David Brooks is the token conservative on the New York Times op-ed staff and occasionally he actually writes something I agree with. So this morning when I saw the headline Why Experience Matters, I thought “Glory be! He’s going to point out that Obama has no executive experience!”
Wrong. What was I thinking? The NYT would never allow any writer in its hallowed halls to utter a discouraging word about the Obamessiah. So I really wasn’t overly surprised to find that Brooks was referring to McCain’s VP Sarah Palin, whipping girl of the MSM and the leftwing nutroots.
So was there a single mumblin’ word in Brooks’ musings on experience about the inexperienced Obama, who as was said about Jesse Jackson, “Ain’t never run nothing but his mouth?” Of course not. But Brooks did say a few true things about Palin before comparing her to “W” which is of course the ultimate put-down from the left. (I wonder where he got the idea to compare McCain-Palin to “a third term for President Bush”?)
Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.
Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.
And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.
Another one of those Freudian slips, like Maureen Dowd had yesterday: Trying to say something nasty about Palin but letting the truth slip in.
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