Sarah Palin: The Morning After
It’s absolutely amazing to read how many people want to denigrate Sarah Palin’s performance last night by noting that she didn’t write her speech. Anyone who says this must be terribly, terribly ignorant of the last several decades of political speech making. We’ve not had one nominee of a political party who didn’t employ speech writers for at least two generations.
Speech writer Jon Favreau writes Barack Obama’s speeches, including that famous speech on race that many people found so inspiring. Joe Biden has writers. John McCain has writers. Every major presidential hopeful, with the exception of Pat Buchanan, has used speech writers.
Feel free to decry the rise of professionally written speeches if you like. Bemoan the ubiquitous use of teleprompters. Note that charisma, charm and oratory are not necessarily indicators of competence and wisdom. You’ll be in good company on this. Read Plato’s Gorgias for some early arguments along these lins.
But raising these points only in relation to Palin smacks of pretext. When you’re grasping for a way to insult the woman for doing something that everyone else does, you are implicitly admitting that this isn’t what bothers you at all. It’s simply a convenient way to attack her without getting explicit about what really bothers you.
I’ll note that it’s politically unwise for those who aren’t looking forward to a John McCain presidency to resort to pretextual attacks on the process that produced last night. It looks petty and deceptive. In the end it will only help the McCain-Palin ticket.
Barack Obama’s supporters may want to re-evaluate the strategy of attacking Palin for being an inexperienced politician who gives great speeches. This was, of course, a line of attack used by Obama’s Democratic and Republican opponents with very little political effect. It’s even less likely to work when employed by Obamaniacs. When you support a great orator with minimal political experience, attacking your opponent as a great orator with minimal political experience is ill-advised.
