I spent a little bit of time talking about Sarah Palin in the latest episode of The Delivery. I didn’t get quite as much time as I wanted and I didn’t get to say anything about her interview with Rush Limbaugh, which was actually very good. Hey, I only block half an hour for politics but that’s what a blog is for, right?
As it turns out, most of what I was going to say Melissa Clouthier wrote into an excellent post this morning. Her piece is a better analysis of what Palin really should be considering than anything I’ve read in the past couple months. Here’s an excerpt:
Sarah Palin must though, find a way to be at ease answering any question that the superficial, bigoted, condescending North Eastern blue bloods throw at her. Underneath, these people are insecure. It rattles them to their bones that a state college educated, wife, mother, politician and governor could best them. Their insecurity will get more piqued as President Obama continues to waffle, avoid and hide–from unfriendly press, from dictators, from tough decisions, from failure.
Sarah Palin will have to get used to wearing the mantle of leader. That means that she’ll have to own the fact that she’s so formidable that Barack Obama has finally, at long last, decided to man up and face Fox. (It won’t be much of a feat. Geeze, O’Reilly already loves him and the rest of the cast like him, too. It’s only the talking heads like Beck and Hannity that dislike the guy. What a weenie Obama has been avoiding Fox. So typical, though.)
Obama illustrates the point though. He’s weak. He will only take the easy road. Sarah Palin, by nature of being conservative, chooses the more difficult road. It’s just the way it is. She needs to own it. She needs to march down the road with cheerful grace. These self-important press and establishment types cannot handle good humor. They have no sense of humor about themselves. A well-placed gentle jibe will do more than 100 well-circumscribed answers and cluck-clucking back-tracking. The circumlocution is Obama’s forté. Sarah Palin needs to own everything, be direct and have a ball.
I will add one thing: she needs to own her mistakes every bit as much as her successes. No one outside her most ardent critics and the MSM (but I repeat myself) expects Palin to be perfect. She will make mistakes. What will kill her, politically, is if she recoils from every gaffe, no matter how small, as if it was a giant poisonous hellbeast.
It amazes me how many politicians (and would-be politicians) don’t understand that being graceful and a little self-deprecating when you’re wrong is worth far more than doing the same when you’re right. Heck, we all know that you can be a complete jerk when you’re right so long as you own your screw-ups, too. This just seems to me a no-brainer.
Tags: Sarah Palin
