Pensees: Inexperience is Better than Experience: The Palin Pick

Inexperience is Better than Experience: The Palin Pick

There is only one answer to the populism of Edwards and the ambiguous we-are-all-united-because-we-are-essentially-the-same niceness of Obama. It is what they both emanate, in my opinion: anti-establishment conviction. – Pontificated by me, the inexperienced political observer on January 4, 2008.

And, oh, was I ever so right! And, finally! FINALLY! In Palin conservatives have a candidate with anti-establishment conviction!

One has to probe deep into the hinterlands of his memory to remember the fundamentalist leader, Bob Jones III, frantically endorsing Mitt Romney in the South Carolina paper as the only candidate that could possibly beat Hillary Clinton. I said baloney. My tiny blog is insignificant, but I was still able to garner a collection of sharp emails – all from BJU alumni – that rebuked me for suggesting that Bob Jones didn’t know what he was talking about. He was, they said, quite savvy politically; I should tone down.

Turns out Bob Jones III did not know what he was talking about because he was talking about candidates who would not even be nominated. And unless there is some mysterious connection between Mitt Romney’s premature lucre-drenched primary washout and Hillary’s slow fade-out that I don’t know about, I have one more anecdotal life experience that I share with Six-Pack Joe American that reinforces my suspicion that most leaders today are clueless. Increasingly, their pontifications and predictions become meaningless. They become meaningless, not because of an inherent rebellion by anti-establishmentarian revolutionaries toward leadership, but because they are, in fact, meaningless. Leaders in established positions of leadership simply do not have a clue.

One of Bob Jones’ defenders told me that Bob Jones had a lot more experience than I did when it came to political analysis and know-how. That’s absolutely true; I’ve never pretended to have any experience whatsoever. But Jones’ was smashingly wrong; and my hunch that Obama will be the next President of the United States is still in play. Inexperience becomes more commonsensical than experience once again.

Commonsensical. Populist. Normal. Regular. Six-Pack Joe. Hockey Mom. In the past two hundred years politics in the free world has proven to be cyclical. It starts out as fresh, grassroots, culturally-relevant politics and then overtime morphs into just plain politics; professional, elitist, moneyed, established and experienced. However, the hockey moms and Bobs of the free world eventually weary of the expertise of the political elite and start realizing that their life experience is teaching them something about people in general that is vastly different than the platitudinal analyses of real life situations foisted upon them by political powerbrokers. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere there always arises a fresh face with a populist message and politics gets shaken up again. Enter Obama. Enter Palin.

Obama and Palin are fresh faces with all the appearances of status-quo shaker-uppers. Both offer the regular American something different than the same ole same ole.

I said way back in January that experience wouldn’t matter in this election. Again, with the brilliant insight of inexperience, I said, “Anti-establishment conviction is what appeals to humans. What politicians and pundits seem to forget is that voters are humans; not blacks, evangelicals, women, special-interest groups, and soccer-moms. They marvel that women voted for Obama instead of Hillary. I don’t marvel. Women are human. And humans in today’s world instinctively like Obama more than Hillary.”

This is why the discussion of Palin’s experience vs. Obama’s experience is ridiculous because the reality is that nobody on either side cares. Leaders of every ilk simply don’t get it.

Inexperience keeps proving to be more reliable than experience because today’s culture does not think logically, but emotionally. Six-Pack Joe and the pastor of Six-Pack Joe know this instinctively. When I said that Mitt Romney could not beat Hillary, I mentioned Hillary only because Hillary was the one feared at the time. I was responding to Jones’ anachronistic summation of conservative politics, “It’s all about beating Hillary.” But Hillary was already becoming a relic in the poitical museum. Immediately following her loss in Iowa, I said, “

Hillary may not be the worst thing for us. If Hillary were to become president of the United States of America we would see another four to eight years of the same old same old. If Obama becomes President something new will happen. I’m not sure that I would want to exchange the currently-bad for whatever new Obama has to offer. But if I were a careless youth, my instinct would tell me that Hillary is the same and new - whatever it is – would be interesting! Therefore, I think it is a bit melodramatic to panic so much over Hillary.

