So, yeah, MC’s right – Palin endorsing McCain does “stink” – but only if you were hoping that she would lend her charisma exclusively to the cause of rigorously pure conservatism.

NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON POLICY

MC and I are not far apart on the most politically relevant points, even though this agreement leads us to different conclusions.  Before anyone reads the wrong things into these differences, however, there are some policy questions that need to be cleared up.

MC concedes that there’s little daylight between McCain and Palin on foreign policy, and he’s happy to set aside possible post-Campaign ’08 hard feelings (“her business”).  It’s on domestic policy that differences seem to arise, but I think MC partly mischaracterizes them, and otherwise exaggerates their importance:

1. Immigration: MC links to a recent FoxNews interview in which Palin unambiguously states her support for McCain’s current “position on immigration.”  Though inveterate McCain skeptics may be unwilling to credit a shift in his approach that’s as old as the ’08 campaign, we should be clear that what Palin is supporting is a “border security first” approach.  MC calls determining what Palin really means a “tough call.”  I disagree:  She says she supports McCain’s position.  If he diverges, he’ll presumably have to “answer to Sarah,” and, if she fails to call him out, it will harm her credibility.  That’s implied in any endorsement.
2. Global warming/Energy:  I believe MC misstates the differences between Palin and McCain on GW issues.  When MC claims that “McCain and Obama get along swimmingly” on Cap and Trade, he ignores the fact that McCain has been a fierce critic of Obama’s program from the day it was introduced.  McCain may, for instance, have been the first to dub it “Cap and Tax.”  MC also forgets the softer/squishier pre-ClimateGate remarks that Palin made over the course of years on Global Warming-based policy, clearly intended to make it easier for AGW believers to support her. Post-ClimateGate, she’s become much more vocal in her skepticism.  As for ANWR, differences on the subject are very old news.  They didn’t prevent Palin from running with McCain, and haven’t prevented her from recycling lines like “all of the above approach” and “drill, baby, drill” from her and McCain’s joint campaign ’08 platform.
3. Gay marriage:  McCain and Palin are both opponents.  They may differ on the wisdom of passing a “Defense of Marriage” amendment now, but even McCain, who opposed a constitutional amendment in 2004, has for years been saying that he would support it if the Defense of Marriage Act were overturned.  Does anyone see this secondary/tactical difference as likely to determine many elections this year – even a primary election on the GOP side?
4. Evolution:  In what election anywhere in America other than for school board are the particulars of beliefs on this issue of importance? McCain apparently believes in evolution + God.  Palin seems to believe in God + evolution.  MC:  “Some may say it’s a minor issue, but it’s seemed important to Sarah Palin.” She’s responded when others have brought the topic up, and she discussed her beliefs in her book.  Has anyone heard her bring it up on her own in any political context?

…and that’s about it from MC on policy, though at other points both he and other commenters have brought up other issues, especially (5)  Campaign Finance Reform (CFR).  I don’t recall and couldn’t find a detailed statement of Palin’s on McCain-Feingold, though I believe that, like Fred Thompson (who co-sponsored it in the Senate), she expressed support for the good intention of cleaning up politics (since the 19th Century a typical progressive focus, incidentally).  Palin had her own personal experience of campaigning for and helping to implement progressive-style political reforms – the Alaska ethics laws – that, despite good intentions, seemed to backfire on her. She may sympathize with McCain.  Anyway, with the Supreme Court having gutted McCain-Feingold legally, and with the Obama ’08 campaign having blown apart many of its presumptions, it’s hard to imagine a deader letter, or any reason why it should influence Palin’s decision-making on McCain vs Hayworth.

In sum, Palin and McCain are very close in one major area – foreign policy – and easily close enough for government work on the other issues MC points to.  Most important, they’re together on the major unifying conservative issues of the 2010 campaigns – debt, deficits, ObamaCare, DC elitism/corruption – issues on which McCain has been and remains a leading spokesperson.

Moreover, like Mitt Romney and others who have endorsed McCain, Palin wouldn’t need a personal bond, debt of gratitude, or perfect agreement to conclude that putting the Arizona Senate seat at risk, losing a” lion of the Senate,” creating or widening rifts within the party, and opening the Republicans to a “they’ve gone crazy with ideology” narrative would interfere with job #1:  Defeating Obamacrats.

