This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.
…
Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.
I’m sorry, what? “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” or “humble beginnings” or “son of a millworker” or whatever nonsense does not mean “remain mediocre your whole life and get handed the Presidency.” Jackson was a military man. Truman had decades of experience before becoming President. Neither of them winked in a job interview. (Neither of them quit, either.) People love Sarah Palin because until she became McCain’s running mate, she was already a rising star in her own right and a darling of the conservative Christian wing.
I don’t know if Palin herself is to blame for how badly her national debut was mishandled (it’s not like McCain’s team was running an excellent campaign), but the knock on her most certainly wasn’t that she didn’t go to Harvard. Her story is compelling. Everything else wasn’t.
More to the point, the last three Democratic Presidents all fit Douthat’s imagined model. Humble beginnings, check. Working hard using one’s natural gifts, check. Rising to great heights due to a combination of luck and those gifts, check. It’s even true of Reagan.
I realize anti-intellectualism has always run deep in this country, a sort of crazy American blend of believing in education and hard work and the common man who can show up the snob all at the same time. It’s a good crazy, most of the time. But I’m not sure when it became a pillar of contemporary conservative punditry (I won’t say contemporary conservatism, because they send their kids to the Ivies, too, including Douthat) that working hard and succeeding meant that you were suddenly un-American. The Connecticut Yankee wasn’t fancy, but knew what he was talking about.
And you have to wonder if that’s the message they mean to send. Douthat says the message to America from Palin’s experience is “don’t even think about it”, but increasingly the message from the conservative punditry re: Obama, Sotomayor seems to be “don’t succeed.”
The Edge of the American West 
13 comments
July 6, 2009 at 7:24 am
tomemos
Did you miss the part where Douthat says that Obama “represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story”? Douthat is actually contrasting the meritocratic ideal with “the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.” He’s saying that what’s really democratic is succeeding regardless of whether you have merit or not. Brains are so elitist, you see.
July 6, 2009 at 7:36 am
dana
I didn’t miss it. I just don’t think Douthat’s spin makes any sense.
I think it would be a very American thing to celebrate someone who graduated from a state college as being able to stick it to the Ivy league snob (this works better if the Ivies comprise only legacy admits and the state colleges aren’t really, really good research institutions, but whatever. No one said the stories have to reflect reality in 2009.)
But the Hank/Horatio ideal is always one that pits skill, strength, and smarts against someone who turns out to be good only on paper. The democratic ideal is that the person from the humble background can do just as well or better with just their own wits and maybe fists. But the meritocratic and democratic ideals aren’t in tension; Hank has merit.
July 6, 2009 at 7:50 am
ScentOfViolets
Dare I say it? Dogwhistle. Code Words. I know this is well on the way for being used in just about any interaction with Those People, but there you have it.
In this context, I think what’s being communicated is that people who work at a trade or with their hands are Plenty Smart. Just as smart and just as good, in fact, as people who go to a fancy college to get a fancy degree and who work at a fancy job making funny marks on stacks of meaningless papers. In other words, it’s okay to be smart, so long as it as directed at ‘practical’ pursuits – wiring your own house up, working on your car etc. Them’s Heartland Smarts. The people who get degrees in law or medicine or some sort of scientific or humanitarian discipline? Them’s elitist coastal Frenchy smarts. Not to be trusted. I’ve known these people all my life, and yes, they are just that schizo.
July 6, 2009 at 8:18 am
soup biscuit
It’s a good crazy, most of the time.
There is nothing good (crazy or otherwise) about kneejerk anti-intellectualism. In fact I think it’s a significant weakness of this culture. Of course, there is nothing good about putting it on a pedestal, either, but that’s quite a different issue.
July 6, 2009 at 10:40 am
DaKooch
You all make excellent points, but the crux of the issue is, as Douthat states,
“A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans who despise her. A Sarah Palin who resigned in the delusional belief that it would give her a better shot at the presidency in 2012 warrants no such kindness.”
His cynical, “But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it” is a jibe aimed at the “liberal” media and a betrayal of the democratic/populist ideal. In the words of Lyle Lovett,
“I understand too little too late
I realize there are things you say and do
You can never take back
But what would you be if you didn’t even try
You have to try
So after a lot of thought
I’d like to reconsider
Please
If it’s not too late
Make it a cheeseburger”
July 6, 2009 at 12:44 pm
SEK
Penguins are so sensitive.
Penguins are so sensitive.
