Frank’s Case Book

It is hard for Conservatives to not like Sara Palin. It is not so often that there is such a match between Conservative ideology and charismatic appeal. Sarah Palin is a political rock star. She demonstrated this by her ability to raise funds and draw crowds for candidates in the mid-term elections a few weeks ago. Though the historic Republican sweep cannot be said to be her doing (there was substantial help from President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), Palin deserves credit for vigorous labor on the behalf of candidates. She certainly was able to make substantial deposits in her bank of political favors, ready for withdraw later.

It is also easy for Conservatives to feel protective of Palin. She has been unfairly depicted as being a dim bulb by people of limited wattage themselves. This line of political attack is part of a broader critique of middle-class America by the self-anointed elites of the blue states. However, is precisely because Palin has been somewhat successfully caricaturized as unserious that she should spend more time as a policy wonk and less as a lightning rod.

Palin should learn from the experience of Ronald Reagan. He changed careers from actor to politician, and was dismissed as “just an actor’’ for his entire political career. Overtime the criticism lost its saliency because Reagan led a large state for eight years. Palin unfortunately withdrew from the governorship of Alaska, probably for personal financial reasons. The decision may benefit her family, but not her prospects for higher political office.

Reagan spent years providing regular radio political commentary where he thought through his ideas and nutured his political voice. Sarah Palin has exploited the new social media with a presence on Twitter and Facebook, but in not quite the correct way. She needs to twitter less, and use Facebook more as Reagan used radio.

Palin would be well-served by thinking through and regularly writing serious political pieces on Facebook and perhaps even delivering her ideas on a regular podcast. Palin has the star power, she needs to persuade others that she can back up with policy credentials. She should use social media in much same way as Congressman Paul Ryan does: less for political attention and more for explaining ideas. The public elected a novice pretty political face for president in 2008, who hid is political radicalism. In 2012, the public will be more concerned with ideas.

Palin took a step backward this week with Sarah Palin’s Alaska: a show on the TLC channel. If the show had focused entirely on Alaska in documentary fashion, it might have helped Palin.

Instead of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,’’ the show would be more aptly named “Alaska’s Sarah Palin.’’ There was beautiful scenes of Alaska and Palin’s family in Alaska. Unfortunately, program devolved too much into a reality show. Sarah Palin may be attractive to look at walking in shorts around her expansive new house, but the view of her family was just too intimate. It was not that there was any pathological present. On the contrary, the Palins were dealing with children and other family issues, much as we all do, in an appealing – if contrived – manner.

However, we want leaders who, as in Kipling’s phrase, “can talk with crowds and keep [their] virtue, [and] walk with kings’’ while not losing, “the common touch,’’ there needs to be an emotional distance for leadership. Sarah Palin’s Alaska shrinks that distance.

There is a saying that no man is a hero to his valet. Similarly, it is hard to entrust weighty issues to your next door neighbors, no matter how appealing. Palin’s show is making her more a neighbor we might like, and less a leader we would believe in.

A healthy sense of self-regard and confidence are necessary personal attributes for any successful leader. Under what other circumstances would anyone desire the scrutiny and loss of privacy associated with becoming an national leader?

However, even given the high bar set by recent leaders, President Barack Obama’s self-regard approaches a historical highs.

In 2008, Obama explained, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.’’ Either he selected a mediocre speechwriter, policy advisers and a political director or Obama is apparently convinced he is always the smartest person in the room.

When it looked liked the Republicans might enjoy a hugely successful mid-term election in 2010 that rivaled 1994 when Republicans earned a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in a generation, Obama dismissed these concerns by saying, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’’

Whatever, on thinks about former President Bill Clinton’s policies, he is universally acknowledged as the most masterful politician in memory. For Obama to cavalierly declare that he could avoid political losses that Clinton could not, betrays self-regard bordering on what others have called “narcissism.’’

Obama’s self-regard may eventually prove politically fatal, but his recent problem is not been the regard in which he holds himself, by the dismissive and condescending regard with which he holds his fellow Americans. We received a glimpse of this during the 2008 election, when Obama said of Pennsylvanians in hard times, “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations’’’

While Obama now concedes that his party suffered a “shellacking,’’ he chalks it up to a recovery that has not yet really kicked in. Obama has only acknowledged that perhaps he has not been able to explain to Americans the soundness of his policies. The implications is that if only Americans were smart and aware enough they would appreciate Obama’s efforts.

When Americans were focused on the pain caused by a struggling economy, Obama and the Democrats thought that it was necessary to pass a sweeping and costly health care reform bill. They crammed it through despite the fact that a clear majority of Americans were against it and now want its repeal. In addition, Obama and the Democrats increased the debt by trillions to stimulate the economy while most people believe that the policy has not worked. Obama was saying, in essence, we know better than the American people, so we are going to pass the health care reform and stimulus bills anyways.

Americans will tolerate and perhaps even celebrate a leader with overweening self confidence, but not one who has comparable low regard of Americans as a whole.