Kathleen Parker writes. She also teaches public speaking and writing in a program with a distinguished front porch.
Today she decided that her problem with Sarah Palin’s interview skills should be America’s problem.
Let me take a moment to praise Parker.
Parker has opinions, and by happenstance often has good opinions. This is evidence of God’s goodness, since she writes beautifully about whatever opinion she has.
She writes about these opinions well since presenting opinions in a catchy manner is what Parker has done for her entire adult life. Parker has won prizes for writing, has written for a longish time, and has run things related to writing.
When her good opinions meet her writing skills, then like a good party that gets the right weather blessings flow.
Sadly when one’s opinions happen to one like the weather the wrong opinion can bump into the fine writing skills and the party is spoiled.
Parker has chances to think most of us lack. She works at a school with a front porch perfect for “composing thoughts.” Today she thought and composed.
Let’s look at her latest post on Palin to see what her porch time wrought:
WASHINGTON — If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.
It is true that she faces the wrath of the comment boxes on Town Hall, but the Inquisitors will not be out for her at USA Today for her “heresy” in attacking Palin. She faces little meaningful pundit peril.
I don’t condemn Parker for swimming downstream. It is easier to swim downstream after all, but one might avoid posturing as brave for doing so.
(”She Bravely Swam Downstream,” “I Took the Path More Traveled,” or “A Lifetime of Boldly Going Where Everyone Already Went” don’t seem promising as titles for an autobiography.)
To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.
By whom?
It is laughable to think that the kind of people who use phrases such as “anti-woman” will use it on Parker when she bags on Palin.
It is like worrying that the kind of chap who says “cheerio” and eats crumpets will call you “bounder” for preferring cricket to baseball.
The people who use “anti-woman” will think Parker has written a fine column.
Instead, Parker risks being called a toady to the media establishment and being perceived as lacking philosophical depth, critical thinking skills, and political prudence by her friends on the right.
As Andrew Sullivan demonstrates, there are plenty of men with these struggles. These are mighty difficulties and Parker is right to worry that swimming downstream might be confused with intellectual laziness.
Parker continues:
Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.
Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received.
Parker feels she is “guilty” for charging feminist critics of Palin for hating her based on a conservative point of view.
Does Parker feel that Palin would have gotten feminist kudos if she were pro-life but had better media skills?
Perhaps Andrew Sullivan continues to press for patrimony tests on the Palin kids, because he did not like her governing style in Alaska?
But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.
I seem to recall that she was introduced as the popular and effective reforming governor of Alaska, but perhaps McCain missed those credentials and did indeed think he was picking “just a hockey mom with lipstick.”
Parker faced a problem in writing this column.
It is hard to go “downstream” without looking like one has done so for the sheer ease of doing so. It is hard to agree with conventional wisdom without looking like one is merely sucking up one’s establishment friends.
This would be unfair, but that is the hell of swimming downstream. People often assume you are an intellectual lightweight when in reality you have courageously chosen to do the easy thing.
Fortunately, if one wishes to avoid these charges one can always assert the situation has grown “complicated.”
Parker continues by showing us how the situation has grown complicated:
As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.
Apparently Palin is running for President now and not Vice President.
Parker has dispensed with the customary caution that McCain could die.
If he does die, Parker also has dispensed with the Secretary of State and Treasury in the Palin administration.
How does Parker know Palin does not know enough about economic or foreign policy?
What kind of “knowledge” is needed to govern? Is it “quiz show” knowledge?
Parker never answers these questions. Of course, when you are swimming downstream, you don’t need to answer questions. You can assume everyone knows the answers.
If we swim upstream for just a minute, we might wonder how Parker knows what she claims to know.
I am pretty sure Governor Palin does not need a giant pile of facts to have a good foreign policy or Reagan would have failed the Parker test.
I am pretty sure that giving great media interviews isn’t it or Dwight Eisenhower would have been a lousy President.
Sadly, those are the only Palin problems to which Parker will ever refer in her beautifully written column.
Parker continues to write well:
Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)
Presidents govern. Part of governing is meeting heads of state and being good at it.
If one wants to condemn Palin, it is a problem that Governor Palin met with heads of state and was good at it.
Since later Palin’s inability to charm Charlie Gibson will be the main reason to disqualify her from the office, Parker must minimize Palin’s success at doing what a President is paid to do and maximize her failure at something Parker is paid to do.
Parker associates all Palin’s success with her looks.
This is a charming move by Parker . . . one made with “wit, style and persuasion.”
The only thing most of us regret us that our failure to attend Parker’s “handcrafted” seminar on making such moves in writing prevents us from turning it on Parker with the same wit, style, and persuasion. We will have to dispense therefore with witty retort that beautiful women are successful because of their looks.
Parker continues to persuade:
And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).
Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.
Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.
Evidently, Palin has now done something so serious that it overrides these (carefully minimized) achievements.
Will Parker tell us what it is?
It was fun while it lasted.
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.
Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity:
“Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”
When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”
If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.
This is a Parker revelation: a Governor is unqualified to be President if she is bad at media interviews.
Being good at media rhetoric is the same as being “Big League!”
I would like to see an argument for this claim.
Palin would fail Professor Parker’s one day seminar on public speaking.
If only Governor Palin had taken time to let Parker “unknot her tongue,” “unstuff her shirt,” “banish her stagefright,” “set her muddled thinking straight,” then Palin would have been qualified to be President!
Skills Parker claims to be able to teach in a day are all that separate Palin from the White House! Oh the humanity . . .
If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.
We are not reluctant to say that Palin has done poorly in parts of two media interviews. We are reluctant to say that this is the determinative skill in electing a Vice President.
Joe Biden is worse than Palin at interviews, with no chance he will get better, but that is a bad reason to vote against him. Biden has bad policy ideas, so bad that one way to determine a good idea in Washington is to take the opposite idea from that proposed by Joe “Multiple Iraq States” Biden.
Parker has taken a minor problem with Palin and made it everything . . . which is not surprising since Palin isn’t good at the only thing in which Parker has any demonstrated competence. Everybody gets irritated when somebody does what they do well . . . badly.
Parker the pundit is irritated with Palin the pundit. Parker should go on with the punditry to which she is suited and leave Palin to presiding over governments.
Sadly, rhetoric needs a firm grounding in reality . . . political punditry needs some connection to political reality. Parker loses sight of this while composing a column to win her audience, write with elan, and otherwise organize her thoughts.
What to do?
McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.
Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.
Do it for your country.
We can now question Parker’s judgment.
If Palin bows out, millions of Americans will not vote for McCain. Palin is, I believe, more popular in the Republican Party than McCain . . . something that the nature of fund raising emails from the McCain camp (all Palin all the time) indicates astute Republicans know.
If Palin leaves it will be assumed to be involuntary, and McCain will lose.
This was always a hard year for Republicans and Palins’ strengths (some of which Parker listed) made this a race. McCain may lose, but my guess is it is more likely in the long term that Parker will vote for Palin for President than that Palin will sit with Parker on her front porch composing her thoughts.