Smartest Conservative of the Day: David Brooks (for being against conservative anti-Olympic fever)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For saying this about Obama's efforts to bring the Olympics to Chicago on Meet the Press yesterday:

I have to say, I’m with Obama on this. He took a risk, he comes away somewhat humiliated, but he took a risk for his town, he took a risk for his country, he put his country ahead of his own personal prestige, and he lost one. I actually don't mind it. I think he was all right on this.

I object to Brooks's suggestion that Obama "comes away somewhat humiliated" -- he tried and the effort failed, but not necessarily because of him, and there is no humiliation in losing when the Olympics are concerned (more on this below) -- but, overall, I praise Brooks for coming out in opposition on this issue to so many of his fellow conservatives, including his former Weekly Standard colleagues Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. (He even agreed, more or less, with fellow MTP panelist Rachel Maddow, who said this: "For them to be cheering America's loss here on the right, I think is sort of disgusting." Because, as she rightly pointed out, other world leaders, including Blair and Putin, have campaigned for the Olympics. This time, "all four finalists sent their head of government or head of state to make the argument.")

Kristol, on Fox News yesterday, accused Obama of bullying the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and he was "amused" by his failure, but of course Obama did no such thing. At The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, where he and Kristol are editors, Barnes pointed to "Obama's embarrassing failure in Copenhagen":

[W]hen an American president voluntarily takes up a fight and loses badly, it's a big deal. Obama could have stayed out. Having the summer Olympics in Chicago doesn't involve the national interest. But he thought the matter important enough to fly to Denmark and make the pitch for his hometown in person. He put his prestige on the line, only to be slapped down.

This is also ridiculous. Obama didn't lose badly. Chicago's bid lost out to Rio de Janeiro's. It would be one thing if Obama had gone to the U.N. and, say, been refused support on a key matter. In this case, he just did what so many other world leaders have done, and do, and only one city, only one big, can win at a time. Did the Chicago bid "involve the national interest"? Maybe not, strictly speaking, but what it against the national interest? No, not at all. There have been financial disasters in Olympic history, like Montreal '76 (my hometown, originally), but for the most part having the Olympics is a matter of national pride, an opportunity for the home city, and country, to showcase its best while the world is watching. (We Canadians are certainly excited about the upcoming Winter Games in Vancouver.) Besides, it's not always about financial gain -- though, in the long run, it may well be that having the Olympics is a fantastic investment in a city's, and country's, future.

Getting back to Barnes, it is simply not true that Obama was "slapped down." He supported Chicago's bid, but the vote in Copenhagen wasn't a referendum on Obama. Furthermore, given the IOC's reputation for, and long history of, corruption and insider politics, is there anything wrong with losing such a vote? As much as a city, as well as a country, may want the Olympics, the IOC has its own priorities, and winning has to do with trade-offs and quid pro quos among IOC members at least as much as it does with the actual merits of a bid. Toronto, for example, lost out on the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing. Was that an embarrassment for Toronto, a great loss for Canada. Were we "slapped down"? No. Beijing won because the IOC wanted the Games to be in China, a huge market. Forget that Toronto is an open, diverse, cosmopolitan city. Forget that China is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. The IOC got what it wanted, and China got its reward. So it's a bit rich and rather disingenuous for these conservatives to be suggesting that an IOC vote is somehow a significant indicator of world opinion -- and that Chicago's loss was Obama's great embarrassment.

Steve Benen (quoting Paul Krugman) is right: "[A]s a political matter, in light of [the] right-wing ecstasy over Chicago not getting the Olympics, Paul Krugman concluded, 'Middle-aged adolescents -- dumb middle-aged adolescents -- rule one of our nation's two great political parties.' Sad, but true."

If there's anything embarrassing, and utterly repellent, it's the right-wing "glee," as Benen put it, over America's failure to win the 2016 Summer Games. Clearly, among conservatives, with one or two exceptions, party and ideology come before country. And they dare call themselves patriots?

What the world needs now is not more Sarah Palin; or, how her right-wing admirers are falling all over themselves trying to love her up

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Whether we like it or not, we're being bombarded with all things Sarah Palin, more so now pre-resignation than at any time since last year's campaign. And, honestly, it was driving me nuts over the weekend.

But the right loves her, and continues not just to apologize for her, not just to cheerlead for her, but to pump her up out of all justifiable proportion. Which is fine, when you think about it, because the simple fact is, she's not -- and is not close to being -- a credible national political figure. And that's putting it nicely. I'd say she's a joke, an appalling caricature of phony, mock-outraged populism, a caricature of herself, actually, though I'm not sure the caricature is any different than the real thing, so entwined is she with her own manufactured persona.

Whatever.

Let's take a look at what a few conservatives have said about her in recent days:

1) Ross Douthat -- One of the more thoughtful conservatives around, to be sure, with a perch at the NYT, one of the key media organizations of the coastal elite that Palin claims to loathe, and against which she directs much of her silly resentment. I was going to comment earlier on his ridiculous juxtaposition of "Palin and Her Enemies," but I don't have much to add to Mustang Bobby's terrific post from yesterday afternoon.

