One of the most amusing tropes of the past few weeks in relation to the release of Sarah Palin’s book has been the notion that, among everything else that is wrong and terrible about her, Palin should be ashamed of herself for her ingratitude. After all, she was plucked from obscurity and made world famous, and yet she has the nerve in the course of her book to take shots at those she feels didn’t do well by her during the election campaign last year. Evidently, it seems, Palin should have been grateful to “the McCain campaign” for “the McCain campaign’s” supposed kindness toward her. Michiko Kakutani, on the New York Times website this morning, offers the most complete rendition of this:
The most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book. … [She is] thoroughly ungrateful toward the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage.
The thing is, the “McCain campaign” is not a person; it was a bureaucratic organization, and an uncommonly confused and dysfunctional one at that. Perhaps the greatest mark of that dysfunction was the stream of unnamed McCain advisers who went out of their way to criticize Palin in remarks they were too cowardly to deliver for attribution. It was, to say the least, highly peculiar for them to have acted as they did. The only conceivable defense for it was that some of them might have been working to protect John McCain’s reputation by somehow downgrading Palin by comparison; but of course, political advisers to Republican campaigns do not talk to reporters on background for such selfless reasons. They do so to hedge their own bets, to maintain relationships they want to last after the campaign is over. The best way to do that is to reflect the same cultural and theoretical priorities as the journalists to whom they speak, as a means of distancing themselves from the dysfunction and receiving kind post-mortem treatment.
The only “gratitude” Palin owed to the McCain campaign was to McCain. She owed no gratitude to campaign advisers and employees who threw everything but the kitchen sink at her — quite the opposite, in fact. By naming names and revealing the unprofessional behavior of McCain campaign staffers who were doing his election effort no favors by engaging in Palin-bashing, she has struck a blow for a greater degree of campaign civility in the future, in part by letting future potential employers in the political realm know about the poor behavior of people they might hire to help get them elected. The best way to neutralize a hostile leaker in the world of electoral politics is to let the world know that the leaker is a leaker.
As for the sudden concern about whether Palin was “ungrateful,” what Kakutani and others seem to believe is that she should act like one of those people in a T-shirt two sizes too small for them who are plucked from the audience of The Price is Right to bid on the showcase items. Palin did not have her name plucked from a hat. She was one of 22 Republican governors — and the only woman among them, and someone with a 70 percent approval rating in her home state besides.
But of course the whole ingratitude trope is wildly disingenuous. The fact that Kakutani, and others like her, are suddenly concerned with Sarah Palin’s political manners is another mark of the fact that she is being graded on a reverse curve. If she has done it, by definition, it was done wrong.
Gordon: I believe that you are way off base here. I don’t know if you were among those assuring the public that Fatah was a shoe-in over Hamas, or pressuring Egypt for democratization (for which the Muslim Brotherhood, now controlling around 25% of the Egyptian Parliament is really quite grateful) but promoting democracy as the authentic “realism” in the Middle East is absurd. You, like many Western commentators are fooled by the thin veneer of westernized elites. In fact, those places are dominated by a Muslim silent majority whose intellectual progenitor is the Prophet Muhammad, not Thomas Jefferson.
Our forefathers were not so easily fooled. Although attributed to many presidents, I believe it was FDR who replied to Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s assertion that Somoza was a son-of-a-bitch by stating, “Yes, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” As Jimmy Carter proved by failing to support the Shah, supporting sons of bitches is only self-defeating when we fail to support them. Forget about democracy in Pakistan.
Richard F, as an initial matter, I have neither said nor written anything on elections involving the Palestinians. I’m just not that brave.
On your more general point, sons of bitches are uncontrollable and often lose control of their populations. Then, what can we do? We end up not achieving our aims and looking completely cynical.
For decades, American administrations have played a cynical game in Pakistan. Just where has that gotten us? Democracy promotion from the beginning could not have produced any worse result than we have achieved: a nuclear-armed state where miliants are about to take over after already selling weapons technology to dangerous states.
