Nailin' Palin

Something about Denali -- Picture courtesy of HarperCollins

by blogSpotter
Apologies in advance to anyone who thought my blog title was in reference to a porno movie. Am only using the word “nailin’ “ in the sense that individuals are caught doing something questionable (in this case, being a shameless publicity hound). If the porno sense of the title is what focused your attention, by all means read on.

Many men think that Sarah Palin is a hottie. I look at her with her Grammy glasses and school marm hair and have trouble seeing her in that light. Is she sexier than Barbara Boxer or Madeleine Albright? Well, yes but that’s about as far as it goes. She could be Miss November on a calendar of female politicos that need to stay dressed. Now one might ask – is she Presidential material? Could she be the GOP nominee in 2012? Back when John McCain made her his 2008 veep candidate, I wrote a softball article about her, “Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington”. I didn’t really have a lot to go on – I thought her rustic, Alaska moose-hunting background made her seem like a feisty, tell-it-like-it-is Annie Oakley character. As things moved along, I became aware how very, very wrong she was for any place on anyone’s ticket.

Many people have poo-poo’d the now infamous Katie Couric interview as a “hit job”. In retrospect, Katie asked softball questions like “What magazines do you read?” and “What Supreme Court cases have made the biggest impressions on you?” For someone aspiring to the highest or 2nd-highest office in the land, these should’ve been gimme questions. Instead, Palin became tongue-tied. Not only could she not answer the questions, she gave rambling, incoherent replies that might even make you think she went off her medications.

She was credited in her veep debate with Biden for (at the very least) not stepping in it or making a total fool of herself. The bar was set very low. That she makes Dan Quayle look like a Nobel contender went largely unnoticed by her “core” GOP supporters. McCain’s campaign advisor, Steve Schmidt was on pins and needles the whole time – he has since said unequivocally that we dodged a bullet on that one.

Palin has rewarded the McCain camp (most recently in her magnum opus “Going Rogue”) by lambasting them. Apparently they gave her coaching points on how to talk and dress for public appearances. Wonder why they might have thought it necessary? Palin has most recently been embarrassed by the Playgirl modeling career of Levi Johnston, her (no longer) potential son-in-law. He has come to the fore with several juicy tidbits about the Palin family dysfunction. It’s “he said/she said” but still we have to ponder – do we want Jerry Springer episodes staged in the White House?

And where does all of this leave us? I hate to say that Palin could still be viable in 2012 if blacks and Latinos sit on their hands as they did in 2004. Then, the same crowd who deemed George W Bush as a weighty intellect can install Palin and clan into the White House. How tragic, both from practical and symbolic viewpoints, that would be.

I must now close with a passage from Palin’s gubernatorial farewell speech – a speech so fraught with poetic malfeasance that Conan O’Brien had William Shatner do a dramatic reading on the Tonight Show:

“Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins”.

Say what? Mother Nature wins, but speech-writing loses big-time. You have to credit her with having a fertile imagination. Fertile, but not at all Presidential. A poll done here in Dallas (NBC5 I think) indicated that even a majority of Dallasites think that Palin should return to private life. Let's hope that she takes the clue and does just that.


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