While Douthat is certainly right that Palin has "tarnished" her own "ideal," and that she remains popular, "beloved by millions," it is ridiculous to suggest, as Douthat does, that Palin represents "the democratic ideal" -- in contrast to Obama, who supposedly represents "the meritocratic ideal" -- simply because she has shown "that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard." I had no idea that going to an Ivy makes you somehow un-democratic, but this is the sort of populism that Palin spins, the sort that her story, and her political celebrity, has inspired on the right, including among elitist coastal newspaper columnists who are hardly Heartland material.

As Mustang Bobby puts it, Palin's problems were her own fault, not the media's, not the political commentariat's, not liberals' or Democrats'. Douthat claims that the attacks on Palin "had everything to do with Palin's gender and her social class." No, they had everything to do with Palin herself. And they weren't attacks, they were justifiable criticisms of a self-absorbed dimwit who was in way over her head but who nonetheless managed to arouse the GOP mob.

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2) Fred Barnes -- Kristol's pal at TWS and an unabashed partisan (and Palin booster). For Barnes, who can't seem to keep it in his pants, Palin is "the most exciting Republican figure to emerge in decades." But, alas. While she has "a super-abundance of charisma," she also has "shortcomings in experience and knowledge" -- which is just another way of saying she has a nice personality, but...

And so Barnes, after tracing the history of Republican presidential nominees since WWII, looks ahead, a long, long way ahead: "By itself, two months on the Republican ticket won't propel her to the presidential nomination. But there is a way: win Alaska's lone House seat in 2012 and oust Democratic senator Mark Begich in 2014. A term in the House and another in the Senate -- nothing would do more to groom her for the White House than this and transform her into the best Republican candidate for the presidency in, say, 2020, when she'd be 56."

Woo-hoo! Palin 2020!

Actually, it's not so unreasonable, given that Palin has a much brighter future in Alaska than nationally, and she may just be able to do what Barnes suggests. But her bright future has dimmed even in Alaska, and I wonder if her career path to 2020 is as clear as this. Obviously, we shall see. What I do think is that we haven't heard the last of Palin the politician.

But back to Barnes. Despite the fact that Palin has glaring "shortcomings" and "limitations," he still things she was a brilliant veep pick for McCain. He even claims she won the debate with Biden, which is insane. He apparently was watching a different debate than the rest of us, perhaps one firing off in the recesses of his imagination. And he claims that "she could have taken Joe Biden apart while demonstrating her own knowledge and brainpower had she known more about national issues," which is also insane. The fact is, she didn't have any knowledge or brainpower to demonstrate, and she didn't know anything about national issues beyond the facile talking points that had been fed to her. Her "personality and likeability" in that debate just came across as smarmy arrogance. And yet Barnes still wanted her to be, as they say, a heartbeat away from the presidency? How irresponsible is that?

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3) Jim Prevor -- Also at TWS, Prevor puts even Barnes to shame with respect to Palin-boosting, as there is apparently no end to what Palin can accomplish if she just puts her mind to it:

Will she write a thoughtful book? Become a syndicated columnist whose ideas make her a "must read" for everyone? Will she found an important new think tank? An important journal? Spearhead an effort to help the unemployed? Decide to launch a business? Or maybe she will start a new political party?

*****

Maybe Sarah Palin thinks she can change the world without becoming president. Maybe she is deeply and authentically conservative and isn't certain that aiming to change the world is such a good idea.

Maybe plumes of white smoke will herald her election from atop the Vatican.

Maybe she'll win back-to-back Nobels, if not for literature, maybe for peace and chemistry, or for whatever areas she wishes to tackle upon her return to private life.

Maybe she'll hit .400.

Who knows? Who can say?

As TNR's Chris Orr notes, it's rather curious that Prevor put quotation marks around "must read." Are we to take it that Prevor is being ironic, that there's no way Palin would ever be a legitimate "must read"? No, surely not, but I think Chris is quite right that the passage reads better if you put quotation marks around "thoughtful," "ideas," "important" (twice), "effort," and "business" as well. I'm quoting more than Chris here, so I'd also put them around "change the world" and "deeply and authentically conservative."

Seriously, though, does anyone other than her mindless admirers at TWS actually think that Palin might found a think tank or journal, or "help the unemployed"?

I've had enough of Sarah Palin, yes, but thankfully her fan club keeps me entertained with its stupidity. At a time like this, we can at least be thankful for that.

So much Palin, so little time

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been meaning to comment for a few days now on Sarah Palin's recent reemergence in the news, specifically on that huge, meandering, and only vaguely satisfying Todd Purdum piece in Vanity Fair, on all the Republican infighting (specifically the Kristol-Schmidt squabble and Schmidt's role in the Todd-Palin-AIP issue back during the campaign -- Palin comes out of it, as you might expect, looking like a self-absorbed moron), and on the still-ongoing Palin '12 hype (with conservatives still circling the wagon), but I'll leave it here to the usually nonsensical Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News, to serve up some common sense, and, yes, I realize that I rarely have any praise for C-Kraut, but when credit's due, credit's due. Here you go:



Contrast Krauthammer's common sense, as his usual partisan self, with Fred Barnes's Kristol-like nonsense (the two Weekly Standard-bearers are nothing if not enamored with Palin to the point of mental breakdown. Let me just be clear, though, that I do not think that the criticism (or "attacks") on Palin were or have been unfair. Given what an ignorant twit and arrogant thug she has been all along, how she handled herself during the campaign and how she has handled herself since, she has brought the negativity upon herself. If anyone deserves all the ridicule, it's Sarah Palin.