I admire Charles Krauthammer and usually agree with his take on the issues of the day, but I disagree with his recent dismissal of Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for 2012. It’s far too early in the game to declare anyone either out of the running or inevitable… well, except for you-know-who. As Allahpundit aptly noted, Krauthammer’s statement that “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency” is so powerfully contradicted by recent history as to be surreal. It would be a more defensible statement if he’d clarified it by adding “… without the enthusiastic support of the entire mainstream media apparatus, which Palin is definitely not going to have.” I don’t think that’s what he meant to say, however… and there lies the key to understanding his views on Palin.
Charles Krauthammer is a brilliant writer, and a very perceptive analyst. He’s also a denizen of the Beltway, which inevitably alters his perceptions. He lives and works at the very heart of the machinery of the superstate. If you’ve never been to Washington D.C., I highly recommend making the trip someday. Besides the wonderful sightseeing opportunities and museums, you’ll also gain a sense of how much pure power hums in the air, radiating from the massive government buildings, and refined by the monuments to great moments in our nation’s history. Washington has a sense of both age and modernity. You can see both the past and the future from the Mall.
Some would say that living inside the Beltway tends to make one turn into a liberal, but it’s more accurate to say that the Beltway lifestyle brings a greater appreciation of the power of government. Every Beltway pundit, including Krauthammer, sees the ideal political candidate as a brilliant technocrat, combining charisma with a vast knowledge of history, economics, and the minute workings of Washington. The ideal leader has the intelligence and vision to steer the nation into the best of all possible futures, and Washington is the helm of the American ship, with the ship’s wheel planted firmly in the Oval Office. The primary point of disagreement among Beltway pundits is the precise course we should be setting for the mighty central government. Few of them agree with the conservatives out in flyover country, who think we should be heading for the lifeboats.
If the ideal candidate for mastering the U.S.S. Federal Leviathan is not available, the Washington and New York elite will happily manufacture him, provided they can find someone who gives them suitable raw material… and flatters their intellectual vanity. The liberal dominance of the Beltway media grants liberal candidates the proper credentials, merely by virtue of their being liberal. All that is necessary is for the candidate to have attended a few of the right schools, to allow the pundits to proclaim him a gifted intellectual. Thus, an undistinguished junior senator from Chicago, with a wafer-thin resume, mediocre academic career, spotty attendance in the Senate, and shadowy past associations was magically transformed into a “brilliant community organizer” and awarded presidential stature. In fact, the award was most loudly bestowed by his putative opponent, John McCain. Meanwhile, the equally young and charismatic governor of Alaska is dismissed with a snort and wave of the hand, because she didn’t go the right schools, and doesn’t have a stack of detailed five-year plans for the U.S. Economy.
Krauthammer is no liberal, but he shares the common Beltway vision of the President as a super-genius micro-manager, the CEO of America, Inc. He doesn’t see Sarah Palin as a serious candidate, because if she does decide to run, she won’t be applying for the position he has in mind for her. He parts company with red-state conservatives, because we don’t think our President should be expected to be a human super-computer, with every aspect of a three trillion dollar economy routed through her sleepless intellect. Searching for such candidates is a fool’s game, and building a gigantic centralized government that can only function with such a person at the helm is a recipe for unending disaster. The desperate longing for such a Technocrat-In-Chief makes the media elite highly vulnerable to being conned by anyone who can brandish the right diploma and make it clear he has big plans for the office. He doesn’t even need to present any detailed plans – Obama certainly did not. He only has to convince the elite that he has those plans rattling around in his gigantic, policy-wonk brain. Add a dash of heroic narrative, and you’re all set: Obama is the First! Black! President! John Kerry was a super soldier in Vietnam! Bill Clinton was The Man From Hope! Even the most ridiculous fraud of a candidate can be taken seriously, if he pretends to be what the Beltway elite are looking for.
I think the unfolding events of the Obama presidency will continue to validate the views of we who write from flyover country. The Beltway romance with the Wilsonian ideal of the professor President, acting as an elected philosopher-king to solve all of the nation’s problems from his Washington palace, is increasingly divorced from reality. Like all romances, this one tends to blind the smitten party from seeing the unpleasant truth. America does not need kings, and they are no more acceptable because their palace is granted with the consent of the voters, with a maximum lease of eight years. The colossal failure of a titan with Big Ideas may be a thrilling narrative for Beltway pundits to chronicle, but those of us who have to live through the fiery carnage are tired of clutching our wallets and waiting for the next titan to take center stage.
Krauthammer’s practical advice to Sarah Palin is quite reasonable: study up on the issues she felt uncomfortable with last year. He’s not entirely correct when he says “she has to stop speaking in cliches and platitudes… it won’t work.” It would work, if her desire was to seize that huge ship’s wheel in the Oval Office, and tack just a few points to the right. I can only hope that if she does run, she has the kind of bold conservative vision that will make her campaign an epic battle, against the people who think the Presidency is the kind of job Barack Obama is qualified for.
