Sarah Palin, 2008-2009, a Political Obituary

As she steps down today as governor of Alaska, where is the Mouth That Roared headed? Political obscurity is a possible destination but, based on her 11-month performance since John McCain anointed her, that seems unlikely.

A long-time Alaska Republican operative tells the Washington Post: "As the saying goes, the most dangerous place you can be is between a grizzly sow and her cub. But now I have to change that--it would be between [Palin] and a television camera."

The irony is that, during the campaign, Palin soared on scripted sound bites but was a stealth candidate, never once appearing for questioning on Sunday political talk shows. Now that she has made a mid-life career change from politics to celebrity, she is as available as Ann Coulter, if not quite as brainy.

Yet, while helping bring down McCain's candidacy, Palin rocketed into the hearts of the GOP Hard Right, and it would take more than piddling proof of corruption to dislodge her.

In a well-advised written statement to the Post, the departing Palin insists, "I'm not leaving the governorship because of any particular ethics complaint. Rather, I have explained that the millions of dollars spent by the state and the diversion of resources to address politically inspired records requests, personnel board costs and wasting staff time is unnecessary and harmful to the state.

"I will take the battle nationally and I won't shy away from challenging the powerful, the entrenched, the corrupt and anyone standing in the way of getting our country back on the right track."

Especially when the TV cameras are rolling.

Lincoln-Douglas for the Brain-Damaged

The next weeks will provide evidence that the economy has not hit rock bottom, although the culture may have, when people in New York, Boston and elsewhere pay $50 or more to watch Bill Maher and Ann Coulter debate issues of the day.

To promote these historic events, part of a series titled "Minds That Move the World," Ms. Coulter deigned to give the "treasonous" New York Times an email interview, invoking Aristotle, Winston Churchill and Lincoln-Douglas as models for the encounter.

Closer to the mark would the old CNN freak show "Crossfire" demolished by Jon Stewart two years ago when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala they were partisan hacks who “should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”

On his weekly HBO show recently, Maher has looked lost without George Bush to riff on while Coulter, who reached a high point of loony invective by naming John Edwards a "faggot" and wishing him dead, is fighting a losing battle against Rush Limbaugh for the attention of the addled.

But give them this much: They are stimulating the economy with spending by people who are not likely to be doing anything better with their money.

McCain, the Goldilocks Candidate

Unnerving as the image may be, there is a contorted Three-Bearish quality to the tale of the Republican standard bearer this year.

After the party found Rudy Giuliani too hot and Mitt Romney too cold, Ron Paul too hard and Fred Thompson too soft, they reluctantly decided that John McCain was just right, albeit not far right enough to suit some of the more vocal party animals.

Pappa Bear Rush Limbaugh has been ignoring McCain and diverting himself by getting Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

Momma Bear Ann Coulter is still sulking about McCain sitting in her chair with threats to vote for Hillary in November because "she's more conservative than he is" and "would be stronger on the war on terrorism."

Only Baby Bear Bill Kristol, with the optimism of youth, has warmed up to the GOP Goldilocks, babbling that "Republican hopes of denying Democrats complete control of the federal government for the next couple of years may rest on the promise of 'McCain exceptionalism,'” which could result in "a return to this cold-war model--a strong-on-national-security and supporter-of-middle-American-values Republican presidential candidate prevailing, while at the same time voters choose a Democratic Congress."

As fairy tales go, that may be the most outlandish of all.

3972 Reasons for Nader Not to Run

John Roberts, Samuel Alito and US fatalities in Iraq head the list of what might have been avoided if America's crusader had stayed off the ballot in 2000 and not provided George W. Bush with the margins he needed to win the White House.

Now here he is again, on Meet the Press, puffing away at the importance of third-party candidates in pushing Democrats and Republicans toward ideological purity, pooh-poohing the complaint that he gave us a President who has tilted the Supreme Court away from what Nader's admirers believe and into a war that he and they deplore.

