Running for president was once the province of seasoned public servants with extensive knowledge of law and history, and practical experience managing complex enterprises. Today running for president is a public relations strategy for boosting book advances and landing contracts with television news networks.
Remember when Sarah Palin was the darling of the right and she was on the news every day pontificating in her uniquely incoherent way? Remember when reporters followed her brightly colored bus around the country desperately trying to get her to look in their direction?
Remember when Donald Trump was on the news every day with increasingly wild assertions about his own magnificence or the President’s citizenship? Remember how unquestioning the press was about his phony resume and declarations of achievement and wealth?
Remember when Chris Christie was on the news everyday parading his arrogance around as if it represented moral character? Remember how he led the polls for the GOP nomination despite not even being a candidate?
Remember when Michele Bachmann was on the news every day after she won a straw poll in Iowa that had a notoriously spotty record for predicting the GOP nominee? Remember when she was the front-runner for the Republican nomination and the heir to Sarah Palin’s Tea Party princess crown?
Remember when Rick Perry was on the news every day and was heralded as the serious contender for the GOP nomination with executive experience and bona fide credentials? Remember when his name could mentioned without invoking uncontrollable laughter?
Before long we will be asking: Remember when Herman Cain was on the news every day and leading in the polls against more establishment candidates with conventional backgrounds? Remember when people actually took seriously the former head of a pizza chain as a possible president of the United States?
But the real question we should be asking is what has happened to our national pride? What has happened to the aspiration for excellence and the admiration for brilliance? Why have so many Americans embraced an anti-intellectual pursuit of averagism? When did their standards decline to the point that they have contempt for Harvard graduates and reverence for governors who quit mid-term?
The parade of Republican front-runners would be an embarrassment to any party other than one preoccupied with tea. And the thinness of their character is evidenced by how quickly they disappear, leaving merely remnants with vague resemblances to persons we think we used to know. Which leaves us asking, Sarah who?
LOVE
IT
!!
Flavor of the month club! And when the scoop goes down into the last tub they will complain “This taste like Mitt!”
I salute the astute!!! Would love to see this linked on HP where more could read such a concise overview of the GOP/TP roster.
“But the real question we should be asking is what has happened to our national pride? What has happened to the aspiration for excellence and the admiration for brilliance? Why have so many Americans embraced an anti-intellectual pursuit of averagism? When did their standards decline to the point that they have contempt for Harvard graduates and reverence for governors who quit mid-term?”
I can tell you exactly when – when we started down the progressive/liberal path, where people don’t actually need to earn anything anymore, where race and gender are now more important than competence – this has been coming for a long time and we have only ourselves to blame.
I forgot to mention how people are more interested in celebrity than actual accomplishment.
Republicans will learn to love Mitt Romney the way Democrats learned to love John Kerry.
I wasn’t aware you actually “loved” John Kerry given he lost his election bid. He seemed to be a lot like John McCain – decent guy, but just couldn’t accept him as president. Amazingly enough, we elected a complete incompetent in Barak Obama – so anyone has a chance.
It’s hard to accept Mitt Romney, but who knows how it will all shake out.
No one “loved” John Kerry. Like most right-wingers, you are simply too thick to understand irony.
However, Mitt Romney is the best candidate the Republicans have had since Reagan. But he’s also sane and rational, and thus has no place in today’s nutjob-dominated GOP.
Hey Mark, love the piece on Palin. I’m trying to get ahold of you but can’t get your email to work. Email me back and give me your phone #. I’ve got something really cool I think we can work on together. Thanks! RJ.
Nothing makes me happier than getting under you skin so much as to get insults thown at me. I enjoy it all too much – unlike you libs, silly names and insults that bother you are meaningless to me. Hell, Mark has called me all kinds of things.
The anti-intellectualism of the republican party was going on when Reagan first ran for office and was elected to 2 terms. The republican party has nothing but contempt for science as shown in their attitudes and views on things like evolution and climate science. They think scientists have a political agenda because they don’t believe the earth was created in seven days. The are a party of dopes!!!
I happen to have a great respect for college-educated Americans, whether from Harvard University or the University of Idaho, and I while I do not know it, I feel that Sarah Palin does as well, her top-aide, Rebecca Mansour, is Harvard-educated, and her foreign policy advisor, Peter Schweizer, is a Hoover-Fellow. However, social/educational pedigree and wisdom do not always necessarily go hand-in-hand.
