David Broder - Tone Deaf - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

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Thu Feb-11-10 11:01 PM
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David Broder - Tone Deaf

Edited on Thu Feb-11-10 11:18 PM by NanceGreggs

My LTTE to the Washington Post:

After reading his piece, “Sarah Palin Displays Her Pitch-Perfect Populism”, I can only draw one conclusion: sadly, David Broder is tone deaf.

Mr. Broder describes Ms. Palin’s keynote address at the National Tea Party Convention as the delivery of an important political message, that being to take Sarah Palin seriously – a line that should be accompanied by a rim-shot in the tradition of Catskill stand-up comedy.

“Taking Sarah Seriously”; it sounds like a Reese Witherspoon vehicle, with the glaring exception that the actress plays such roles strictly for laughs, while Ms. Palin actually aspires to high political office. And no one is laughing.

Mr. Broder goes on to gush that Sarah’s convention address, along with her Chris Wallace interview, “showed off a public figure at the top of her game.” If this is the top of her game, one can only shudder at the thought of what the bottom might look like, or if it is even possible for someone to be more vacuous, more self-absorbed, more clueless about world affairs, domestic and international, than Ms. Palin continues to demonstrate herself to be.

“This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me,” Mr. Broder states, and refers to her vice-presidential acceptance speech in the 2008 campaign. However, Mr. Broder was not specific about the other times he was impressed, leaving one to wonder what other events led to his obvious adoration. Was it her inability to name a single newspaper she relies on to inform herself of current events? Was it her vagueness when questioned about investigations into ethics violations while governor? Perhaps it was her penchant for trotting out her special-needs child when on the campaign trail – a child who now seems to have lost his usefulness as a vote-getting prop.

“Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.”

There are several glaring problems with that statement. Mr. Broder does not mention the fact that the “enthusiastic audience of activists” didn’t exactly turn out in droves, nor the fact that carrying a placard that reads No Amnety or Keep the gov’t OUT of Medicade does not an activist make. (In fact, should Tom Tancredo’s proposal of mandatory civics and literacy testing in order to vote ever be implemented, the vast majority of Ms. Palin’s supporters would be turned away at the polls.)

I don’t dispute Ms. Palin’s ability to incorporate phrases like smaller government, cut taxes, stop spending, keep the nation safe, common sense ideas, home and family, God and country in her speeches. What Mr. Broder fails to point out – or perhaps understand – is that stringing together a bunch of applause-inducing words, absent the ability to explain how such crowd-pleasing goals are to be achieved, is not just empty rhetoric; it is a sign of empty-headedness.

No doubt I could enthral an audience by publicly announcing that it’s time to eradicate all crime, cure cancer, and establish a lasting world peace. But not coming up with even a modicum of an idea as to how to go about doing so would not exactly catapult me into the presidency. Nor will it propel the erstwhile Sarah into anything more than her current position as someone who is able to talk the talk, completely crippled by an incapacity to walk one step past the talking points scrawled on her palm.

As though it wasn't made abundantly clear during the 2008 campaign, Ms. Palin continues to confirm that it is not an inability to communicate her ideas to the populace that is lacking. It is instead an all-too-obvious lack of ideas; an inability to comprehend that words - regardless of their folksy, down-home delivery - are supposed to express actual thoughts, as opposed to spewing a simple, and simple-minded, litany of well-worn phrases spoken in a cloying effort at homespun-ese.

Says Sarah, as quoted by Broder: “And then I do want to be a voice for some common-sense solutions. I'm never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I'm not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I'm going to fight the elitist, because for too often and for too long now, I think the elitists have tried to make people like me and people in the heartland of America feel like we just don't get it, and big government's just going to have to take care of us.”

Well, the response to this should be obvious – but I will spell it out for the Broders of the world. While Sarah may desire to be the voice of common-sense solutions, to date she has offered neither sense nor solutions. As to the “people like me” comment, I have to ask: Is she talking about people like her who demand $100,000 to speak up for their love of country? Can we all get paid for doing so? Where do we sign up?

Admittedly, I am not now nor have I ever been a fan of Palin – or of Broder. However, I am a fan of irony, and it was not lost on me – nor many of your readers, I’m sure – that while Broder was admonishing a nation to take Sarah seriously as a political force, your own newspaper simultaneously published survey results showing Ms. Youbetcha as being, as they say in the political biz, yesterday’s news.

In all fairness to Mr. Broder, along with the other conservatives who are coming out of the woodwork of late to sing the praises of a woman whose “presidential qualifications” include being able to field-dress a moose (a skill which, among her other self-proclaimed talents, is to this day shrouded in doubt), I understand the need to offer such praise by way of apology to the country at large – an apology for their party having promoted the idea that an ill-equipped, ill-advised, totally scatter-brained motor-mouth should be one heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States.

This is the point at which I could invoke the traditional axiom about putting lipstick on a pig. But I won’t.

Sarah Palin is no pig. She is an exceptionally attractive woman, and I have no doubt that she is capable of applying her own lipstick – especially when she can bill her cosmetics to the party that supports her, along with her wardrobe.

Unfortunately for Sarah, these continue to be her only qualifications – for anything.

Broder ends his Novena to Saint Sarah, patron saint of Lost Political Aspirations, with the words: ”Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand. The lady is good.”

The ammunition, Mr. Broder, is plentiful. And every time Sarah-the-Sublimely-Ridiculous opens her mouth, the stockpiles are replenished beyond the opposition’s most fervent prayers.