Palin leads the right into a reality TV vortex

Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin, left, her husband Todd and daughters, Piper, center, and Willow, right, pledge allegiance to the flag before a campaign rally at the Beaver Area High School in Beaver, Pa. on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.

The Alaska governor’s resignation shows how shallow Republicans have become

Andrew Sullivan
London Sunday Times

Writing about Sarah Palin always presents a quandary. Does one operate under the usual assumption that this is a rational figure, a serious politician, a rising Republican star . . . or do you acknowledge the copious evidence that she cannot tell the truth, has delusions of grandeur, has no policy record to speak of and quit her job as Alaska governor halfway through her first term because she is, in her own explanation, “not a quitter”? I think that you have to proceed under the assumption that this is a joke of a candidate and a symptom of a political party in the middle of a mental breakdown.

Mind you, I love the idea of Sarah Palin: a brassy, no-nonsense enemy of bloated government and corruption. That was probably John McCain’s rough idea of who she was in the five minutes his staff vetted her, and on the one occasion he’d met her, before offering her a chance to be leader of the free world. The idea of Sarah Palin, though, is sadly not the reality of Sarah Palin.

The reality of Sarah Palin is that politics is a means to her higher goal: celebrity. Every action she takes is designed to make sense . . . if you believe that government is really a version of a reality show. The remote, David Lynch-style location, the family often in trouble with the law, the pregnant teenage daughter and her impossibly handsome redneck boyfriend, the boyfriend’s angry sister, an ornery Alaskan trooper, a few moose and mysterious pregnancies . . . and, well, the mini-series never ends. The best guess I’ve heard of the real reason for her abrupt departure is: “I’m a celebrity . . . get me out of here!”

No one yet understands the real reason for a first-term governor just quitting on Friday, July 3, with no advance notice. If it were planned, why did her husband have to travel 300 miles to be there? Why do it all on a federal holiday before the Fourth of July? As Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous might note: “Who can say?”

(Continued here.)