Some have focused on JD Hayworth’s flaws as a candidate, but, in trying to justify Palin’s endorsement, you don’t need to destroy Hayworth unless you despise McCain.  Palin focused almost entirely on McCain’s positives in her endorsement statement, with only a glancing, implicit reference to Hayworth in her conclusion:

In 2008, I firmly believed that John McCain was the right man for America. Today, I know he’s the right man for Arizona. Your state deserves more than rhetoric; you deserve a leader with a real record of accomplishment. That’s why, on behalf of Sen. McCain, I’m asking for your vote. For the good of our entire country and the future of your state, please send John McCain back to the United States Senate.

Not to take her at her word requires you to deny the evidence that she actually is closer to McCain than anti-McCain conservatives want to acknowledge.

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATISM vs PURE CONSERVATISM

I therefore both disagree and agree with MC’s conclusions.  I don’t think he’s justified his description of McCain and Palin as “at odds all over the place,” but I think he’s right to question whether Sarah Palin is a “strong conservative,” if by that he means a committed ideologue.  She clearly possesses many strongly conservative impulses and core beliefs, but her approach to politics is at least as pragmatic as it is ideological.  In that way, she’s an authentic conservative in an American mode, putting concrete results above any idle search for absolute political right and wrong.  Since I consider the combination of the two political impulses, under whatever names, to be both desirable and inevitable, I applaud SP’s having offered support and encouragement across the conservative spectrum, from Scott Brown to Doug Hoffman and maybe even Rand Paul.  It’s good for her and good for us.

In disagreeing with me strongly on this conclusion, MadisonConservative is far from alone on the right.  He’s probably closer to the majority view at HotAir (at least among those highly interested in immigration policy).  I welcome the continuing debate with him and those who agree with him.  As for those who don’t welcome the discussion, I wonder what they think HotAir is for – endless recitation of “true conservative” principles, all dissenters shamed and silenced?

Far as I can tell, it ain’t that kind of place, never has been, from the top down and the bottom up, and I’m happy with that, too.

Overall, my point is this: is Sarah Palin a strong conservative? If she is, why is she endorsing McCain? They disagree on a number of relevant domestic issues. She and Hayworth share more common views. If it’s personal, so be it. If Sarah Palin is a moderate, then very well. Let’s get that out into the open, and stop presenting her as a conservative icon, because there are few left who would consider McCain as such. Some have suggested that she is just being loyal to the man who chose her as his running mate for the presidency. Ultimately, the argument that Sarah Palin supports McCain because of his politics is frail. They’re at odds all over the place. It’s not “hatred” to point this out. Deal with it.

Other than to say that, contrary to a few commenters at HA, I find such debates enjoyable and useful, and entirely consistent with truth, justice, and the American way – I’m refraining from and direct response for now.

Some McCain-haters – and there’s really no better word than “hate” for the attitude of many HotAirians regarding McCain – think Palin’s made a “mistake.” Others who like and support Palin, but who remain hostile and suspicious toward McCain and what they believe he represents, believe she’s just “doing what she has to” in demonstrating loyalty to the man who “made her” a multi-millionaire and national political player, and are willing to give her “a mulligan.” Here’s one typical exchange:

I don’t know how many endorsements like these Palin can survive.

DFCtomm on March 29, 2010 at 1:29 PM

HondaV65 on March 29, 2010 at 1:30 PM

ONE. And only ONE.

Many such observers have persuaded themselves that Palin is trying to improve her political prospects and expand her power base. At some unspecified later date, they expect, she’ll be able to call in the chit. It squares with the view of your average Fox News All-Star always happy to attribute any conduct by any politician to cynicism.

What a load of, ahem, bullcrap! No one has yet explained why this straight-talking, “if I die, I die” conservative heroine has suddenly turned crafty pol or hypocrite, and yet still could remain a worthy Tea Party leader.

How about this explanation:

Palin supports McCain!

I hope no one finds that too complicated.

In the race with JD Hayworth, I doubt it’s even a close call for her.

Gov Palin agrees with Senator McCain close to 100% on foreign policy. She respects and likes him personally. She doesn’t blame him for the actions of some of his operatives during and after Campaign ’08, and never believed it was his responsibility to play the role of political Dad and discipline the other kids for her. She was and is quite capable of defending herself and charting her own course, and would have found it condescending and presumptuous for him to play protector.

