Party Privileges
The basic point here, I think, is that racism allows white people to be mediocre. ~Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates is referring to this article, which makes the case that white privilege explains why the records and qualifications of Palin and Obama are treated differently. This strikes me as quite exaggerated, since by and large it is not white people as such who are flacking for Palin as a qualified candidate, nor is it even all conservatives who are doing this, but it is principally partisan hacks who are deeply invested in making a bad VP selection look better than it is. This may be entirely obvious, but the difference in treatment comes mainly from Republicans who are intent on Obama’s defeat and McCain and Palin’s victory, which makes this a more straightforward case of absurd partisan opportunism.
Were Palin still white but a Democrat, well, look at how Palin supporters view Hillary Clinton and you can just imagine the response. Were Palin not white but a still a Republican, the mainstream conservative praise for her limited record would be, I submit, even more over-the-top as a result of combining the Republican tendency probably to overpraise prominent minorities and women who agree with them and a willingness to cut these allies more slack. Taking nothing away from him, the boosting of Bobby Jindal for VP by a number of prominent Republicans was a good example of what I mean. Jindal’s resume is not that different from Palin’s, though he has more experience in the federal government, and while you could argue that Jindal has a better grasp on policy he would still not be qualified to take over as President. If McCain had chosen Jindal instead we would be seeing pretty much the same strained rationalizations and excuse-making that we are seeing now, because the main issue is not whether Palin or Obama is really qualified, but it is instead simply the party affiliation of each that governs how they are treated.
What I would agree with is the notion that the far-right neocon GOP has much lower standards than anyone else. Obama might be given a break by liberals because he’s a liberal, but he’s miles more substantive a figure than Palin. Liberals simply don’t have the nerve to support a corresponding liberal figure who is as substance-free as Palin. Clarence Thomas is another example of the right-wing GOP rallying behind a figure of little substance, regardless of his race, as long as he is perceived to be the vehicle of their policies and thinking. Liberals simply would not nominate a correspondingly weak candidate.
We shouldn’t forget Bush himself, who during his 2000 campaign was revealed to be almost as shallow as Palin, but this did not stop the GOP from rallying around him.
It’s certainly true that every political movement has a tendency to be more forgiving of its own than of others, but there’s something downright creepy about the GOP’s incredilby lax standards for basic competence once ideological standards have been met.
You know, after the irrational exuberance of GOP partisans about Palin, and the vehement, substanceless, repeated invocation of her “small-town values,” I was inclined to say that there’s nothing left to the GOP but appeals to white identity.
But I find it very difficult to contest your point that if Palin were a minority, we’d see more or less the same thing from mainstream conservatives.
I think it’s arguable that the grass roots would be less enthused than they are about Palin, but that’s pretty hard to prove.
I tend to disagree that “[I]f McCain had chosen Jindal instead we would be seeing pretty much the same strained rationalizations and excuse-making that we are seeing now”.
I think the Jindal counterfactual is telling in a couple of ways, but first, some premises:
a) Agreed on the hardcore GOP apparatchiks following the line of the day, whatever the line might be. Case in point, Harriet Miers. The neocons via their Trotskyite lineage did study the CPUSA of 1939-1941, after all :}.
b) I agree with your previous (pre-palinomania) posting (I forget exactly when) that McCain would have done Jindal (and the broader socon movement/tendency) no favor by picking him for 2008 (maybe VP in 2012? or keynote at the 2012 RNC, assuming Obama wins?).
c) I don’t agree that “Jindal’s resume is not that different from Palin’s”. Governing LA is qualitatively different from, and IMHO rather more difficult than, governing AK. Though the Russians aren’t as threateningly close. Also, 1.5 terms as a Congressman counts for something. Not to mention graduating with honors from a fairly elite university and being a Rhodes Scholar (both of which would, presumably, be large marks against him).
