President Obama needs Sarah Palin !?

Oddly, there is suddenly chatter of an iceberg that is about to wreck Sarah Palin's ship, as though an iceberg were necessary. If there ever was an iceberg, it must have melted by now. Don't worry though: Sarah Palin has effectively done herself in. She's drowning.

But in "Obama Benefits in Having Palin as His Foil," Matt Bai comes along and writes that Sarah Palin may be President Obama's best asset:

... “In our system of government, the party that does not have the presidency does not have a recognized leader,” said Mike DuHaime, a top Republican strategist. “She’s one of the very few who tries to fill the void.”

For the White House, it would seem, this is a hopeful development. That’s because every modern president, and especially one who finds himself confronting divided government, needs the kind of critic who can remind the public of why he once seemed so eminently presidential.

Think of it this way: American voters have for decades now sent their presidents to Washington in hopes of delivering some mortal blow to the status quo. Once in office, it’s hard for any president to fully embody the reform that a restive electorate may have hoped for. But it’s considerably easier if you can contrast yourself with an adversary who embodies the kind of outdated politics, ideological rigidity or divisiveness that repelled those voters in the first place. ...

... Next year, when Republicans settle on a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama will have an adversary chosen for him. But for now, he could clearly do worse than to have Ms. Palin overshadow the party’s more predictable leaders in Congress [John Boehner and Mitch McConnell]. With every controversial tweet or video, Ms. Palin makes Mr. Obama, who has often struggled to project the regality of the office, seem more like the post-partisan grownup he always intended to be.

Shortly after Mr. Obama’s speech last week, his opponent from the 2008 campaign, Senator John McCain of Arizona, issued a gracious statement thanking the president for his call for civility. Perhaps Mr. Obama wanted to thank Mr. McCain, as well — for having created the Sarah Palin phenomenon, thus giving the president’s words more resonance than they otherwise might have had.

What to do? Throw her an anchor? A rope? Both ends of the rope?

After Tucson, Is the Anger Gone?

In the wake of the shootings in Tucson on Saturday, January 8th, many have expressed the hope that our political discourse might improve. But is America at a turning point? At a crossroads? Perhaps not. Matt Bai writes, in "After Tucson, Is the Anger Gone?" that not all hisorians would agree that turning points or transformational moments even occur.

... In what may have been his most emotional speech since the 2008 campaign, President Obama registered his own disappointment, pleading with all sides for temperance. “What we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another,” the president said in his Tucson eulogy. “If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.”

If the shooting didn’t feel like the turning point in the civic life of the nation that some of us had imagined it might become, then it may be because such turning points aren’t always immediately evident. Or maybe it’s because the murder suspect appeared to have no obvious ideology, his crime an imperfect parable for the consequences of political rhetoric.

Perhaps, though, we have to consider another explanation — that the speed and fractiousness of our modern society make it all but impossible now for any one moment to transform the national debate.

Not all historians accept the idea of transformational moments, which, they point out, may seem neater and more definitive in retrospect than they were at the time. But others are inclined to see the American story as a series of crescendos and climaxes, periods of mounting internal strife that are resolved, or at least recast, by crystallizing moments. ...

Bai's article was informed by talks with Beverly Gage, "who teaches 20th-century history at Yale" and John Lewis Gaddis, "the pre-eminent cold war scholar and Yale professor," both of whom describe historical events in the nation's history that may have been turning points.

In the end, we may simply have the insane act of one man. Both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times have lengthy articles about the man suspected in the Tucson shooting, Jared Lee Loughner. The LA Times' article is "Suspected Tucson shooter 'slowly spiraled into madness'." The NY Times' article is "Looking Behind the Mug-Shot Grin of an Accused Killer."

Whether the shooter was driven to act by the talk of "second amendment remedies" or imagery of rifle sights over Representative Gifford's district, some, perhaps not all, may tone down their "rhetoric." Republican disdain for Sarah Palin, which was becoming apparent before the shooting, had marginalized her. The shooting ended her political career. The country's political unconscious will forever link Sarah Palin to the shooting.

Obviously, there may not be much more to blog about Sarah Palin (Or could it be that crowing over her next lie or inconsistency might diminish her culpability in the shooting? In the sense that it could distract people from the greatest reason she is unqualifed for any office?) So, we've started a new blog, a Sarah Palin free zone, named "Blogging towards Bethlehem." It's still under construction, but has several posts, and some links, which may give you a sense of its flavor. There will be posts about politics, but they won't be news-chasing posts. This post may appear there.