She has no problem with the main thrust of his domestic views or his overall approach to politics. If she cares much about immigration politics – I’ve seen little evidence of it, though it’s clearly still a big deal to many grassroots conservatives – she’s happy with McCain’s post-”Shamnesty” positioning. I suspect that she cares enough about the Republican Party’s long-term prospects to want to see the issue handled soberly and positively.

Though post-’08 she’s been driven into a conservative cul-de-sac – in part by political circumstances in the US of A ca. 2010, in part by a learning experience that has included attacks on her from the left and from Brooks-Frum moderate/elitist conservatives – her political profile and her actual political conduct when in office, was moderate, bi- and non-partisan, and altogether maverick-y.

It was classically progressive: reform-oriented, anti-machine politics, woman-empowering, etc. – including not just a willingness but a determination to use government in aid of “social justice” – as in care for the vulnerable (special needs children, indigenous peoples), fair and equitable stewardship and profit-sharing in the exploitation of natural resources, safeguards against self-dealing by powerful economic and political players.

No one is in a position to take an objective measurement, but Palin looks to me to be about as much a McCain conservative as a Tea Party conservative. With the help of, as the governor likes to say, “people of both parties and of no party at all,” that overall political direction represents a potential governing majority.

I personally have no trouble taking the governor at her word on this and most other issues. It’s one of the things I like best about her. My advice is that you stop looking for secret calculations, obscure motives, and stop insulting Palin with the notion that she’s acting on some other basis than her best political and moral judgment. She prefers McCain to Hayworth, probably by a lot. Deal with it.

cross-posted at the HotAir Greenroom

How is it dehumanizing invective to refer to progressivist political ideology as a cancer on the American polity? It would be one thing to say the metaphor is inapt. I don’t think it is, but one could argue the case dispassionately. Another criticism that wouldn’t necessarily be a reach would be that it’s hyperbolic. Again, I don’t think it is. I am convinced that progressivism is antithetical to limited, constitutional government. I think Beck is correct that progressivism and limited, constitutional government can’t coexist. One of them has to recede, be defeated, dissolve over time. They can’t occupy the same space.

[...]

I really don’t see what’s out-of-bounds about putting this in metaphorical terms as the operation of a “cancer.” Is it the metaphor, or the basic proposition, that you find so offensive…?

Well – both – except that I never expected anyone to care whether I personally was offended by GB and the to me unfortunate resonances of his rhetoric. My concerns initially were that Beck’s approach might be politically counterproductive and potentially dangerous, and that it would be rightly taken as offensive and extreme, or just plain nuts, by others. I see no gain in making Frank Rich and David Neiwert look relatively reasonable, however briefly. I am equally concerned, however, about how “the basic proposition” may be taken and acted upon by us – by conservatives.

Liberty - Under Construction

Setting aside some important differences between J.E. and Beck, I fundamentally disagree with their characterization of the struggle before us – as a matter of theory, because I do not believe that progressivism, so broadly defined, could ever be completely eradicated; and, as a matter of practical politics, because I believe that total war with progressivism is neither practical nor desirable. I believe that such a war would fail, and, in failing, be highly destructive to those who fought it. Furthermore, as a missed opportunity, it would be tragic.

Contrary to Beck and J.E., I see little difficulty in “co-existing” with a conservative progressivism. J.E. defines progressivism as “antithetical” to constitutional conservatism, but even that definition suggests a relationship of mutual dependency, not a fight to the death – a dialectical yin and yang of the sort that the American system and the Constitution itself were designed to synthesize and re-synthesize, not to settle perfectly and forever. The Founders were not utopian fantasists.

Those who have lately been using the word “progressive” as a curse word, or who have been using “progressive,” “statist,” and “liberal” interconnectedly and even interchangeably, may refuse to believe that an authentically conservative progressivism could even exist except as some demon sheep in wolf’s clothing. Others may identify progressivism with the tedious nostrums of Barack Obama, the legislative misbirths of Reid and Pelosi, the musty interest group agenda of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or the pretty vicious rants of sundry nutroots bloggers. Yet as I’ve participated in discussions inspired by the “War on Progressivism” – to use my co-blogger adam k’s term – I’ve increasingly seen a conservative progressivism, a radical reform conservatism, traced out as the course conservatives have been, will be, and in my opinion should be following in response to the challenges of our times.

