Sarah Palin Watch 1: Secret Service Revelations

Our political attention spans are often too short. The onslaught of news from all kinds of sources, the tragedies and triumphs of international events, and our own hectic daily lives conspire to engender in us an unacknowledged amnesia. I've discovered this tendency in myself. And so, looking forward to the next presidential election, I'm going to keep watch on the political actors that appeared in this election as well as other presidential hopefuls and policy leaders who are being put forward by the political pundits. With that in mind, here is my first installment of my Sarah Palin Watch.

According to Tim Shipman, of the United Kingdom's Telegraph, Sarah Palin's "demogogic tone" in her attacks on Barack Obama at the McCain/Palin campaign rallies "provoked a spike in death threats against the future president.":

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

We need to remember the tone that Sarah Palin took in this national race, as it tells us something about the woman. McCain aides are now griping publicly that "Mrs. Palin took it upon herself to question Mr. Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr. McCain."

I'm not one to believe everything the McCain aides say; they're trying to save their reputations. However, I do think that Sarah Palin's very successful use of demagogic language reveals something about her, about her tendencies to bifurcate the world into "those against us" and "those for us." She excited the fringes of the Republican base in a very dangerous way.

For Further Reading about Palin and the Republican Party:

• Mark Lilla, "The Perils of Populist Chic: What the Rise of Sarah Palin and Populism Means for the Conservative Intellectual Tradition," The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2008.
• Ed Pilkington, "We Feel About Her the Way You Feel About the Queen," The Guardian, November 10, 2008. (www.guardian.co.uk)
• Steve Benen, "Coming to Grips with Republicans' Anti-intellectualism," Political Animal blog at The Washington Monthly, posted November 9, 2008.
• Rasmussen Reports, "60% of GOP Voters Say Palin Helped McCain," Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 (Hat tip: Think Progress):

  When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin [snip].....The key for the 44-year-old Palin will be whether she can broaden her base of support. An Election Day survey found that 81% of Democrats and, more importantly, 57% of unaffiliated voters had an unfavorable view of her.

• Kathleen Parker, "The Conservative Crackup: The Palin Factor," conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's contribution to a dialogue among conservatives (writers, editors, television pundits) on Slate, posted November 7, 2008:

  Palin covered her inadequacies with folksy charm and by drumming up a class war, turning her audiences not just against elites but against the party's own educated members. The movement created by that superelite, but never elitist, William F. Buckley Jr. was handed over to Joe Six-Pack. Know-nothingness was no longer a stigma, but a badge of honor.