In declaring his candidacy yet again, Nader, who will be 74 this week, is in a dead heat with Ann Coulter for becoming this year's foremost example of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, the compulsive need to preen for TV cameras at any cost.

What they have in common is Hillary Clinton. Coulter claims she would support her rather than John McCain, and Nader would do anything to keep another Clinton out of the White House.

Of the two, Coulter is a more benign case, providing only passing amusement in her quest for attention. Nader is a self-deluded disgrace who might pose an actual danger of electing Bush's anointed successor if it were not for the comforting fact that he drew less than half of one percent of the vote in 2004.

Bush: "I'm Just a Simple President"

George W. Bush certified John McCain as a "true conservative" yesterday.

In emeritus mode on Fox News, the President told Chris Wallace his successor-in-waiting "is very strong on national defense" and "tough fiscally. He believes the tax cuts ought to be permanent. He is pro-life. His principles are sound and solid as far as I'm concerned."

Asked about resistance from the Rush Limbaugh-Ann Coulter wing of the GOP, the President was confident McCain can "convince people that he is a solid conservative and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

In view of Bush's iffy record on the domestic agenda of the Rabid Right, that may not solve McCain's problem, but the Decider is upbeat about the party's prospects for November.

He pooh-poohed Barack Obama's popularity with his customary political acumen and accuracy: "The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."

"Why do you think he's gotten this far if people don't know what he stands for?" Wallace asked.

Bush's answer was on the money. "You're the pundit," he said. "I'm just a simple president."

The Near-Defection of John McCain

George W. Bush and Karl Rove apparently accomplished something the North Vietnamese in five years of captivity could not do--get John McCain to consider switching loyalties.

The story surfaces, just before Super Tuesday, in The Hill today, of McCain's temptation to leave the Republican Party after being savagely smeared by the Bush campaign in the 2000 primaries.

In persuasive detail, it reports the approach of a McCain aide to Congressional Democratic leaders about the possibility of the Arizona Senator emulating Vermont's Jim Jeffords in becoming an Independent and aligning himself with their party.

McCain's disaffection in 2001 was no secret. Fellow Republican Trent Lott criticized him publicly then for keeping "unusual company."

But why does the story surface now? The cui bono is obvious as Mitt Romney tries to persuade Republicans that he is the party's legitimate standard bearer, and Ann Coulter reflects the weird vote by announcing she would back Hillary Clinton before McCain.

There must be déjà vu in all this for the Republican front runner. The rabid Right hated him back then, still does and will stop at nothing to derail him. But Romney, Coulter, Rush Limbaugh et al are no Karl Roves in the art of demonizing those they oppose.

When McCain gets the nomination, rational Republicans and Independents may be drawn to him by what these attacks reveal about his character.

Ann Coulter's Glossolalia

She has been speaking in tongues again. This time Ann Coulter tells a cable TV host of Hebrew origin that it would be better for America if Jews “perfected” themselves and became Christians.

The woman is clearly in the grip of “glossolalia,” defined as “the vocalizing of fluent speech-like but unintelligible utterances, often as part of religious practice.”

Until recently, such behavior was a mystery. But now neuroscientists have taken brain images of women speaking in tongues and found that their frontal lobes--the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do--were relatively quiet. (Spoiler alert: Several of the researchers had Jewish-sounding names.)

In the grip of such religious ecstasy, Coulter can’t be held responsible for what she says, as would a normal person who was just plugging a book on cable TV.

Previously, she had seemed to be a victim of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, a pathological need to be noticed that afflicts politicians and show business people. But Coulter’s self-destructive streak of disinhibited pronouncements suggests something deeper.

Politicians and performers set limits to what they say by the need to be liked. Not Coulter. After calling John Edwards a “faggot” and then being publicly rebuked by his wife, she replied, “If I say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

The Edwards campaign turned Coulter’s attacks into a fund-raising tool, so yet another conspiratorial possibility arises: Is Coulter secretly acting as a Zionist agent to arouse sympathy for American Jews?