Yet, I must admit that a President Hillary will likely want to get her pound of flesh sometime and her presidency could be marked by unadulterated (interesting choice of words) revenge. However, if she managed to rise above her nature, she might be a tired generic leader, competently mediocre. Generic and competently mediocre might be a blessing compared to a flamboyant and passionate activist who could rightly interpret his election as a mandate for a change of everything! Obama is smooth and nice. He could be the best thing true liberals have ever had, particularly if they want the young. However, Hillary’s crusty and snappy remarks last night sounded like an embattled flower child with a modern perspective, particularly her comment concerning potential votes for her from Republicans “who have seen the light.” She shoved the establishment’s obsession in everybody’s face. Obama, on the other hand, seemed as if he hardly knew there were such things as Democrats and Republicans. The Postmodern trumped the Flower Child.

Modern flower children are ho-hum. Obama will get the youth.

Well, Romney proved he can’t win anything even with gobs of money, Hillary is out of the picture, and Ladies and Gentlemen, we now have a classic cultural conflict on center stage that illustrates the bubbleheaded isolationism of elitist leadership and newsmakers (whether it is in national politics or evangelical/fundamentlist movements) who sincerely believe that the world turns on the axis of their personal experience and worldview. They simply cannot understand the changing climate. It is a cultural phenomenon that the establishment just doesn’t get.

This race has nothing to do with policies and experience. It is a popularity contest. And somewhere in the backrooms of both Republican and Democrat camps somebody influential knows what most leaders and newsmakers have yet to comprehend: the race will be decided by who wins the popularity contest with the swing voters. This race will be decided by people who don’t care about politics.

That’s why I predicted a long time ago that Obama would come out ahead of Hillary. He has the unique quality to be unknown enough to be loved. If the Democrats really cared about experience they would have nominated Hillary a thousand times before Obama. Everybody knows that. American politics today is less about experience and policies and agenda and more about marketing a person. Somebody in McCain-land finally figured that out.

It is not disloyal, politically naïve, unchristian, or ignorant to say that Sarah Palin’s greatest quality for the Republican ticket right now is her star power. She’s a relatively young beauty that has a charming narrative and the refreshing distinctive among Republican nominees since the Reagan era in that she can actually talk. It is nice to have a conservative in the top tiers of Republican leadership that one can listen to without going to sleep or gnawing one’s nails in fretful anticipation of the next gaffe.

The difficulty for the still-rational, Christian modern who may or may not be sympathetic to the Republican agenda but is pro-life enough to refuse to pull the lever for Obama is figuring out how to respond with cool objectivity and thoughtfulness to the tidal wave of exuberance caused by what Matt Drudge called “Hurricane Sarah.” So, allow the voice of inexperience to offer some suggestions:

1. Star power is not always a bad thing. God has granted star power to His servants before to thrust them into the public eye. David of Bethlehem became the subject matter of the hit song, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.” It is completely feasible that a Sovereign God may choose to make a good person very, very popular by giving them the “total package” of good looks, charming story, and meteorite advancement through what unbelievers see as a series of “good luck.” So let it happen.

2. Good looks are very practical. Face it, we are all very happy that the most socially conservative candidate in the presidential race is also the hottest. Beauty matters to God. At times He has prepared some of His servants with an unusual eye appeal because, like it or not, humans look on the outward appearance. David was a good looking dude and it seems that all the women in Israel thought he was a hottie. Esther arrived to her position of power purely on her babe qualities. Seems like she took the election by landslide. (Of course, she only needed one vote and that might have been after some sort of sleep-over. So besides giving a new connotation to “voting booth,” what’s obvious is that her good looks mattered.) Joseph was equipped with very good looks in order to serve God more effectively among the superficial pagan Egyptians. Similarly, our country is just as shallow and superficial as the ancient lands. It could be a mercy to God’s people if He equips a woman with remarkable beauty. The pro-life cause in America could not have hoped for a better advocate.

3. God appoints leaders and, ironically, sometimes the commonsensical defies common sense. Christian people who aren’t going to vote pro-life this coming election by not voting at all because they don’t think a mother of five can or should be doing anything outside of the home are confusing common sense with politically savvy voting! Thus, while God often humbles the political experts with brainless populism, He often reduces the pride of the brainless because they vainly refuse to exercise political acumen.

It is common sense that a mother of five cannot be vice-president, but it may be the stupidest political error of all time to not vote for the McCain/Palin ticket if you really do care about the life of unborn babies in this land.

Inexperience gets savvy. The cycle continues.

I simply cannot predict if Sarah Palin will even survive the next sixty days. I’m still gloomily sticking by my prediction that Obama will win the popularity contest, but there has never been a more hopeful sign for conservative values than when McCain decided to reject experience and go for the babe with anti-establishment conviction. Somebody in the McCain camp has figured out what kind of world we live in. At the very least, there’s a glimmer of hope.