Commentary > Op-eds
Sarah Palin - Rebel, Not A Rogue
By MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE, For The Bulletin
I had an opportunity to meet Sarah Palin a year ago during the National Governors Association conference at Independence Hall. She was the biggest star there that day attracting more media attention than Arnold Schwarzenegger. I talked to her, albeit very briefly, as she was leaving.
Contrary to her image, she was not the vapid, cute cheerleader one would have expected. She was in command of the facts and spoke with authority.
Of course, her vacuous image is a function of the mainstream media’s prejudices. Part of this is her own doing. As she admits in her new book, Going Rogue, Mrs. Palin gave them ammunition that validated this image after one very hostile national television interview.
However, the criticisms of Mrs. Palin by the East Coast establishment media - the Manhattan media mob - are a result of two dynamic forces. One is her conservative Republican politics.
The other is the sectional differences that have defined this country since its founding. The commercial interests of New England merchants and southern slave plantation owners versus western farmers; of Wall Street bankers versus Nevada miners; of eastern immigrants versus western pioneers; all have played a part in American culture for more than two hundred years.
These differences were delineated during the campaign and are contained in her book – although not described as such. It is very apparent, however, they, in fact, existed. The McCain staffers considered her a necessary evil. She was the young, attractive, vital counterpoint to the aging war hero.
Yet, they secretly, at first, later openly, loathed her. They believed she was too stupid to act in her own best interest – and certainly not in the best interest of the campaign. The campaign’s intelligentsia did not trust her to speak publicly.
First, she does not have an Ivy League pedigree. (Although, when one considers that every president after Ronald Reagan was and is an Ivy League alumnus, an Ivy League pedigree is not much of an endorsement).
One might think John McCain’s staff aversion odd when one considers that the McCain campaign’s top guns were not Ivy Leaguers. Rick Davis graduated from the University of Alabama. Steve Schmidt attended the University of Delaware and did not graduate. However, both are Beltway insiders, part of the eastern establishment.
This attitude was exhibited in a September 5, 2008 U.S. News and World Report which disparaged the fact that Mrs. Palin went to four different universities. Not only did she attend four different colleges, she went to such academic nonentities as Hawaii-Pacific University and the University of Idaho.
Such an educational lineage is unacceptable to those who graduated from the Ivy Eight, the Seven Sisters, or the ‘Almost Ivy’ schools of Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke and some others.
Such a scholastic heritage is an anathema to those who inhabit the banks of the Potomac or between the East and Hudson Rivers. For them, Sarah Palin was – and is – nothing more than a baton-twirling beauty queen.
Then again, most of the Manhattan media mob or the Beltway bums would not know Dutch Harbor and the World War II battle there, from Dutch Apple Pie. Supercilious entertainers like David Letterman and Tina Fey – and their writers – probably confuse Kodiak bears with Kodak cameras.
She is a menace because she represents the hoi polloi. She is part of the great unwashed - the antithesis of the eastern elite. The fact that Mrs. Palin excited the crowds more than Mr. McCain dismayed the Republican elite. This caused the invective directed at her by them.
It also produced alarm among Democrats who believed Mrs. Palin would draw conservative Democrats away from Barack Obama. This led to T-shirts worn by members of a Democratic Party rent-a-mob, who were outside a Philadelphia hotel as Mrs. Palin exited a campaign function, which read: “Sarah Palin is a c**t.”
So much for the civility for which the liberals claim to clamor.
Mrs. Palin is the embodiment of the divisions not only within the Republican Party, but she also represents the schisms within the nation. She has taken the mantle from Ross Perot – another who dared to shake the political institutions and who drew the wrath of Republicans and Democrats alike.
It is doubtful that Mrs. Palin will have a future in a nationally elected office. What is certain, however, is that she will be a powerful influence in national politics for years to come.
Just as Mario Cuomo was influential in left wing national politics as an outsider, Mrs. Palin is the voice of conservative women and the pro-life movement.
