Ms. Palin herself had a surprisingly nonchalant reaction to Mr. McCain’s initial phone call about the vice president’s slot, writing that she was not astonished, that it felt “like a natural progression.”
Ms. Palin suggests that she and her husband, Todd, are ideally qualified to represent the Joe Six-Packs of the world because they are Joe Six-Packs themselves. “We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition,” she writes in “Going Rogue.” “We know what it’s like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools. We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”
Where did this enormous sense of entitlement come from? Her natural progression from city councilwoman to mayor to governor to vice presidential candidate only seems inevitable if you utterly ignore her actual experiences in those offices. It was enough to be crowned, Palin sees actually working the job to be utterly irrelevant. But while Sarah Palin sees her progression to the White House as inevitable, Jane Six-Pack feels she could do just as good a job as an educated, experienced person, because she is "normal." There are not many normal Americans who feel that they are entitled to high office, or qualified to run the country.
In a sense Palin is right. All she needs to do is read the material the lobbyists hand her and do what her campaign contributors tell her to do. They'll do all the thinking for her. Any other decisions will come from the gut, based on personal beliefs and emotional needs.
2 comments:
It may be different in Texas, but around here in the Liberal Northeast, Joe Six-Packs are not millionaires, as the Palins are (and were even before the g/r/a/f/t/ book deal).
I think a lot of Republican mentality -- wanting to be elected, but not actually wanting to work afterwards -- harkens back to Reagan's "the government is the problem" thing.
Democrats, alas, aren't exactly covering themselves with glory either, but they're better than Republicans.
The real problem is not government, it's the disconnect between what elected officials do, and what regular people (those who they are supposed to be representing, after all) want them to do.
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