McCain-Palin

A lifelong independent, I voted with enthusiasm, if in the end not much hope, for the conservative progressivism represented by the McCain-Palin ticket of ’08 – the “original mavericks” dynamic duo that briefly held the national polling lead before being overwhelmed by the politics of the financial crisis. Since that election, the Republican center has moved further to the right, allowing us to reverse the order of the two terms (just as many would have been happy to invert the ticket): I will therefore say that I was cheered by the recent progressive conservative victories of Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown, just as, earlier in 2009, I was cheered by the use that California voters made, in one of the first practical political expressions of Tea Party sentiment, of the ballot initiative process to reject tax proposals and instead require budget cuts.

Those who are unfamiliar with, or who have been too distracted to recall, the positive narrative of progressivism may not recognize that citizen referenda were a centerpiece of genuine Progressive Era reform. They may not realize that, when they support ballot initiatives to pass tax reform, restrict public services to illegal immigrants, defend traditional marriage, recall out-of-control liberal officials, and so on, they are walking down a path marked out by the original progressives – the real ones, from back when progressivism was progressive, before it was melded with statism in the cauldron of megalomania, world war, and global depression.

Rising figures in the national Republican Party, the leading New Republicans, fit neatly within this progressive conservative framework. Representative Paul Ryan comes from the ancestral home of progressivism, Wisconsin. His Roadmap is, among other things, a courageously ambitious yet pragmatic blueprint for reform, intended to bring government, including a longstanding societal commitment to care for the elderly and vulnerable, closer to the people, for the sake of greater efficiency and effectiveness, alongside the destruction of undemocratic and corrupting concentrations of power – all foundationally, capital-”P” Progressive goals.

The difference between Ryan’s progressivism and Obama-Pelosi-Reid’s is that it leads to less state, not more; greater individual freedom, not less. The Democrats, Progressives in Name Only, remain committed, as they have been since Professor-President Woodrow Wilson, to the latest and greatest intellectual fashions of the year 1900 – from the eugenics and “scientific” racism that live on in Planned Parenthood and obsessive race consciousness, to the illusory advantages of administrative giantism. Republicans like Ryan have assumed the liberating, decentralizing spirits of our age, understanding in a way that the first progressives couldn’t how choice and markets on the human scale organize themselves more efficiently, productively, creatively, and equitably than centralized bureaucratic structures can.

Not too long ago, a guy talking about major reform of entitlements along the Roadmap’s lines would have been laughed out of “serious” politics as a dreamer. That he’s instead the Republican people are listening to is, for lack of a better word, progress.

There are many other New Republicans who might deserve mention in this context, but it’s worth returning to Governor Palin, the focus of so much unhinged wrath from the progressive pretenders. The story of Palin’s rise reads like a classic fable of first wave progressivism, only more so, in that she represents in her person a dream that the Progressive Era Suffragettes could only dimly envision. To her credit, she has openly and gratefully acknowledged her debt to them – as in her speech at Dayton, accepting the VP nomination, “88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote.” She had earlier assumed the governorship as the tribune of a mass democratic demand for ethical reform and the defeat of deeply entrenched and just as deeply corrupt political forces – the “old boys network” and its very old-fashioned, very 19th Century patronage machine. One of her favorite words – though her coaches may yet get her to drop it – is “progress,” which, uniquely, she uses as a transitive verb.

It was in this mode that Governor Palin was introduced to the nation – the “Alaska Maverick” who bucked the system. Unlike any of her current rivals within the Republican Party, and very few outside of it, that Sarah Palin commanded majority support in national polls from an electorate desperate for change.

As governor and vice-presidential candidate (before the squalls hit), Palin embodied authentic, classic progressive politics at its revitalized best. Like Ryan, she shows that progressivism does not belong to one side. At its inception, progressivism was neither rightwing nor leftwing, neither elite nor popular, neither religious nor secular, neither statist nor libertarian. It was all of those things and more – and it has never been a single, coherent, fully self-contained political philosophy that could be isolated and safely extracted from the American body politic.

Progressivism simply stood for the determination on the part of countless people, most of whose names have been forgotten, to address the great ills of the age – conditions of life, work, and political affairs that few reading this essay can realistically imagine. It was propelled among other things by crusading journalists – some of them a bit reminiscent of certain contemporary talk-jocks and TV hosts exposing the gross inequities and hypocrisies of our times. It was spread by deeply patriotic citizen activists, many of them involved in politics and insisting on their right to be counted for the first time, ignoring ridicule from the elites of their day: I can’t help but be reminded of the Tea Partiers.

