The Dadaist Phase of American Politics

"Marcel Duchamp was born in in the Haute-Normandie Region of France, and grew up in a family that liked cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, painted and made music together." Wikipedia entry for Marcel Duchamp, innovative French artist and thinker.

I'm sure that sounds nothing like most American families you know. Our families like to snow mobile, watch the NFL, eat fast food, and as for music, it's mainly one of the parents yelling at the teenage daughter to turn the gangsta rap down. That's okay. Sometimes I'm pretty sure I was not only born in the wrong country, but in the wrong century as well. But as to Sarah Palin - you won't find me denigrating her family background or going on and on about her teen daughter's pregnancy or her husband's (then boyfriend) DUI arrest 22 years ago. That's ridiculous. What's the point? Her story is a fairly typical American story, except that Sarah herself is one of those preternaturally pushy and striving people who understand that in American public life, leadership is always there for the taking if you just go after it. The low quality of our political class, I've always thought, owes more to its abandonment by people of higher skills and intellect than it does to some intrinsic quality of politics itself. I watched Barbara Boxer, working the other side of the political aisle, accomplish the same sort of thing in California, a much bigger fish pond than Alaska. Barbara was a stock broker, then a Marin County Supervisor, then a U.S. Representative, then a Senator. When I watch her on C-SPAN, at a committee hearing, I'm always astounded at how ineffective she is. She stands for a lot of the right things, in my book, but she fumbles and flails to no good effect, at least in public.

From Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to Sarah Palin. This surely marks the American progress. My problem with Sarah Palin is that she's almost uniquely unqualified to be President. And a person running as McCain's VP is not a matter of casual interest. I would rate the chances of Sarah Palin becoming President sometime between January 2009 and January 2013, as you read this, at about 25%. I arrive at this prognostication through the multiplication of percentages, taught in American public high schools circa 1963-66. A 50% chance McCain will be elected, and a 50% chance he will not finish his term because of a physical or mental disability (such as death). McCain already shows signs of early Alzheimer's, and this would be obvious to the public if the media would stop screwing around with characterizations of his "confusion" as "senior moments" or the "stress" of the campaign. McCain has referred to: (a) President Putin of Germany, (b) present-day Czechoslovakia, (c) the Sunni trainers of al-Qaeda in Tehran and (d) the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Sometimes when he is asked a question in public, particularly if there is any sort of preamble or predicate to the question, he can't follow or retain the question. With the stress of the presidency, all of these problems would get worse in a hurry; and after the Constitutional crisis about what to do with a President who is not dead but definitely losing it, we would have Sarah Palin as our new leader.

I think a President, at the very least, must be conversant with all of the following in order to be minimally competent. The workings of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, including a detailed knowledge of the role of the dollar as the world's fiat currency. If the President doesn't get that, the entire American economy could go down the tubes in a hurry. (2) A deep understanding of nuclear proliferation, including the safeguards regime, the treaty arrangements and who's got what. (3) An overall comprehension of the U.S. legal system, how the courts interrelate, the role of administrative agencies, the principles of comity between Washington, D.C. and the states, and the function of the Bill of Rights. (4) An appreciation of modern science, the accelerating problem of climate change, the oceanic problems of acidification and hypoxia, and the pathways to alternative fuels to ameliorate all these problems. (5) The looming disaster of avian flu and contamination of the food supply because of the Bush era hollowing out and politicization of the regulatory agencies.

Marcel Duchamp is said to have inaugurated Dadaism by taking a men's urinal, mounting it on a base, and calling it "Fountain." There's a deep joke about modern perceptions contained therein. Something like that is going on here with Sarah Palin. I heard Lindsey Graham of South Carolina passionately defending her as McCain's choice on a Sunday talk show, talking about what a "great" commander in chief she would make, and sneering at the idea of Barack Obama (whose name he pronounced with the utmost disgust - where's the white sheet, Lindsey?) in the same role. (I hope Lindsey is happy with what he's done; because of his intolerance, God has directed Hurricane Hanna to smite South Carolina this weekend.)

What in the world is Lindsey talking about? Is just saying stuff like that enough now? Have the Bush years so degraded national standards that we take seriously the nonsense of people like Cindy McCain, who said Alaska's proximity to Russia gives Sarah "foreign policy experience?"

Oy vey iz mir. Alaska has fewer people than the city of San Francisco, and Palin has been governor for about two years. We're not really going to count her mayorship of Wasilla, are we? What next? Two terms as president of the Rotary Club of Tonopah, Nevada? And although she lives in Alaska, the state where the effects of global warming are most obvious, she doesn't see a connection between all the carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere and all the methane released by Alaska's thawing tundra, or all the dark sea water exposed by the melting of Alaska's sea ice, or the 3.5 degree F overall warming and 6 degree F winter warming of Alaska since the 1970s. Alaska is the poster state for global warming and its governor doesn't think humans have anything to do with it. Could we call that what it is? It's stupidity.

Sarah Palin has nothing in her background which indicates she can handle that list up above, not academically, not experientially. The Republicans can close ranks and claim another completely unqualified person should be put within a hair's breadth of the Presidency, but that doesn't make it true. It's still a bad idea. It's still a urinal on a base, not a fountain.