Sarah Palin and the media: a love story

“But if Palin isn’t important, she’s at least profitable. Liberal sites need traffic just like conservative sites, and the mainstream media needs traffic more than both. And Palin draws traffic. This is actually pretty good revenge for a politician who hates the media. The press had a good time showing Palin to be a superficial creature who relied more on style than on substance, and in getting the media to drop everything and focus on her book tour, she’s proving that they’re much the same.” ~ Ezra Klein

Truer words were never spoken.

It is funny, though. There is some sort of gravitational pull that those of us who write about these things feel toward Palin, maybe because she’s simply so surprising. Everything she does is so counterintuitive. No other politician is quite like her, and yet she’s somehow the archetypal politician: the quintessential power-hungry, spot-lighting, empty vessel.

As with any other empty vessel, those in the halls and alleyways of power, and those in the media want to fill her with everything they hope or fear or wish to ridicule or wish to defend. But unlike that other great empty suit, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin evokes something more profound in us. This is not to say that anything Palin has done or said has been profound. She comes across as almost entirely superficial, a person of reactions, not ideas, of myth rather than substance. And yet we are, inexplicably, drawn to her in a way that someone like Romney could never achieve.

I think it’s a combination of her odd charisma and her stunning ineptitude. The paradox is poignant, as is the delusion – not just of Sarah Palin but of those who still think she’s somehow the great hope for the Republican Party.

Which says a lot about the Republican Party. If I had my way we’d be quietly working toward nominating Jon Huntsman (though that would (A) not go over well with the conservative base at the moment and (B) would be pretty difficult given his new job). The face of the Party in Congress wouldn’t be John Boehner, it would be Jeff Flake or Paul Ryan. Or Ron Paul for goodness sakes. At least he understands the foolishness of our foreign policy, and the unsustainability of our meddling overseas.  Palin, alas, does not.

But instead, the Republican Party is still the Party of Michael Steele and Sarah Palin, and so we keep talking about them, trying to understand them or just trying to be in on the joke. We’d probably talk a lot more about Michael Moore if he were a viable presidential candidate.

At the end of the day, this is politics. Her best weapon is the same thing that draws so much attention and so much criticism: that is, nobody really knows who Sarah Palin is or what she stands for, which makes it way too easy for us to project our hopes and fears onto her, whether or not she’s deserving of either.  It’s a love-hate thing.  Or something like it.

(Image via Daylife)