Tuesday, September 02, 2008

The Irresistible Palins

A hardworking mom and a college dropout dude-of-dudes for parents, a teenage pregnancy in the family, and another teenager, a son, shipping out to Iraq. Can you get more redneck than that? Alaska is the new Appalachians—with a lot of money, snowmobile racing instead of NASCAR, and marijuana instead of moonshine. Fish in a barrel for a bad Maureen Dowd column.

My sympathy goes out to Levi Johnson though. Imagine a handsome, athletic, 18 year old guy used to doing the kind of stuff that teenage guys like to do—including, obviously, unprotected sex—having no choice but to do the right thing.

There is something compelling about the Palins, a mini-clan of natural-born platoon leaders. My guess is that this clinched the deal for John McCain.

9 comments:

Michael Reimer said...

So, I'm starting to feel like this was terrifically clever. Obama has been evicted from the front pages. In my local daily it's almost as hard to find news about him now as it is to find news about boring ol' Canadian politics.

Any press is good press?

Jun Okumura said...

Michael:

Do you know the Recruit scandal? In 1986, the social-climbing founder-chairman of Recruit offered shares in his company to a who’s who of LDP politicians (and other notables) just before Recruit went public, making a ton of risk-free money for the lucky shareholders (which was how public offerings worked in the go-go 80s). More generally, the stock market used to be an important source of political funds, as least for conservative politicians ) Anyway, just after the scandal broke, a relatively junior Diet member whom I knew fairly well was there at a small, intimate gathering totally unrelated to politics. When his turn came to tell us what he’d been up to, he told us only half-jokingly that all his constituents were asking him if he’d been on the take and he was embarrassed to have to tell them that he wasn’t important enough to get a share offer. He then said that for politicians, 悪名も有名のうち, or Notoriety is a form of fame.

So that’s a long, vaguely off-topic answer to your question. Old people will do that to you, with their reminiscences.

I think that Ms. Palin is a very good choice for Mr. McCain. She’ll raise the Republican turnout among Evangelicals with a minimum of turnoff among the less-socially conservative Republicans. I don’t think she’ll pick up votes among diehard Hillarians, but she’ll give other, less politically-minded White churchgoers who otherwise wouldn’t have a reason to vote against, you now, that black guy with the weird name… In the meantime, I don’t see any votes shifting the other way because of Ms. Palin.

Michael Reimer said...

In the meantime, I don’t see any votes shifting the other way because of Ms. Palin.

Still, I wonder if they can get away with the "Not ready to lead" slogan anymore. Let's see how much doublethink voters can do.

I didn't know the Recruit scandal, just like I don't really know anything about Japanese politics. I only ever met one person there who was both informed and willing to discuss it (my co-workers were all foreigners and middle-aged housewives). So I've been skimming your political posts to get an idea of what's going on but mostly feel like a first-grader in that department.

I got the impression that the average voter was very much of the I-vote-X-because-that's-what-my-family-has-always-done-type, and that they didn't want to talk about it because they didn't want to risk disagreeing with me about something. Close to the mark?

Jun Okumura said...

I think that if family members vote alike, it’s mainly because they share much of their personal histories and presumably values. The correlation—and any personal pressure—is probably stronger in the provinces, where there is less mobility.

Political preferences can be a sensitive discussion topic anywhere. But in the United States, to give an example that I know fairly well, anyone from biker with a Confederate flag on his front porch to an East-Coast Obamacon can claim to be a Republican. More or less the same thing can be said about Democrats. Libertarians are merely Republican originals to the nth power. Beyond that, it’s all probably illegal anyway (imagine an emoticon here, just in case you are taking this literally), so political discussions tend to remain within establishment values broadly defined.

But political preferences can be a particularly touchy issue in Japan. A sizeable portion of Japanese voters still go for the Communists and Socialists—7.25% and 5.49% respectively in the 2005 lower house election’s nationwide proportional voting. The two leftist parties have lost much of their bark, but they will still mark their supporters as antiestablishment figures. The New Komeito—with 13.25% of the same vote—carries a strongly religious undertone, and religion is in itself an even more sensitive issue for casual conversation. More specifically, New Komeito is firmly middle-of-the-road, but anyone supporting it is assumed—more likely than not correctly—to be a Sokagakkai member. Because of its formerly aggressive proselytizing tactics and the somewhat cultish promotion of its leader Daisaku Ikeda, a Sokagakkai affiliation is still viewed with some apprehension by some people, particularly those old enough to remember the old days. This means that you have to be careful when you’re bringing New Komeito up in a personal setting. Add up the people who voted for the three parties and you have 1/4th of the grownups who care enough to vote that might feel uncomfortable (or make the others uncomfortable) about discussing their political allegiances.

Jun Okumura said...

I forgot to give you my two-cent’s worth on Michael’s first point. For the record, I think that “Not ready to lead” is still very much on the board. The key messages:

The Democrats got the ticket backwards. Barack Obama is running for President, Sarah Palin is going to be an understudy.
A state governor has real executive responsibilities, a rabble-rousing community organizer does not. (And I’m sure you didn’t miss the subliminal message that he’s just one letter away from being a godless communist organizer..

They sure work on social conservatives, and there’s a certain truth to them, though I think that the argument overlooks John McCain’s own relative lack of executive experience. The world will see if they also work on White Americans who would love to have a better reason not to vote for that black guy with the funny name.

Michael Reimer said...

I think that if family members vote alike, it’s mainly because they share much of their personal histories and presumably values. The correlation—and any personal pressure—is probably stronger in the provinces, where there is less mobility.

There's a different version of this that my brother encountered while living in North Carolina. He reported meeting people who don't know or care much about issues and just say "We're Republicans" as though it's an ethnicity. I.e. they seem to inherit their voting preference.

I'm sure they exist everywhere, but what do you think about the prevalence of that sort of conformist voting in Japan?

And I’m sure you didn’t miss the subliminal message that he’s just one letter away from being a godless communist organizer

Oh yes... the time is ripe to bring back Cold War rhetoric! Commies are on the rise again!

Even if they aren't really commies anymore.

Jun Okumura said...

I don’t know, Michael. I’m sure there’s much less of it than when I was growing up, even in the provinces.

As for community/communist organizer, let’s split the difference and call Barack Hussein Obama a… socialist!

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Jun Okumura said...

Hmm, you know what? If you're a Democrat, this is not going to win the Obama ticket a single vote. If anything, it's more useful to Republicans.