A Viler Shade of Palin

This is a late night thought but it's kind of a thorn I want to pull out of my side before going to bed. I guess I addressed it a bit already but I've really been remembering since listening to Palin's speech the sheer ugliness that American politics can get into, and why such an enormous amount of Obama's appeal is his truly steadfast refusal to go there. Throwing an elbow here and there, sure, but Palin's speech, and the reaction it was garnering from the crowd, was of a different magnitude altogether. There was something just a little bit like a cage of pitbulls - lipsticked and not - about that Republican crowd on Thursday. While Obama's speech - and so many of the Dem speeches - were a genuine celebration of possibility, a truly American sense of possibility, Palin was there with a permanent sneer and the desire and the power to throw politics right back into the unholy stinking gutter of contempt, empty vacous character assassination, and policy-free politics of personality that is by far the Republican party's - and its base's - least appealing character trait.

But what got to me really was a real sense that on a deep sense she meant it. With Giuliani's absurd political theater - a long-time mayor of New York railing about urban elitism (as if) - it just comes across as the pure act of a snake oil salesman reveling in his ability to rally the idiocracy. It's annoying, maddening in its sheer audacity of ridiculousness, but ultimately you can tell it's an act. With Palin, I don't feel that. That sneering vindictive spitefulness feels real, hellish and deep.

While there are all manner of reasons (namely an apparently unending stream of unhappy surprises from her past) that Team McCain is protecting the queen bee by shuttling her back to Alaska after a short tour of deep red country, I suspect that part of this is a realization that temperamentally she may simply be more than they had bargained for, and are genuinely afraid what might come up in a direct confrontation with professional journalists.