 |
|
David Frum v. the Corner:
For a few weeks now, especially since the Palin nomination, one has noted a cadre of conservatives - Frum, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, George Will, in part Charles Krauthammer -- expressing not just dismay at the pick, but more broadly kind of nudging the right to an acceptance of its probable loss of the election next month. And a parallel incredible resistance to accept that possibility - a rejection of the legitimacy that essentially Obama could be elected -- by some on the right, a kind of plan to go down in flames, which at times has seemed willfully, insanely over the top as well as deeply irresponsible. Fighting has very much turned inwards, and Frum's patience seems to be wearing thin.I receive emails from readers every day who tell me that the only possible motive I could have for expressing doubts about the McCain ticket is my desire to attend cocktail parties, appear on TV, apply for a job in the Obama administration etc. Now I see this line of accusation appearing in the Corner too. ...
Do my correspondents (and now my Corner colleagues) truly believe that - but for my pitiful media and social ambitions - nobody in America would have noticeed that Sarah Palin cannot speak three coherent consecutive words about finance or economics?
In the past month, Sarah Palin's unfavorability ratings have risen by 12 points. She briefly boosted the McCain ticket, but that effect subsided by the end of September. Blue-collar white women (!) now reject Palin as unqualified for the presidency 48-43, according to the Wall-Street Journal/NBC poll.
It's flattering to be told that my eagerness to clink glasses with the Washington social elite is the driving cause behind the shriveling public support for the Alaska governor. Flattering - but not very convincing. Tens of millions of people have tuned in to watch Sarah Palin field questions from Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, and then to share a stage with Joe Biden. If Palin's public support is now collapsing, it is her own doing.
Possibly it is bad form for me to acknowledge this reality. As one of my correspondents wrote this very morning:
Well he may have a point.PLEASE KEEP YOUR REMARKS TO YOURSELF! Nobody but Democrats wants to hear them.
Perhaps it is our job at NRO is tell our readers only what they want to hear, without much regard to whether it is true. Perhaps it is our duty just to keep smiling and to insist that everything is dandy - that John McCain's economic policies make sense, that his selection of Sarah Palin was an act of statesmanship, that she herself is the second coming of Anna Schwartz, and that nobody but an over-educated snob would ever suggest otherwise.
Who knows? Perhaps if I do that enthusiastically enough, somebody somewhere might even pour me a free drink or invite me onto the airwaves for a 3 minute Monday morning sunrise interview. And after all: What else could I possibly want?
I know some see this election as representing the shift into a new era of Democratic ascendance. My own unacademic sense is that the right won't be out of power very long, that human nature itself will make an opposition party viable sooner than many think. The economy will hopefully recover in a year or two. The people who think gov't should do less and more will still be here. The people who respond to demagoguery of various sorts will still be here. The people who want less immigration, etc. But the Republicans look to be having a very bad election this time and why I think there's likely to be more of a psychic tipping point this moment for conservatives is because they've had power now for a while and it's very hard to face the prospect of giving that up. Especially when there seems to be a big element of fear on their part too that some of the right exercised their power so divisively, and there could be a kind of retribution against them. At the end of the Clinton era, and I was largely out of the country during those years and was not paying close attention, but I don't remember Democrats being afraid for political revenge from the Republicans when the White House changed hands. But there seems to be an element now on the right of essentially fear, fear for themselves masquerading as anti-Obama hysteria, that thinks maybe they went too far when they had power and it's going to be awful if and when they don't. I mean, really, read some of the Corner, and there's truly an hysterical quality to some of the stuff. Which the saner Frums and Brooks seem to be trying to kind of talk them down from. And again from afar, the prospect that the next president would lead so divisively as Bush/Cheney/DeLay/Rove deliberately did is hardly something one would imagine would tempt or politically benefit whoever comes after Bush, trying to lead a union that feels pretty jittery and fragile on many fronts.
Update: Just saw this Christopher Hitchens' piece: "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign."
More thoughts from the Poor Man.