but regionalism too. Keep in mind that America’s reaction could be vastly different from the media’s reaction, which tries to intervene in how America thinks and observes for itself.
For the last decade, American women have been trying to become either the fifth ‘Manhattanite’ cast member of ‘Sex and the City’ or a ‘Desperate Housewife’ on Wisteria Lane. The White male executives who created, packaged and marketed these female stereotypes have made plenty of money as women across America spent time and money trying to become ‘Carrie Bradshaw’. But somehow, these wanna-be’s never lived it up as glamorously.
Sarah Palin is all about God, Family, Country and Shot-Guns. She is a completely New American Woman. She was not constructed by a Public Relations agency in either New York City or Los Angeles. She is not a Hollywood creation. Sarah Palin is simply a product of American small-town wholesomeness: happy childhood, hard work, self-discipline and a bright, and almost chirpy, outlook on life.
Sarah is not the high-maintenance, drama-seeking, bulimia-suffering fragile caricature of a working woman as peddled by TV.
Her husband, Todd Palin, is not a neurotic metro-sexual obsessing over the price of organic arugula, or whining about his commitment phobias to his shrink. He is a man’s man, and frankly, a woman’s man: just your regular American guy—wholesome and uncomplicated.
Sarah and Todd are American ‘retro’, but it is retro made cool all over again. They are a brand of Americana that has been tested and true—genuine, confident and mature.
Something happened to the Obama brand on the way to the election. It is as if the fashion gods decided that “Didn’t you know? No one wears Obama after Labour Day.”
Once exotic and different, the Obama brand has been turned into something weird and creepy. “Obama’s Witnesses,” “Obama’s Blue-Shirts,” “The Obama Youth Fraternity League”…Plus, after the initial swooning over him, most people still think that there’s something “off” about Obama; as if he’s hollow, or hiding something.
Today, the Obama brand has become decidedly “uncool”. That’s why people tuned out from watching him debate McCain.
On the other hand, Americans are discovering that they are intrigued by Sarah Palin. The TV pundits may want to spin things their way, but the surest measure of who won the Vice-Presidential Debate is that, at the end, the vast majority of viewers walked away from their TV sets and said to themselves, “I’d like to see more of Sarah Palin—unfiltered and uncut.”
The Obama camp may be celebrating too early. There are still plenty of people out there that haven’t made up their mind, and Obama’s triumphalism may begin to sound like arrogance, and he’s already been accused of that.
This is indeed a culturally interesting time to be an American.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Their solution to global warming really is to drill, baby drill. It’s not man made.
How has this not been picked up on more? She doesn’t believe global warming is man-made, yet she thinks we should cap emissions. What the Hell sense does that make?! And then to do stop emissions, we should drill, baby drill. As her state melts into the sea, she can’t even be bothered to take the time to understand that “energy independence” and “capping emissions” do not mean the same thing.
And THEN, she starts blaming other countries for polluting too much and causing the global warming problem. So man did not cause it, but rather abstract concepts of geographically divided groups of people?
She’s in complete contradiction of herself multiple times here! I mean, every time I try to sort out those lines of what she said there, I feel I lose 3 IQ points.
I can’t wait to see how she solves a problem she doesn’t think can be solved, and do this using a solution to a different problem caused by someone else who was contributing to the first problem.
Poof! 3 points gone!
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“the surest measure of who won the Vice-Presidential Debate is that, at the end, the vast majority of viewers walked away from their TV sets and said to themselves, “I’d like to see more of Sarah Palin—unfiltered and uncut.””
I’m thinking alot more Americans walked away from their TVs thinking “Man, is Tina Fey going to rip her a new one on SNL.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Both in the debate and with Katie “the krusher” Couric, Palin actually said “she doesn’t blame all of man’s activities on global warming..” She is pure comedy gold!! The funniest parts of Tina Fey’s SNL skit are when she quotes Palin word for word.
PS Ringo <3 Todd
October 6th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Finally!! a glimpse of truth. DonBoy’s got it right. The line “her reward is in heaven,”in context with delivery, inflections, and all is nothing but a slight-of-hand insult to Joe Biden. The line’s intent is to conjure up the memory of Neilia in Joe’s mind, to throw him off emotionally and the question: “right?” to make it more slighting. The reference to Tracy is just the vehicle of delivery to the attack, which worked. Note Joe’s inmediate reaction to what was supposedly a compliment. I can only categorize this as snake behavior of the lowest kind. Of course Sarah only happily lent her filed tongue, another spineless scum thought it. Why most people who’ve commented on this line would miss the attack is beyond me.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
NEW YORK – Chris Noth’s focus had shifted from career to family when his agent called about a role in the Atlantic Theater Company’s off-Broadway production of a new political drama, “Farragut North.” After wrapping up his last
February 15th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
What’s the phone that Carrie Bradshaw owns in the Sex and the City movie??
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