Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin

From Noonan's Wall Street Journal column today ("A Farewell to Harms"):

Mrs. Palin has now stepped down, but she continues to poll high among some members of the Republican base, some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths.

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To wit, "I love her because she's so working-class."

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What she is, is a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits.

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"She makes the Republican Party look inclusive." She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

"She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes." She shows your cynicism.

"Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues." Mrs. Palin's supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this? Maybe they think "not thoughtful" is a working-class trope!

"The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

Noonan's mostly on-target here, I think, but it would be interesting to see some introspection from her on why so many in the Republican base might have embraced a candidate who hunts, fishes, lives in a rural area, etc. I'd expect a little more thought on this from a former Reagan speechwriter. The GOP has spent the last few decades mythologizing blue collar Americans in an attempt to woo them, going back at least as far as Reagan's "Morning in America" campaign, and continuing through the second Bush administration. We went from a plaid-shirted Reagan clearing brush on his ranch in California, to a plaid-shirted Bush clearing brush on his ranch in Texas. Noonan, of all people, shouldn't be surprised that when a candidate fits this image as well as Palin does, she will be popular among the base.

Noonan claims that Palin isn't working class because her father was a teacher and her mother was a school secretary, but this seems like splitting hairs. Okay, Palin's father didn't work in a coal mine. But neither was he the commander of the Pacific Fleet (as McCain's father was), or the CEO of an auto company (as Romney's father was), or the President of the United States (as Bush's father was). Palin may have her limitations, but she is savvy enough to run with her blue collar authenticity, such as it is, given how GOP image crafters such as Peggy Noonan have long made a fetish of it.

Sarah Palin to Resign from Alaska Governorship?

Apparently so (Hat Tip: Alyssa Rosenberg, subbing on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Atlantic blog). From KTUU.com:

WASILLA, Alaska -- In a stunning announcement, Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday morning she will resign her office in a few weeks.

Speculation has swirled for weeks, perhaps months that Palin would not seek re-election in 2010 as she pursues a political career on the national stage. The former vice presidential candidate has long been rumored to be considering a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Palin did not address those rumors at the press conference at her Wasilla home, during which she did not take questions from reporters.

Bret Schundler's Nest Egg Cracks

For those unfamiliar with his name, Bret Schundler (photo above), the former mayor of Jersey City, NJ, was considered a rising star in the GOP in the late 1990s, as a rare Republican who won office in an urban, Democratic stronghold. For example, back in 1999, William F. Buckley, Jr. considered Schundler a presidential prospect for 2008 (another fan back then, if memory serves, was Jack Kemp). Unfortunately for Schundler, although he would have been an appealing candidate for statewide office somewhere else, he was considered too conservative for New Jersey, and was unsuccessful in his two attempts at the governorship, which could have been a stepping stone to national office.

I had the pleasure of meeting Schundler once in the early 1990s, when he took time off from running Jersey City to speak with the five or six students who showed up to see him at the Republican club event at my university. He struck me as being literate: while speaking extemporaneously about some issue of the day I remember him referring to some relevant point from Plato. He also explained how his faith compelled him to advocate for policies to help the poor, but that he wanted to bring more effectiveness and accountability to those policies.

Schundler apparently made enough money in a handful of years working on Wall Street in the late 1980s that, after traveling the world for a year, he could devote his energies to public service. After the recent market meltdown, it looks like it's back to the salt mines for Schundler. Below is the text of an e-mail I received from him today, announcing that he was abandoning his latest campaign for mayor of Jersey City (I hadn't known he was running again until I received this today):

January 12, 2009

I will not be running to become Jersey City's Mayor this year.

Our nation's economic crisis caused the value of several long-term investments of mine to plummet. I had been hoping these investments would bounce back, but they have continued to fall, and I have now been forced to sell them at a loss.

This will make it impossible for me to run for mayor this year. I had planned to campaign full-time this Spring and to pay my family's mortgage and my children's tuition bills out of invested savings. Instead, I will need to work full-time at an income-earning job to pay those mortgage and tuition bills.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for your encouragement and support this past year. In the five weeks from mid-October to just before Thanksgiving, we raised almost $200,000 in campaign contributions. We had a great start, and I do believe we could have won this election were I able to fundraise and campaign full-time this Spring. Unfortunately, that is no longer an option.

One positive bit of news: we have not spent much of the money that the campaign raised. Accordingly, we will be providing a very large percentage refund to everyone who contributed.

I love Jersey City, and I will do what I can to benefit it, but I have a responsibility to provide for my family. The reality now is that I need to be working full-time at an income-earning job. I hope you will understand.

Sincerely,

BRET SCHUNDLER

The photo above is from PolitickerNJ