It is very seldom indeed that I am surprised—much less pleasantly surprised—by politics today. My stoic acceptance of the sorry state of our federalist system of government has very rarely let me down in predicting the course of political events. Some people call this pessimism. Others call it negativism. I call it the bleak reality of the here and now.
You can imagine my astonishment, then, when as I was recovering from Thursday night’s orgiastic celebration of entitlements I was greeted with the news of McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. I was blown clean out of the water. Now, I was not taken by surprise in quite the same way that many were, because I was already quite familiar with the Iron Lady of the North, and had been loudly touting her merits as a solid Veep choice for months. Never for a minute did I think McCain would actually pick her, though.
And then her “introductory” speech… ahhh… it was just the soothing balm I needed after Progressifest 08. She hit all the right points, with just one unfortunate (yet, I must admit, expedient) reference to the abominable Hillary, and she threw out this beautiful gem to all the true originalist federalists out there:
I signed major ethics reform. And I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere.
…wait for it, here it comes: the money quote…
If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.
Mmmm…. yessssssss!!! That hit the sweet spot. With simple, down-home logic and folksy intonations, she has struck the chord of logic with a clear, ringing tone. Buried somewhere in the morass of today’s politics lie the pure and simple truths on which this nation was founded. With a rather simple turn of phrase, she plucked them out and brushed them off for us to regard and consider.
Why on earth would the Federal government be concerned with building a bridge in some remote corner of Alaska? How could that possibly be a responsibility of the national government? How could a body of representatives of the entire nation possibly have any stewardship over or cognizance of the transportation needs of the people of a remote corner of the nation?
They couldn’t, of course. It was pork. Graft. Payback for some political favor. Sarah Barracuda smelled the bacon cooking and didn’t want any part of it, despite the obvious advantages to the people of Alaska from working a federally (over) funded contract. She had the moral courage to bite the diseased hand that fed her state federal table scraps.
And she had to go up against the powerful Senator Stevens Ted Stevens to do it. (Paging Mr. Biden: You’re not the first geezer Senate-fixture she has taken on. Be afraid.)
While it seemed like a boon at first, she soon woke from the dream. She knew that by accepting the pork, she was further effacing the federal system that gives her state identity, stewardship, and prerogative. Those sweetheart contracts would have put food on some tables in the short term, and would have helped a struggling town grow in the long term, but ultimately would have further eroded her ability to address the needs of her state directly.
Is this not the very antithesis of the culture of entitlements that pervades our government and our nation today? The trend against state responsibility and state identity is a cancer in the body politic. It is eroding the very basis of our hybrid government as it was set down by our Founding Fathers. Even Hamilton would be sickened by the evaporation of local responsibility and accountability. Lost is the idea that local leaders should be accountable to their neighbors—people they know—and that federal leaders should be accountable to those local leaders for not treading on their stewardship.
Buried in dusty volumes of the federalist papers and the writings of polemics at the time of the ratification, you will find now-obscure notions of how this nation was intended to run. It took years of thoughtful study for me to discover how we came to be completely off course. Sarah Palin seems to know it instinctively.
She just might be the best thing to happen to this country in decades. It’s only VP (the most useless job in the nation), but it’s a step in the right direction… and very refreshing.
Fabius Cincinnatus
I’m sure you are aware that her 2006 statements about the bridge, and that they needed to make it happen while they had the right people in Congress, are all over the internet; right?
Why did you write this?
A quick glance at your homepage, 4leslie, gives an easy answer to how you define “all over the internet”. The quality of your sources is readily apparent in your own writings. Go back to the Daily Kos and find a more sympathetic audience for your partisan blathering.
And no, you are not a “bigot”: you are credulous, naïve, and ardent… which is a deadly combination. The fact that you responded to this post within seconds indicates that you are trolling wordpress for anything supportive of Palin with the intent of jumping on it rather than thoughtfully considering it.
Had you the inclination to consider it, you would have read the entire post and would have seen where I acknowledged that she embraced the bridge at first. I don’t expect people to get it right at first blush every time. As a new governor well aware of the challenges faced by the small, isolated town in question, I’m sure the deal seemed like a boon. It’s what she did in the end that matters. Remember, we’re not talking about positions, stances, or even votes here. I’m talking about an action. She stood up to her own party and deep-sixed the whole business… and for the right reasons.
In the future, you might want to consult primary sources before going on the attack. Most of the information you are getting is rehashed from secondary sources, with distortions entering the equation at every step.
Having said all this, please feel welcome to stay a while and browse a bit. Take a break from schilling for your candidate and actually study some different perspectives. Better yet, go visit Library of America and pick up some of the writings of the Founders. You may find the exercise a bit more challenging than The Audacity of Hope (the title says it all, really…), but I’d be willing to bet you might learn something too.
Fabius Cincinnatus