Teleprompters

I continue to be amazed by just how bizarre and circus-like the Sarah Palin affair is.

Let's review. McCain picked someone out of nowhere with extreme right wing views and little in the way of credentials who is telegenic. He gave her a 40 minute speech and a teleprompter and heard many say that on the basis of her ability to speak someone else’s words extremely well that she is a valid candidate. He is now having her pop up now and then at campaign rallies to smile, shake hands and again read with a teleprompter parts of the one speech she knows. In between these appearances, the McCain campaign hides her away to avoid having her say anything unscripted.

Yesterday, 12,000 people came to Cedarburg, Wisconsin to see the McCain-Palin circus. I've been to Cedarburg many times. It's the perfect place for those two. When I was a kid it was a town where no Jews or blacks were allowed. It's still almost entirely Jew and black free today. The people like it that way.

When I was a kid, Disneyland had a theater where a robot made to look like Abraham Lincoln walked on stage and gave a 10 minute speech. He looked incredibly realistic and the performance was entirely convincing. After the speech, there would be thunderous applause from the audience. The robot would then walk off the stage.

McCain’s strategy with Palin is to treat her just like that Disneyland robot. It tells me that, beyond being able to read from a teleprompter, she does not have the skills necessary for a national campaign. That this strategy seems to be working so far also tells me something sad about the press, which is so weakened right now that it can't demand access, and the public at large, which isn't concerned with substance. Without the public's obsession with personality, Palin - a haphazardly educated, not very bright, book-banning, creationist, anti-environmental, bible thumper who apparently can't be trusted to speak without a script - would receive little attention except for ridicule.

I read the other day that Palin's role model in leadership is the biblical Queen Esther. I would suggest a different role model - Margaret Thatcher - but Thatcher had far more brains than Palin and was a gifted unscripted speaker so my suggestion is probably not a good one. Let's stick with Queen Esther.

I bet I can out Bible thumb most any Evangelical preacher when it comes to the Old Testament and I know the Book of Esther pretty well. Esther's act of heroism was, unlike the campaigning of Sarah Palin, unscripted. She had to go before the king without an appointment to save the Jewish people. Given that her husband the King murdered his previous wife for refusing to strip for his friends at a party, this was a big deal. Rushing into the king's throne room without advance permission was simply not allowed and could well have lead to death. Somehow she summoned the courage to go before the king and plead her case. I'm guessing - just a guess mind you - that she didn't have a teleprompter.

The Obama camp seems to have determined that the best strategy in dealing with Palin is to ignore her and focus on McCain. Given that the response of the public to Palin is an emotional one - both positive and negative - driven by personality and given that she isn't the one running for president, that sounds like an excellent idea.