In any case, medical attention is needed. Is there an exorcist in the house?

Bragged About Any Good Books Lately?

The news today is that even reading has been politicized. A new poll finds one of every four Americans has not cracked a book in the past year, and that leads to a brouhaha about whether conservatives or liberals are the most avid readers.

Former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, now president of the American Association of Publishers, started it by saying, "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes.' It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."

"Obfuscation,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto shot back, “usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals."

As a spectacularly unsuccessful book publisher for a brief time, I can mediate this with a few words of wisdom: Who knows? People buy books for all kinds of reasons: from self-help advice about diet, money, etc. as promises to themselves to improve their lives, which they may read or skim but just feel better about possessing, to serious works, which may serve the same purpose on an intellectual level.

Conservative blogger Jonah Goldberg today confesses his “dirty little secret: I'm a terrible book nibbler, reading the introductions and then grazing from the tasting menu called the index.”

Figures in the AP poll found that 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book, compared with 34 percent of conservatives. But there are books and books: Ann Coulter and Al Franken do their stand-up routines between hard covers, Rove admits that he and President Bush sometimes cheat in their reading contest by counting murder mysteries, and then there are all the vacuous best sellers that, as Flannery O’Connor once observed, could have been prevented by a good teacher.

In the age of YouTube and blogs, what may be the real news in all this is that the politically persuaded are still so touchy about their intellectual credentials. It would be helpful if they showed some signs of brain activity in what they said and did, instead of arguing about what’s on their night stands and coffee tables.

Liberal, Progressive, Whatever

In the YouTube debate, Hillary Clinton said she would rather be called “progressive” than “liberal.” As usual, her judgment is poll-perfect.

Later in the week, the Rasmussen Reports asked voters and found:

“Just 20% said they consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically liberal while 39% would view that description negatively. However, 35% would consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically progressive. Just 18% react negatively to that term.”

Irving Kristol, father of Bush’s best media friend William, famously described a neo-conservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality,” a snappy definition with a touch of sly racism. In today’s political atmosphere, a progressive might be defined as a liberal who has changed his (or her) name out of ambition.

Until the Ann Coulters of the world worked so hard to make it a synonym for godless and goofy, liberal was a badge of honor for those who valued people over property and, in the last century, helped create Social Security, unemployment insurance, civil rights for minorities and opposed the war in Vietnam on the same principles that they now oppose the war in Iraq.

Even today, the most-educated Americans, including college professors, describe themselves as liberal and (hold the snickering from the cheap seats) so do I.

It’s saddening that Hillary Clinton, as her husband did, feels compelled to change her political name.

The Ecology of Coulter-Edwards

Science defines mutualism, one form of symbiosis, as “an interaction between two or more species, where both derive benefit.” Think bees and flowers.

In putting the relationship of Ann Coulter and John Edwards under the microscope, another example seems more apt: the birds that eat parasites off crocodiles and are in turn protected from predators by their hosts’ giant jaws.

The gnashing of Coulter’s mandibles against him have not only nourished her notoriety (and lecture fees) but served as a fund-raising boon for Edwards.

When she called him a “faggot” in March, his campaign converted it into $300,000 in contributions. This week, when Elizabeth Edwards protested Coulter’s remark about wishing “he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot," the fund-raisers went into high gear and raised more money than from any previous e-mail campaign.

So we have here another instance of Nature’s grand design, in which two victims of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder serve to ease each other’s affliction.

Blonde Bombshelling the News

Cable TV is giving the Fairness Doctrine new meaning this week as Elizabeth Edwards launches a surprise counterattack on Ann Coulter and flaxen-haired Paris Hilton breaks her silence on Larry King tonight.

But these celebrity blondes are only part of the picture, the dark side if you will. The Daily Show, as always, is onto the main story about the platinumming of the news, as Samantha Bee so well and warmly described it not long ago.