More From My Email In-Box

The following is a response to a friend who was very politely and kindly incredulous that a sophisticated policy wonk such as myself could find any redeeming qualities in Sarah Palin.

A couple thoughts on Sarah Palin. First, while I know a fair amount about politics and policy, my decision making process for choosing candidates is really pretty simple. I try to practice strategic voting in supporting candidates that align with those issues that I have the strongest views on: life and family issues, national security, and poverty, in that order. It isn't that Senator Obama wouldn't have checked any the boxes but he is, in my view, so radical on the first and so lacking in experience in the second, that my sympathies with him on the third just didn't and couldn't balance them out. On the other hand, I felt very comfortable with both McCain and Palin on the first two, and I think both were educable on the third. I don't think she was qualified to be president but I wasn't expecting McCain to die in office (frankly, I think he's so irrascible he will probably outlive me) and even if he had, I would have felt the country was in good enough hands with a woman of Palin's intelligence (she's very smart, you know) and grounding. It is hard being president but people tend to grow into the office quickly when they have to.

This may sound a bit "off-hand" to you, boiling decisions down to so few issues and such basic considerations. My attitudes on this grow out of long exposure to the policy process. On most issues, I would be able to generate a stack of reports of equal height and persuasiveness on both sides of any given issue. I'm not impressed with encyclopedic knowledge of issues; often that much information is a hindrence and, honestly, just about anyone of average intelligence can master that kind of work. (I know this because I'm a person of average intelligence and I've done just fine in Washington.) The most important thing in politics boils down to philosophy and prudential judgment: where does a policy issue fit within the broader philosophical frame that you make decisions by? Since I won't be able to influence many (if any) decisions a president makes, I have to make the most of my ballot and that means voting for the candidates who best reflect my own views and what I'd like to see done. Viewed through that lens, I'm entirely happy with having backed John McCain AND Sarah Palin.

The biggest mystery to me about the whole Sarah Palin kerfuffle is how much socioeconomic class seems to explain reactions to her. People who come from the working-class people (me, Mrs. Potomac, others) or are part of the working class themselves instantly recognize her as someone like them. She understands what average people with maybe a high school diploma or two-year degree (that is, about half of America) think and value: family, community, security and common sense. Like me, she seems to know that it would be far better to be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard (William F. Buckley's line) because those elites are so often divorced from reality and captive to utopian philosophies. The community organizer line was a cheap and unnecessary shot but it was driving at an important point: people who work for a living, take care of their families, serve on the PTA or with their Cub Scout troops, or are small-town mayors are the real community organizers not the social services professionals who make their living from the welfare system.

By contrast, I found that college educated people - and especially women with degrees - were driven around the bend by Sarah Palin. In her obvious religiosity, her five (!) children, her insistence that she would carry a Down child to term, her support for her pregnant teenage daughter's decision not to abort her child, and the ease with which she embraced her femininity and her career, she was in a way a living repudiation of the model that feminists have developed over the past 40 years or so. The result was a kind of rage that I didn't know existed among normally very kind and decent people. I think those are the kinds of attitudes that really drive voting behavior not the careful weighing of whether a 15% subsidy for health care is better than an 18% subsidy or vice-versa.