As noted in regard to ballot initiatives, the original progressives believed in direct democracy. Some, like T.R. in his failed third party bid to re-take the presidency, even called for national referenda and recall of federal officials as a check on misgovernment. Today’s self-styled progressives, by contrast, call upon a partisan congressional delegation to ignore popular sentiment and pass a massive Health Care Bill negotiated with a raft of special interests. It’s fallen to conservatives to respond with a cry of “Here, the People rule!”

Freedom - Under Repair

Modern American liberalism can be defined as “statist progressivism,” “elitist progressivism.” Its end point isn’t the freely expressed popular will, but the ossified bureaucratic state – or worse. This line of development now having run its course into profound exhaustion, liberalism has turned its version of progressivism into its own opposite, a contradiction in terms: reactionary progressivism, progressive stasis – Obamaism.

Radical reform conservatism on the rise – as in 1994, as in 1980 – drives leftwing reactionaries out of their minds. It doesn’t depend on enemy conspiracies and caricatured scapegoats, but instead unites people from the center to the right around a pragmatic and desperately necessary, yet innovative and even visionary, agenda – rescuing the progressive spirit from those who have turned it into a mere statist prop. It could triumph in 2010 and beyond. We can know that, because we can see it already winning.

At this point no national political leader has emerged who seems capable of providing the leadership the new populists seek. Sarah Palin stirred their hearts, but her appeal does not seem to grow as her exposure increases. Certainly there is no one of Ronald Reagan’s stature on the horizon. More, since the public is not particularly happy at the moment with the results of electing sympathetic but untested young leaders (George W. Bush as well as the current President), experience and seasoning hold some appeal. That is a tough thing to find: a Washington-hating outsider who is also deeply knowledgeable about how government works. A military leader could fill the bill; generals aren’t career politicians but they know a thing or two about Washington life.

Does David Petraeus or Stanley McChrystal drink tea? Potentially, that could be the most important question in American politics.

“Do Soldiers Drink Tea?” – Walter Russell Mead’s Blog – The American Interest.

Fox News will broadcast Sarah Palin’s keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention live on Saturday night, allowing millions of viewers to see the main attraction of a gathering that was once criticized for barring the press.

The network, which pays Palin as a political analyst and is considered the favored network of conservatives, will carry Palin’s speech during Geraldo at Large in the 9 p.m. hour, a network spokeswoman told POLITICO.

Palin will also be making her first “Sunday show” appearance the next morning, also on Fox.  As a separate media moment, the interview should be interesting on its own terms, just to see how Chris Wallace and company treat her on her home turf (Fox  may soon be known as the Palin News Network), but the appearance is conditioned by and in effect part of the Tea Party foray, which Matthew Continetti at The Weekly Standard sees as part of Palin’s attempt to turn herself into the movement’s de facto leader:

Sarah Palin is clearly mounting a bid to lead the Tea Party. Last year, she endorsed Bill Hoffman’s Tea Party campaign against liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens. This week, she endorsed Tea Party favorite Rand Paul in the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. She will address a Tea Party convention in Nashville on Saturday; Fox News Channel will broadcast her speech live. In a USA Today column, Palin announces she will also appear at Tea Party functions in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada (March), and Boston (April).

Continetti has been highly sympathetic to Palin – not least as the author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin - but he goes on to argue that this move “carries dangers,” and he questions whether a too fervent embrace of the Tea Partiers will increase Palin’s chances of combining the “pro-life, anti-big-government vote” with the “moderate suburbanites who voted Democratic in 2006 and 2008 but began to return to the GOP in 2009.”

I can acknowledge that future coalition-building may be a concern, but I’ve never been convinced that Palin herself would make sense as a GOP 2012 nominee except in the context of an abnormal election year – on the order of 1980, but even more so.  Because there’s a more than negligible chance of such a turn of events, that means I wouldn’t count Palin out, at all – or presume that the Tea Party won’t be seen as mainstream by 2012, a classic “radicalism of the center” similar to Perotism.  If that’s the case, then those moderate suburbanites won’t presumably be voting on a whim, or for a merely moderate change of course – just as Democrats in 1980 didn’t vote for Reagan because they temporarily confused him with Rockefeller.