We are at our best when we remember our principles.
Shorter: Gordon joins the Blame America First crowd.
The hundreds of Pakistanis arrested by General Musharraf are lawyers, judges, human rights activists, some journalists and many of his most prominent political opponents. In short, he is arresting the democratic civil society which is opposed to his non-Constitutional rule. Notably, he is not arresting Taliban, jihadists, radical madrassah clerics, or terrorists.
How the Ayatollah Khomeini must be laughing in his grave. Pakistan is about to have an Islamic Revolution like Iran’s (Abul Mawdudi has already written the major philosophical work), because America under Mr. Bush still refuses to put a premium on the morality of freedom before the utility of ‘stability,’ just like Mr. Carter.
Why is it our government’s business what sort of régime rules Pakistan, half a world away? What makes us think that we understand, or are capable of understanding, Pakistan, well enough to dictate what sort of a polity rules the Pakistanis? The experience gleaned in such democratic paradises as New Jersey and Louisiana, perhaps?
If we understood the need for some equivalency between our ends and the means available to achieve them, we would be far more modest in our goals. We should trade with just about everyone, and let them screw up their own affairs without our help.
Such a course would do wonders for the public fisc, for our reputation, and for our safety.
Grumps, you and I agree on something. I live in New Jersey and wish there was a better form of democracy here.
And a note to everyone else: If you live in the United States, remember to vote today–especially if you live in the Garden State.
P.S. Maybe you are right that we should maintain more modest goals in some countries. But what do we do about Pakistan now that we are already deeply involved supporting an unpopular strongman? It’s not an easy issue, but this is as good a time as any to change course. Our generations-long policy of short-term thinking is an obvious failure.
Gordon: Look, my heart is with you. Nothing would please me more than a resemblance between Islamabad and Columbus, Ohio. And you’re right on another point–SOBs can disappoint, sometimes badly. But no regime is permanent (including ours) and the goal of diplomacy, intelligence, and military action is to *manage* critical situations, not solve them. The past has proven that in general, the only permanent “solution” to long term problems is a successful war–be it of the “Cold” or hot variety. While using exclusively diplomatic means to resolve conflicts usually indicates a lack of will to fight, there is a third way–the proper use and support of proxy regimes. As we have proved for over half a century in places like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, this is easy where the majority population could care less about “democracy” and other kuffar imports. But proxies must often maintain themselves by harsh means, and for us to prate, Jimmy Carter style, about human rights, is absurd and contrary to our interests. Again, had we supported the Shah’s autocracy in 1978-79, had we allowed him the brutal means to suppress the Khomeini Revolution, we would have avoided the current situation. *That” was the “lesson of history” and not recourse to a ballot box in which the locals wouldn’t know whether to stuff a ballot or their laundrey.
Richard F, you make many good points and, more important, a convincing case. My answer on Iran is that we should never have gotten involved in Iranian affairs so deeply in the early part of the 20th century. We have since lurched from one situation to the next. Sometimes we have managed the problem, but for more than a quarter century we have not.
We just should not get on the wrong side of history. We did that in Iran and have been paying ever since. The Shah was on shakey ground long before Jimmy Carter arrived on the scene and ultimately made things worse. So, although I can understand others’ points of view, I still believe we are almost always better off in the long run when we maintain a consistent policy of supporting democrats and condemning brutal leaders. This does not mean we have to use military force to get rid of autocrats. It just means that we keep our principles, maintain a modest profile when we can, and use force when we must.
I have an even better “had we” for Richard:
Had we not organised a coup to depose Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, the popular and democratically elected prime minister of Iran, who was taking the country on the way to modernization but who, how could he dare?, nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and then had we not replaced him by an despotic, but western-friendly, tyrant, then maybe the Iranians wouldn’t have risen against such puppet despot to replace him for some other despots more of their liking, who are now causing us so much trouble.
The already classic tendency of the west to meddle in other countries’ lives to adjust them to their interests have caused much suffering in the world and thwarted the development of so many nations. But, as they say, what goes around comes around.