Penguins are so sensitive…
…to my needs
July 6, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Sir Gnome
Tomemos says, “He’s saying that what’s really democratic is succeeding regardless of whether you have merit or not. Brains are so elitist, you see.”
Dead-on.
However, you guys run a great blog—which begs the question, why are you posting about Palin? Let alone, to address superficial (and purely constructed) divisions between “meritocratic elites” and democratic every-persons, in such a way that you seem only to accept, reinforce, and amplify those very divisions?
The “Palin” dialectic is very simple. She is emblematic of a living, breathing American-West narrative of advance, co-opt, and colonize. Her mode is to pre-empt criticism by shotgunning self-fulfilling accusations of elitism.
Is her narrative inauthentic? Of course! But when did we begin assuming the narrative itself possessed a single boot-strap of authenticity? Surely, it is interesting watching what seems to be her personal psycho-drama that that darn, stubborn *real* narrative just won’t want to fit the projected myth, or not without the linguistic dissonance.
But other than that, of what significance is she, really? Or, as with that last post, how can one split intellectual fibers of quote mis-attribution with an individual whose inherent
anti-intellectualism is her entire political play book? How can the mere mentioning of her name yield anything but the shallow, banal inquiry which makes/made her so effective?
IMO, she is pure narrative, leaving little if any logical grounds for deploying the kinds of analysis reserved for actual professionals.
(For what it’s worth: Fish did a Palin/Sanford piece as confused as Douthat’s.)
July 6, 2009 at 1:01 pm
tomemos
Dana, I completely agree it doesn’t make sense. And I didn’t mean “Did you miss…” to be derisive of your post or a defense of Douthat’s argument. My point is that far from ignoring the Obama/Sotomayor example—someone who through great ability rises up from difficult circumstances—Douthat considers it and explicitly says that he sees a different phenomenon in Palin: someone who rises up from obscurity despite a lack of ability. Which he somehow sees as a good thing.
July 6, 2009 at 1:08 pm
dana
However, you guys run a great blog—which begs the question, why are you posting about Palin?
My rule is that if it’s in the NYT, I’m allowed to post about it. This preserves my ability to mock SEK merciless for reading stupid rightwing blog comments. I’ll do penance with a philosophy post later this week.
I do find the larger what-it-means-to-be-a-cultural-American narrative to be an independently interesting question, but I’m not sure I have much intelligent to say about it.
July 6, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Ben Alpers
Also don’t miss Douthat’s claim that Palin is really very popular even “outside the Republican Party’s shrinking base.” It’s only the elites who disdain Palin, Douthat suggests; the masses love her!
His evidence? A recent Pew poll that shows that 48% of Americans with no college education have a favorable impression of her. That’s some popularity there!
Incidentally, the same poll shows 41% of Americans with a college degree have a favorable impression of her.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the one group that actually has a favorable impression of her are Republicans, 73% of whom like Sarah Palin. My guess is that if you control for party ID, the discrepancy between college educated and non college educated Americans’ views of Palin will shrink significantly.
Douthat’s numbers suggest pretty much the opposite of his argument: what remains of Sarah Palin’s popularity is largely confined to that shrinking Republican base.
July 6, 2009 at 5:22 pm
blueollie
I almost broke off relations with my yoga teacher over Palin. My teacher liked Hillary Clinton and hoped that she would win the nomination (no problem with that).
But then when Obama got the nod, she didn’t know who she was going to vote for and she was a fan of Palin’s! Palin and Clinton couldn’t be more different (imagine Hillary Clinton quitting because things got tough…)
July 6, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Ahistoricality
I got to announce Palin’s resignation at my mother-in-laws’ house, knowing that she and my spouse would have completely opposite reactions (in-laws are Fox-Limbaugh Republicans, but nice folks; we’re feminist progressives, mostly, but nice folks) and we couldn’t actually discuss the news until we were alone…. My mother-in-law was, predictably, disappointed but, for the sake of national unity on the holiday, we left it at that.
July 10, 2009 at 7:03 pm
TF Smith
By definition, a journalist (which is what the soon-to-be-former-governor has a degree in) works at “a fancy job making funny marks on stacks of meaningless papers.”
It is called editing. Even in broadcast, one often edits scripts.
Is Douthat really this shallow? (Much less the Jackson and Truman comment)…
Perhaps the reason print newspaperrs are dying is because the the hire hothouse flowers like Douthat (NYT) and Jonah Goldberg (LAT) and give them a forum to speak out about … nothing that ever makes sense.