For instance, Michelle Obama is Harvard and Princeton educated, and I respect that, but I have yet to hear an astute appraisal of the country’s Foreign Policy, Healthcare System, Energy supply, and Monetary Policy from her, as of yet. At least one as astute as has been delivered by Sarah Palin, whether or not I agree with it. Originality of thought is something that can be derived anywhere, and not just in University hallways. From where I was standing, Palin was being dismissed as incompetent & stupid for having attended four-colleges, and I just couldn’t accept that sort of dismissive logic, because I simply believed that she was the better candidate.
Besides, the cynics who dismissed Palin’s credentials are the same people who defend William Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays (over the authorship of Edward de Vere) stating that “it is possible for a simple peasant from Stratford-upon-Avon to write ingenious plays with incredible accuracy, but some people don’t accept that,” and are the same people who talk about the beauty of William Wordsworth’s and Walt Whitman’s poetry for their other-worldliness and refusal to be bound by the conventions of intellectual society. They are also the same people who teach the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen Crane, Jack London, William Faulkner, etc. most of whom were college dropouts. How can their reasoning be so arbitrary is all I wonder.
And, my problem with Romney, more than anything else, isn’t his position on Climate Change, Gay Marriage, or Border Security. My problem, more than anything else, is rooted in his arrogance. This is a guy who has no issue joking about “hanging” Obama and inserting his FULL name in the place of “Osama” rallying jihadists. He claims selfless love for his country, despite sporting no military record, and is courting Conservative constituents whom he will likely abandon as were done in Massachusetts when he was elected Governor. He makes no effort to court, or even show any remote interest, in the Black/Hispanic demographic, and its clear he doesn’t think about them very much to hear his speeches and “vision of America.” I’m not a right-wing whacko, I just appreciate candidates with at least some form of consistency. I have appreciation for bipartisan efforts, but Romney lacks principles. Regardless of my opinion on Obama, I at least understand he has consistency, as is evident in his voting record. I’d rather have him for another four years and know what to expect than get a guy who gets a free pass on flip-flopping because he “looks like a President.”
And, in no way, shape, or form, is Romney anywhere near Reagan in terms of viability or integrity. Say what you will about Reagan, he beat a two-term incumbent, governed one of the largest states in the country effectively for eight years, and then beat an incumbent President. When has Romney EVER beaten an incumbent on any election level? When has Romney ever had to fight for reelection? When has Romney even served two terms? He has spent six years running for/preparing to run for, the Presidency, and can do so because he has the cash for it, but seriously seeks to paint himself as the representative of the people. Give me a break.
To some extent, I agree with the OP, but my disdain extends to Romney as well. What ever happened to the days of Adlai Stevenson, Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Charles Evans Hughes, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert & Elizabeth Dole, Henry Cabot Lodge (Jr. and Sr.), etc.? Where have all the greats gone? Are the sensible-rational ones who will “show us the way” really embodied by men like John Boehner, Harry Reid, Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell? There just seems to be no one in the political atmosphere one can respect anymore – on any level.
lol, “men like…Nancy Pelosi” – typo.
Q. “Why have so many Americans embraced an anti-intellectual pursuit of averagism? When did their standards decline to the point that they have contempt for Harvard graduates and reverence for governors who quit mid-term?”
A. “Christian” Homeschooling
Palin QUIT her Governor’s job, when she could have asked the State of Alaska to defend her against the eithics charges she claims were so overwhelming. Well, what about “reloading”? She was cited by Republican legislature for abusing her privileges in the Wooten affair. If you can’t even serve one 4 year term as a Governor, how will you make it through the intensely more stressful job of President.?
She QUIT her job as Oil and Gas commissioner
She took payment for over 300 days of per diem from the Alaskans for sleeping in her own
bed, which she had to repay to the State, only after an ethics charge
She just barely graduated from college, mostly with community college credits
She’s on the record as being a christian domionionist, who accepts the bible as the ultimate guide to government, instead of the constitution. People like Palin would IMPOSE christian biased laws on all Americans.
Palin must feel she needs protection from WITCHES!!. Watch the video!
She is friends and was anointed by a witch doctor persecutor named Pastor Muthee,
Muthee persecuted poor old women in Africa, and caused deaths there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ccmRuCpFjY
After leading her supporters on for two years, she then quit running for President on October 5 this year after grifting in millions.