I begin my proof by observing a smart review of Going Rogue, one you might not have expected to read under the New York Times logo, even in on-line only content. Offering an appreciation of Sarah Palin as an American character, veteran cultural observer Stanley Fish focuses on the book’s central motif of Palin running:

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life.

After playing with the metaphor for a paragraph or two, Fish concludes on a note perhaps less familiar to a Times readership than to typical conservatives:

The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.

The manner in which the underestimation, indeed the compulsive derision of Sarah Palin enhances the effect of her successes has been clear to non-Alaskan conservatives at least since her all-eyes-upon-her performance at the Republican National Convention of 2008. The comparison of Palin to Reagan is also familiar on the right. In Fish’s review, it comes across as wholly complimentary on the surface, because it’s explicitly cautionary for liberals, but it may betray Fish’s own partisan bias, since to him as for many liberal historians, Reagan and Reaganism were more symbol than substance, the deceptive offer of a pleasant dream that obscured a deeply flawed reality.

Even if the comparison can be seen in different ways, few Palin supporters will rush to disavow it. Most will prefer to bank it. As for Palin herself, she has directly aligned herself with Reagan, as a fervent admirer and as a would-be heir to his political legacy. When recent interviews have turned to economics, she speaks as a true believer in Reaganomics in statements that could be boiled down to “I’m in favor of what worked in the ’80s” – her main innovation being her emphasis on energy independence, a topic which in an odd historical turn had dominated American politics in the ’70s, but had all but disappeared by the time Reagan was inaugurated. When questioned in relation to national security, she is fond of quoting Reagan directly, deploying a statement of firm resolve that Reagan first proposed as an alternative to Détente, in discussion with his future National Security Adviser: “How about this? We win, they lose.”

WWTL captures the difference between Reagan and virtually the entirety of the foreign policy establishment of his day. For Palin, it underlines the contrast between her and our current president, a man who seems as put off by the word “victory” as Richard Nixon was by the word “love,” but its larger purpose is to associate what she offers – an indomitable and indefatigable American character in support of conservative orthodoxy – with what for large numbers of Americans stands as the last heroic period in our history.

You can be sympathetic to this view and still recognize it as a gross over-simplification. A Palinist might respond that simplicity would be far preferable to the complications fetishized by those who imagine that intellectualism – or, say, “smart power” – can ever be a good substitute for “common sense,” another favorite rhetorical reference point for Palin and other populists. And the Palinist might even be right, or more right than wrong: Common sense seems a lot simpler than technocracy, and is therefore quite consistent with a politics of smaller/limited human scale government. It perfectly suits the suspicions and the aspirations of armies of self-styled outsiders who believe that the federal government has expanded way beyond utility, and way beyond the best interests of the nation.

Yet this simplicity also recalls the image of Reagan advanced by his political enemies, of the “amiable dunce” who somehow bumbled his way to economic recovery, a second term, and the defeat of the Evil Empire. It’s how liberals wanted to see him, but their own political suffering at his hands – along with Reagan’s own letters and diaries and the testimony of those at the center of events – suggest a figure arguably closer to “The Real Ronald Reagan” of Phil Hartman’s iconic SNL skit, in which Reagan the folksy oaf turns into Reagan the polymath mastermind as soon as whatever reporter or other visitor has left him to his complex devices. The point isn’t that Reagan was, secretly, able to solve complex mathematical equations in his head, or some such, but that he was, as Steven Hayward emphasizes in his recently published second volume on The Age of Reagan, “one of the best-prepared men ever to become president.”

As Hayward details, by the time Reagan was elected, in addition to having been governor of the nation’s richest and most populous state, he had been active in national public affairs for thirty years, and had already run for president twice (seriously in 1976, half-heartedly in 1968). With this context in mind, it may be easier to understand why some keepers of the Reaganite flame – including Hayward, though not including Reagan’s son Michael – have resisted the idea that Sarah is our Ron. For all of Palin’s assets as a politician, and even stipulating that she draws upon much deeper and broader qualifications than her detractors acknowledge, she’s still a comparative newcomer on the national stage. In addition to being much younger than Ronald Reagan was in 1980, she lacks anything remotely approaching his political and intellectual track record and his extensive network of supporters and advisers. It’s no insult to Palin to suggest that she suffers by comparison to Reagan in this respect, just as it’s no great compliment to suggest that she’s better-qualified than our current president was on the day he took office.