Just as Ross Perot influenced national policy, so, too, will Sarah Palin. An elected national office would be too restrictive to someone like her who needs to be able to speak her mind.
Sarah Palin is more rebel than rogue.
Contrary to her image, she was not the vapid, cute cheerleader one would have expected. She was in command of the facts and spoke with authority.
Of course, her vacuous image is a function of the mainstream media’s prejudices. Part of this is her own doing. As she admits in her new book, Going Rogue, Mrs. Palin gave them ammunition that validated this image after one very hostile national television interview.
However, the criticisms of Mrs. Palin by the East Coast establishment media - the Manhattan media mob - are a result of two dynamic forces. One is her conservative Republican politics.
The other is the sectional differences that have defined this country since its founding. The commercial interests of New England merchants and southern slave plantation owners versus western farmers; of Wall Street bankers versus Nevada miners; of eastern immigrants versus western pioneers; all have played a part in American culture for more than two hundred years.
These differences were delineated during the campaign and are contained in her book – although not described as such. It is very apparent, however, they, in fact, existed. The McCain staffers considered her a necessary evil. She was the young, attractive, vital counterpoint to the aging war hero.
Yet, they secretly, at first, later openly, loathed her. They believed she was too stupid to act in her own best interest – and certainly not in the best interest of the campaign. The campaign’s intelligentsia did not trust her to speak publicly.
First, she does not have an Ivy League pedigree. (Although, when one considers that every president after Ronald Reagan was and is an Ivy League alumnus, an Ivy League pedigree is not much of an endorsement).
One might think John McCain’s staff aversion odd when one considers that the McCain campaign’s top guns were not Ivy Leaguers. Rick Davis graduated from the University of Alabama. Steve Schmidt attended the University of Delaware and did not graduate. However, both are Beltway insiders, part of the eastern establishment.
This attitude was exhibited in a September 5, 2008 U.S. News and World Report which disparaged the fact that Mrs. Palin went to four different universities. Not only did she attend four different colleges, she went to such academic nonentities as Hawaii-Pacific University and the University of Idaho.
Such an educational lineage is unacceptable to those who graduated from the Ivy Eight, the Seven Sisters, or the ‘Almost Ivy’ schools of Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke and some others.
Such a scholastic heritage is an anathema to those who inhabit the banks of the Potomac or between the East and Hudson Rivers. For them, Sarah Palin was – and is – nothing more than a baton-twirling beauty queen.
Then again, most of the Manhattan media mob or the Beltway bums would not know Dutch Harbor and the World War II battle there, from Dutch Apple Pie. Supercilious entertainers like David Letterman and Tina Fey – and their writers – probably confuse Kodiak bears with Kodak cameras.
She is a menace because she represents the hoi polloi. She is part of the great unwashed - the antithesis of the eastern elite. The fact that Mrs. Palin excited the crowds more than Mr. McCain dismayed the Republican elite. This caused the invective directed at her by them.
It also produced alarm among Democrats who believed Mrs. Palin would draw conservative Democrats away from Barack Obama. This led to T-shirts worn by members of a Democratic Party rent-a-mob, who were outside a Philadelphia hotel as Mrs. Palin exited a campaign function, which read: “Sarah Palin is a c**t.”
So much for the civility for which the liberals claim to clamor.
Mrs. Palin is the embodiment of the divisions not only within the Republican Party, but she also represents the schisms within the nation. She has taken the mantle from Ross Perot – another who dared to shake the political institutions and who drew the wrath of Republicans and Democrats alike.
It is doubtful that Mrs. Palin will have a future in a nationally elected office. What is certain, however, is that she will be a powerful influence in national politics for years to come.
Just as Mario Cuomo was influential in left wing national politics as an outsider, Mrs. Palin is the voice of conservative women and the pro-life movement.
Just as Ross Perot influenced national policy, so, too, will Sarah Palin. An elected national office would be too restrictive to someone like her who needs to be able to speak her mind.
Sarah Palin is more rebel than rogue.
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