Sarah Palin could always join the Democrats

In this morning's column I referenced two passages from Vanity Fair's "It Came from Wasilla" as most exemplary of the Alaska governor -- Sarah Palin's "extravagant self-regard," which finds itself comfortably housed within "a political party that ... often demands qualities other than knowledge" -- but upon further reflection, I believe I was remiss.

There was a third -- today a rather pedestrian, ho-hum quality which invited oversight, but whose implications are politically transcendent: "Palin has always been a party of one."

With respect to Palin alone, VF's Todd Purdum noted she possesses "no political principle or personal relationship [that] is more sacred than her own ambition. To be sure, Palin is 'conservative,' whatever that means, but ... in a June interview with Sean Hannity, she sounded like a New Dealer when she proudly proclaimed that 'a share of our oil-resource revenue goes back to the people who own the resources—imagine that.' In the next breath, sounding like a 'starve the beast' conservative, she said she hoped the price of oil, the principal variable of state revenue, would not rise too much."

Confused, contradictory, and, as Purdum put it, "all over the lot in the articulation of her platform." Yet Palin is hardly alone, and that's where, logically, the "transcendent" part comes in -- and it's something that Democrats, in general, and on a macro level, are far more guilty of than Republicans.

As a party they're confused, contradictory, and all over the lot. Now it's true that ever since Democrats broke from their nineteenth-century and Southern states rights' mold they've tried their best to square with Will Rogers' observation about political incoherence, yet for a few decades running they at least -- roughly -- stood for civil rights, equal opportunity, progressive taxation, and (post-Vietnam) a vaguely intelligent and humbler foreign policy.

Today? Take any Democratic pol and you're also taking your pick, philosophically speaking. He or she might be neoconservative in foreign-policy approach, might not; might be for more equitable taxation, might not; might wish to legislatively overcome historical traditions of inequality, might not; or, in the most current debate, might demand health care for all, or, might not.

Each is, Palinlike, merely "a party of one." And since overcoming many of society's inbred problems first requires a factual, non-subjective, pragmatic, one-size-does-indeed-fit-all approach, the Democratic Party's collectivity of individual deviations means that it, too, is fast becoming "a political party that ... often demands qualities other than knowledge."

Comments

[Realist]

I know that the Democrats are low-life liars and yellow-bellied cowards, but what have they done to deserve Sarah Palin pulling an Arlen Specter and switching parties?

[the truth]

"I know that the Democrats are low-life liars and yellow-bellied cowards" Do you mean like Bush and Cheney?