Today, as I was reading the Wall Street Journal, I came across this column of Peggy Noonan’s. I was annoyed with her trashing of Sarah Palin during the campaign, and now this.
The difficulty of Caroline Kennedy’s hopes for appointment to the U.S. Senate is that she was in, or put herself in, a position demanding of more finesse and sophistication than most political veterans have. To succeed as a candidate for appointment, she needed the talents of an extremely gifted natural, which she’s not. She is an intelligent woman who has comported herself with dignity through a quarter-century of private life in Manhattan. She would never steal your money, indulge in dark political dealing, or growl, like Blago, into a tapped line, “I’ve got this blankin’ thing and it’s golden,” though let’s face it, it’s a little sad we’ll never hear that.
We know someone who is a natural, though. Don’t we ? She, of course, is not a member of the New York elite. She arrived at her present level in politics with no help from the cognoscenti like Noonan. She went to five or six colleges and she has worked on a fishing boat. She got started in politics by running for the school board in her town.
The movie Dave has always been a favorite of mine although it is marred by the usual Hollywood left wing ideas about policy. The character of the vice-president, played by Ben Kingsley, is asked by Dave, who is an imposter playing the role of the real president who is in a coma, how he began in politics. The vice-president tells him (Kevin Kline plays Dave) that he was a shoe salesman who complained about politics until his wife convinced him to run for the city council. From that first election, he rose to be vice-president.
In fact, that is a fairy story. Almost all major politicians, especially Democrats, get started by working in politics all their lives, usually as staffers until a seat opens up. Then they run with the help of the usual machine and usually get elected unless another ex-staffer with better support and more money defeats them.
This year, we actually had a real candidate for vice-president who embodied the supposed ideal of Hollywood. What was their response? You know what it was.
Noonan drones on:
But life is complicated. If you’re going to run as the princess of a dynasty, you have to act and be like a princess—something different, rarefied, heightened. Her problem in part has been that she spent a quarter-century trying to blend in and not call attention to herself. She made herself convincingly average—not distinguished. She has her parents’ dignity but not their dash. She radiates a certain clueless class.
A clueless class certainly describes the Caroline I’ve seen on TV. What else can we do ?
People who’ve seen politics up close when young tend to be embarrassed to be in politics. This is because they have seen too much of the show-biz aspects, the balloons and smiles and rallies. They are rarely (and this is odd) tutored in the meaning behind the artifice: that the artifice exists for a purpose, and the purpose is to advance a candidate who will advance a constructive philosophy. And so they find the idea of coming up with a philosophy sort of show-offy, off point and insincere.
This is one reason modern political dynasties tend to have a deleterious effect on our politics. When you get new people in the process who think politics is about meaning, they tend to bring the meaning with them. On the other hand, those who’ve learned that politics is about small and shallow things, and the romance of dynasties, bring that with them. (They also bring old retainers, sycophants and ingrained money lines, none of which help the common weal.) Those who are just born into it and just want to continue it, bring a certain ambivalence. And signal it. They’re always slouching toward victory. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t do any great good, either.
So this year, Noonan had a chance to do something about the problem she describes above. She had a real natural who was interested in the politics of meaning and who had come up through hard work and real meaning. What did Noonan do ?
In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.
There is more but it has nothing to do with Ms Noonan’s complaints about the trivialization of policy in present day politics and everything to do with Manhattan social class distinctions. It is sad to see someone decline from wisdom to irrelevance.
???
Look at this interview and compare it to Caroline Kennedy.