Beating a Dead Elephant

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/14/palin.persistent/

Is it just me, or does it seem rather beneath an ostensibly serious politician to harp continually on the premise that her image was somehow both created and distorted by the media at large? If you blacked out the names and one or two details, I’ll bet you a steak dinner that you couldn’t tell whether the complainant was Gov. Palin or Omarosa.

(On a non-media related note, I must interject here and say that this whole Palin situation is surreal. I feel like her mother. It’s like I, via my vote, had to sit her down and say that blaming absolutely everybody but yourself for your failures is not demonstrating the kind of maturity that I am comfortable trusting. Her retort, amazingly (if predictably) enough, actually is “I’ll act like an adult when you start treating me like one.” The woman has five children – Wouldn’t you think she’d recognize that that’s just not how it works? Good grief!)

Fairly or not, Sen. McCain learned the hard way that playing to the base on this issue is a bad idea. He bit the hand that fed him, going in short order from being a media darling, a favorite guest of Jon Stewart and other über-lefties for his distaste for Pres. Bush (both on a personal level and even occasionally in terms of policy), to being a favorite target.

In McCain’s case, this was an example of “live by the sword, die by the sword,” having reached his level of prominence and national recognition (to say nothing of favorable impression) by successfully playing the media game. By trying to play the “media card” to win over a lukewarm base, he signed his own metaphorical death warrant. Palin could learn a thing or two from that flameout, but she seems determined as ever to avoid any kind of learning.

Must be that pesky base. The Barracuda knows: they don’t much care for that learnin’.

William Buckley, how thou (and thy sesquipedalian contributions) art missed...

Cheers!