Hijacked

I didn’t want to write about Sarah Palin. I’ve been avoiding it all week. I had a purpose, in titling this blog iklektik ink. It was to set up the expectation that you could find anything on these pages. I imagined that if you were avoiding work or the laundry or your children, you might just check your bookmark, read a post to kill some time and be surprised in the process. But given the stakes in this election, I have come to accept that my mind is totally consumed. I am unable to think of other things, even when I want to.

Last night I stayed awake to watch Charles Gibson interview Sarah Palin on Nightline. You will have to imagine me, in bed with my already large eyes open wider than normal and my jaw hanging ajar. Sarah Palin does not read the newspaper. Sarah Palin does not have a basic grasp of what has been happening in the world for the past eight years. To be in line for the presidency and not know what the Bush Doctrine is? It’s unconscionable. I don’t know whether to thank John McCain for giving the nation fair warning of what a “maverick” presidency will look like or to smack him for being so utterly reckless with our fates. It took me a long time to fall asleep.

Mostly what kept me awake was ruminating about how little we value intelligence and critical thinking in this country. These are not qualities we look for in leaders. In 2000 I was convinced that it was precisely Bill Clinton’s abuse of his own intelligence that delivered George W. Bush the election. The Monica Lewinsky scandal was a scandal not because of the sex but because of the extremes Clinton went to in order to bend language so that he could avoid telling the truth. Voters were furious and they wanted someone incapable of doing that. In loped Dubbya.

Haven’t we had enough of this experiment? Is it possible that eight years of George W. Bush has not made it eminently clear that “a guy you could have a beer with” was not a good criterion for choosing our head of state? Are we really so insecure as a nation that we need our leaders to be recognizable figures from our daily lives? Don’t we want our leaders to be better than us? What happened to the notion of greatness? Since when does being an ordinary Joe (now, Jane) qualify someone to lead the most powerful nation on earth?

Sarah Palin was chosen to deliver votes for John McCain. I think she can do that. She was not chosen to appeal to women like me. She was chosen to appeal to religious and conservative women who are thrilled to see their views (limited as they may be) represented. They are going to go to the polls, they are going to get their men to go to the polls, and perversely, they are going to feel proud doing it. I hope I am wrong. I hope John McCain has underestimated the intelligence of our nation. I hope he has fatally sided with a 20th century version of our nation as a white, Christian, nation that can ignore the rest of its citizens without consequence. I hope Obama is more than just a possibility of what may come in the 21st century. I hope we’re in the 21st century.