The attacks from the left (and for that matter, from the emotivist-populist right) would be very, very different than they have been with Palin – I strongly suspect the attacks from the left would have been almost entirely policy-based, along with some attacks on his religion (e.g. the exorcism story). But I can’t see the culture war stuff playing out the same.
n.b. I’m not a Jindal fan because I disagree with him on policy. But I think he’s a fairly impressive candiate.
c) I agree also with your counter to Alex Massie of Pawlenty being a fairly serious version of who/what Palin allegedly is.
But if you really think Jindal would get remotely the same level of support as Palin, you are either smoking something or are being optimistic, no offense intended (BTW, I bought Dienstag’s book on your recommendation – many thanks, I’d never have heard of it otherwise). People like J.C. Watts and Alan Keyes were feted because they were marginal in the power structure (Clarence Thomas is a special case to some degree – his race allowed him to be confirmed, but I agree that his substantive performance on the Court would generally get praise from the apparatus in a genuinely colorblind way). McCain’s VP is both symbolically and potentially in reality (Tyler, anybody?) much closer to the power center.
Palin’s gender and sex appeal (e.g. Wilkerson’s truly bizarre post) are a big part of the furor, which would not be there if she were not white (that is, a non-white Palin would still be female, but the valence of the gender would be totally different, and probably net negative).
Further, even though Jindal has lived his whole life other than grad school in the US, he’d still be, forgive me, Other – not a Real American. An excellent tactical reason for McCain not to have picked him – Jindal would have substantial diluted the tribal appeal, for all that he would be an infinitely better VP or President.
Elvis,
Might we be seeing the Republicans devolving into more of a Christianist identity party than a purely ethnic one? Granted I do feel there’s a racial component here, even a racist one (we’ll eagerly await the Willie Hortonization of Barack Obama as November approaches). But even Pat Buchanan’s candidacies in the 1990s attracted a non-trivial amount of support from Blacks over social issues, such as anti-gay rhetoric. Remember the “cultural and religious war� Even in my relatively liberal part of the country (Pacific NW), there are anti-gay alliances between working class Blacks and Slavs. I imagine Buchanan might have gotten working class Latinos on board if it hadn’t been for the anti-immigrant angle.
It’s still creepy to me, this kind of abandonment of traditional Republican meritocracy in favor of a crude identity politics that’s un-American and redolent of the sort of ethnic nationalism we see all over the “old worldâ€. But it may not be strictly racial identity and prejudices that are at hand.
Examine what the GOP response would be to a Condi Rice nomination. Utterly lukewarm compared to Palin. As others point out, the tribal/doctrinal thing is what matters most. Condi certainly has experience, competence, and ovaries, but not what really matters in the GOP, which is the ability to be “identified” with. The GOP is commited to passion play politics, and creating evil enemies out of the “jews” in this and every election we’ve had for the last 20 years. McCain is God the Father, Palin is the Virgin Mary, and Trig is the immaculate conception passed around to the wonderment of the crowds. Obama is of course the evil cosmopolitan Jew-Pharisee who is too educated to recognize the God in our midst. So casting is very important, and Bobby Jindal and Condi have no real place in the play except as supporting members of the crowd.
“Governing LA is qualitatively different from, and IMHO rather more difficult than, governing AK.”
Point taken. I will also admit Palin has an appeal to women (and Lara Croft-loving nerds) that Jindal could not have had. However, we have to keep in mind that he is a conservative Catholic convert who would have excited social conservatives for many of the same reasons. Do not underestimate the Republican impulse to celebrate the “good son of immigrants” success story. Consider all the white Republicans who were oohing and aahing about Obama earlier in the year in spite of his politics–there were a lot of them–don’t underestimate the enthusiasm that would greet the elevation of a minority candidate who agrees with them on policy, which offers the trifecta, in their view, of 1) proving they are not racist; 2) proving that America is the best; 3) providing a key example of assimilationist success.