There is also nothing in Reagan’s biography that compares to Palin’s resignation of the Alaska governorship, a move that I for one supported, but which I believe must tend to heighten insecurity about her among many voters. I further have to wonder whether it’s a factor that will loom larger under the very conditions – a failed Obama presidency – that would make a successful run by Palin as early as 2012 thinkable. Even assuming that Palin can politically overcome questions raised by her resignation, or under an outsider’s banner even turn it into a net positive (conceivable, not necessarily likely), it may further reinforce an even more important question: What are the chances that a Palin presidency would be successful? If she couldn’t gain sufficient support from the Alaskan legislature to revise the flawed ethics reforms that she had originally sponsored, but were being used to destroy her governorship and inhibit her rise to national prominence, what would her chances be with the US Congress and the national political and media establishment?

It’s a contingency worth anticipating for anyone considering an outsider run for the presidency, for Palin’s relative political isolation, made evident in her ethics law problems, is a familiar end state for outsider executives, at all levels of government and in other realms of life, too. It’s one of the oldest political, social, and religious stories. There’s a rightwing populist notion that the political equivalent of a neutron bomb, neutralizing the inhabitants but leaving the physical structures intact, would be better than liberal government, but a president with few political allies might very likely be overwhelmed by the permanent government whose customary practices and perquisites are deeply entrenched and well-defended.

Not that Palin has put herself forward as a bomb-thrower or negativist: She has clearly and repeatedly enunciated the outlines of a positive program – energy independence, national security, fiscal restraint, small government, local control. With the exception of the first point (as observed, energy was in effect a side issue for Reagan), the platform is pure Reaganism. It is therefore all the more worth recalling that, for all of Reagan’s skills and despite his elevated historical status, the Reagan Revolution lasted for only a brief moment in political time before even Reagan was forced to play defense, with his most effective opponents including the “tax collectors for the welfare state” in his own party. Reagan lowered tax rates, reduced regulation, and offered critical protection and political backstopping while Fed Chairman Volcker administered harsh fiscal medicine – but major elements of his domestic agenda were all stalled by 1982, never to be revived, something that movement conservatives of the time noted in despair.

Hayward’s biography persuasively suggests that Reagan’s greatness, or anyway his greatest contribution, on the domestic side was in breaking the ideological stranglehold that liberalism had held on political discourse for 50 years. He set new terms for our national political conversation – no small feat – and that also means we do not need to start where he did. If Palinism is going to matter as more than a political-cultural footnote, whether or not it proceeds under that name and with Palin herself in the lead, it cannot function as a re-play of the Reagan Revolution: Palin is not Reagan, and, in part thanks to Reagan’s contribution, the correlation of political forces today and prospectively is much different than what Reagan faced upon taking office.

This set of facts brings us back to our present moment and its uncertainties, and to my formula. What it’s meant to express is this: For Palin or any Palinist not just to run and win, but to succeed, she will need a congress and a country much readier than were the congress and the country of Reagan’s time to implement a Reaganist agenda.

QED

The intensity of feelings Sarah Palin evokes from almost all sides is remarkable — and for me, a bit puzzling. I don’t think she has earned either adoration or contempt. But as we’re seeing, she elicits plenty of both.

Peter Wehner – “Why All This Fuss Over Sarah Palin?”

It’s because people – the people who makes Palin a “populist” – sense enduring and worsening problems and great dangers (and opportunities) that our political and intellectual betters don’t seem to grasp and, sitting on their very comfortable bottoms, may not even see a need to face squarely; and that even individuals like those Wehner mentions approvingly – “Margaret Thatcher, William Bennett, and Antonin Scalia” – haven’t been able to lead us out of.

If the country undergoes a return to relative normalcy, then Palin may not be very relevant politically in her own right, at least as a candidate for president.  Anything else – and she may matter a lot, and could continue to surprise, confuse, and even puzzle the intellectuals on all sides whose main purpose in political life ought to be to anticipate, clarify, and even solve major public questions.

PALIN: How many AP fact-checkers does it take to change a lightbulb?

FACT: Palin has gone seriously “rogue” in her facts here. AP fact-checkers are prevented per union regulations from changing lightbulbs.

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this joke. We’ll be here all week.

And when he’s bad he’s even better:

Hmm. Greater Bombay forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon?

“I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?”