Riffing off that. It\u2019s 2015 and John McCain\u2019s still ticking, so maybe stop breathlessly giving him shit for presuming to put Sarah Palin in line for the presidency. (Admittedly, I wouldn\u2019t put it past a President McCain to fly out to the sandbox for some \u201cleading from the front\u201d stunt and step on a landmine.)
Which, I don\u2019t think she\u2019d\u2019ve been a good president. She\u2019d certainly\u2019ve been an interesting president. Some days I suspect Obama\u2019s legacy will mirror the 19th century Whigs: \u201che did what he could to keep the civil war from starting on his watch\u201d. I can\u2019t see that as a Palin legacy.
I stand by my assessment of 2 years ago, she\u2019s the platonic, um, dysideal of a politician - \u201call the bloviation, narcissism, and lack of expertise at anything beyond self-promotion that implies\u201d. Also, from a party that likes to give Obama shit for using a teleprompter, she\u2019s an honest-to-god news hairdo who left to her own devices tends to start one sentence and finish another.
But the thing is the Vice Presidency is more than just the Presidency-in-waiting, it\u2019s also been shoehorned into filling the role that the monarch or President does in European parliamentary systems - a ceremonial embodiment of the nation. The Veep flies out to show the colors at state funerals, for example, leaving the President free to do things that actually matter.
And fucking try to tell me there\u2019s a better embodiment of Republican-brand America than Sarah Palin. She would be the best since Agnew. The best.
Reagan ran as an embodiment, and governed as one too - hold a press appearance so charming that the media would write him a blank check, then send David Stockman over to Capitol Hill to cash it.
Candidate Obama ran as an embodiment - that was basically his \u201908 platform, really. But President Obama hasn\u2019t (couldn\u2019t?). A really, really fascinating phenomenon was how the longing for an embodiment got displaced onto Joe Biden. Not actual Joe Biden, Delaware-based Amtrak enthusiast, but The Onion\u2019s fictional Joe Biden, the beer-drinking, poontang-chasing Outlaw Democrat.
Because that\u2019s an embodiment (kind of stealing Bill Clinton\u2019s \u201cBubba\u201d mojo tbh) that The Onion\u2019s readership can love, because that\u2019s one they can see themselves in - white working class, but, like, classic rock white working class, not country white working class. Which is kind of the Hulk Hogan flavor of Republican, isn\u2019t it?
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