The response to Rice would have been much more lukewarm because, unless I am mistaken, I think she is pro-choice, or so ambiguous in her views on this that it would not translate into any enthusiasm there. She is unmarried and has no children, which would also make it a lot harder to use her as the poster woman for working mothers as has been done with Palin. Her bouts of realism in the last few years would make her anathema to the more aggressive militarists, while her gross incompetence in earlier years as NSA and her ties to Bush would make her radioactive to many others. She is also a consummate insider and was (gasp!) an academic. But even given all of what would have been liabilities with the GOP, her name was still floated quite often for VP (when it wasn’t being floated a few years ago for President) and she remained strangely popular with Republican voters all along.
Er, you do know that “immaculate conception” refers to the Catholic understanding of the Theotokos, don’t you? Obama is a “Jew-Pharisee” of the story? Tell it to the RJC!
In comparison to Condi Rice, whatever else one says about Sarah Palin, she’s a talented campaigner. Condi has enough self-knowledge to have squelched any chatter about a campaign for elective office.
I still disagree (but in an agreeable way). Your point about the trifecta is a good one. However, I think you underestimate the degree to which Palin’s popularity is simply based on the fact that she enrages the dread liberal elite and triggers their worst sneering, which Jindal would not have done (nor would Pawlenty, I think, his evangelical ties notwithstanding).
I know, the plural of anecdote is data, but still: most of my social contacts are more or less conventional upper middle urban-suburban left-liberal (I cherish the delusion that I’m an unconventional left-lib), with whom I try to avoid talking politics. A depressingly large fraction of the initial responses to Palin that I heard involved utter trivialities, like her children’s names, that had no meaning outside of identity politics (understandable since Palin’s pick was IMHO pure identity politics, but depressing nontheless that my social contacts for the most part responded in the identitarian way). In notable contrast, I have never heard a bad word about e.g. Huckabee in the identitarian vein, just “I don’t agree with his views, but I think he’s a good/likable/serious/capable guy”. Similarly Brownback for those who knew who he was.
The very fact that Jindal’s biography and seriousness (and, dare I say it, eliteness) insulate him from a lot of identitarian attacks from the left make him much less useful as a figurehead.
Pacific moderate wrote, Might we be seeing the Republicans devolving into more of a Christianist identity party than a purely ethnic one?
Well, it’s not explicitly ethnic, sure, and they’re pleased to have Armstrong Williams or Bobby Jindal or Clarence Thomas along for the ride.
But “small town values,” which has zero policy content except maybe opposition to gay marriage, being such a rallying cry… I can’t imagine that a convention hall full of white people cheering that phrase brings too many minorities on board.
Even sending George Allen to minority-outreach rallies might not be enough to change things.
All reasonable people can agree that Sarah Palin is another tragic instance of the terrible harm wrought by the soft bigotry of low expectations. There’s room for debate as to what percentage of that bigotry flows from ethnic chauvinism, and how much is attributable to religious chauvinism. In the Venn diagram, it all can fit within “tribalism,” though, with scarcely any overlap with “principled belief.”
I should say, the fact that a policy or ideology receives the bulk of its support from whites, or blacks, or Asians, or whoever doesn’t necessarily say anything about the desirability of that policy. But by not merely tolerating the pig in a poke that is Sarah Palin, but rallying around her despite her deficit-running, welfare-queen, crony-friendly history, merely because she “seems like one of us,” with no possible policy rationale whatsoever except for being pro-life… it seems rather like celebration of whiteness is the implicit message.
It’s still creepy to me, this kind of abandonment of traditional Republican meritocracy in favor of a crude identity politics
Creepy is the word. I mean, every democratic society needs conservatives. And this country has about a dozen of them, and a party whose former conservatism has collapsed into substanceless nationalism. It was bad enough in 2000, when we had a pretty good, if slowing, economy, a budget surplus, and the good will of most of the rest of the world. But now… It’s just chilling.