Palin's Pathos by Steve Chapman Minority of One
July 6, 2009 3:41 pm
Even if she regards the news media as a mob of hyenas, I can almost feel sorry for Sarah Palin. I suspect it's hard to imagine how intensely exposed a person feels when she goes from being an obscure governor to a household name in the blink of an eye. And I can hardly blame her for wanting to escape the ceaseless scrutiny that goes with her fame and possible ambitions. Palin didn't ask to be nominated for vice president, and it wasn't really her fault that in a presidential campaign, she was in way over her head.
But she seems to think she's the only national candidate who ever got run through a brutal media gauntlet. She isn't. Ask Dan Quayle, Tom Eagleton, or Geraldine Ferraro. Gary Hart had reporters staking out his house to catch him in adultery. Joe Biden's 1988 presidential race got torpedoed by news revelations about a variety of embarrassing misdeeds. John Edwards had The National Enquirer lying in ambush this year, long after his race was over.
If you run for high office, you can expect every aspect of your life to be examined. And if there are things you'd rather keep to yourself, you're in the wrong place. Or, as Harry Truman put it, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
It was hardly a surprise that an inexperienced Alaskan politician would not be skilled with questions about foreign affairs and federal policy. Palin's greater failing was refusing to admit that she had a lot to learn--or, evidently, doing anything to overcome her weaknesses. Instead, she made herself out to be an innocent victim of a partisan press. In doing that, she looked not just underprepared but dishonest.
Many Republicans liked her because they saw her as what she claimed to be--a fighter. But her resignation brings to mind a boxer named Roberto Duran, whose chief claim to fame is that he abruptly halted a title fight that, to his surprise, he was losing. "No mas," he reportedly said. It was a surprise ending--almost as big a surprise as Palin's.
July 6, 2009 3:41 pm
Even if she regards the news media as a mob of hyenas, I can almost feel sorry for Sarah Palin. I suspect it's hard to imagine how intensely exposed a person feels when she goes from being an obscure governor to a household name in the blink of an eye. And I can hardly blame her for wanting to escape the ceaseless scrutiny that goes with her fame and possible ambitions. Palin didn't ask to be nominated for vice president, and it wasn't really her fault that in a presidential campaign, she was in way over her head.
But she seems to think she's the only national candidate who ever got run through a brutal media gauntlet. She isn't. Ask Dan Quayle, Tom Eagleton, or Geraldine Ferraro. Gary Hart had reporters staking out his house to catch him in adultery. Joe Biden's 1988 presidential race got torpedoed by news revelations about a variety of embarrassing misdeeds. John Edwards had The National Enquirer lying in ambush this year, long after his race was over.
If you run for high office, you can expect every aspect of your life to be examined. And if there are things you'd rather keep to yourself, you're in the wrong place. Or, as Harry Truman put it, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
It was hardly a surprise that an inexperienced Alaskan politician would not be skilled with questions about foreign affairs and federal policy. Palin's greater failing was refusing to admit that she had a lot to learn--or, evidently, doing anything to overcome her weaknesses. Instead, she made herself out to be an innocent victim of a partisan press. In doing that, she looked not just underprepared but dishonest.
Many Republicans liked her because they saw her as what she claimed to be--a fighter. But her resignation brings to mind a boxer named Roberto Duran, whose chief claim to fame is that he abruptly halted a title fight that, to his surprise, he was losing. "No mas," he reportedly said. It was a surprise ending--almost as big a surprise as Palin's.
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