Author: Andrew Sullivan

An important factual correction on the undie-bomber story.

There are vast institutional and professional reasons why the total farce of the Palin vice-presidential candidacy has not yet been exposed in all its horrifying details. But “Game Change” and Steve Schmidt’s Sixty Minutes interview begin to explain the inside details of what was, to those of us on the outside, the most surreal and dangerous period in domestic politics in memory. Schmidt was integral to picking Palin. And he did so without knowing the first thing about her. There was no serious vetting, however many lies they told at the time to cover up their recklessness. Schmidt had no idea that Palin had a pregnant teenage daughter, for example, until after the nominee had been announced. Which means Palin didn’t tell Schmidt, or someone else in the campaign (but who?) withheld that information from Schmidt. We’re talking Keystone Cops levels of competence.

For some reason, McCain’s determination to have another bitter old failure, Joe Lieberman, be his bipartisan running mate was never subjected to the cold rational analysis that the current GOP simply wouldn’t go for it. In today’s Party of God, a man with Lieberman’s social views – on abortion, women, gays, healthcare – was simply out of the question. A serious campaign (and McCain’s was a deeply unserious one, held afloat on the mythological vapors of Mark Salter and McCain’s previous image as a feisty moderate) would have had a few deeply researched and hashed out backups for Lieberman. But McCain had none. And so when Lieberman was nixed at the last minute by state party chairmen and their allies, we had the specter of Rick Davis actually scrambling through Google to find a woman – any woman – who could complement McCain. The sexism was due to Davis’ and Schmidt’s and McCain’s bizarre notion that alienated Clinton primary voters would flock to a cranky old pro-lifer as long as someone with estrogen was his Number Two. The sheer distance from reality this implies and the identity politics it represents found its natural apotheosis in Palin: also detached from reality, and also an identity politics candidate – but not for women, as it turned out, but for the white Christianist far-right. And so McCain triggered a rebirth of the old GOP more akin to the party before Buckley – with racists, extremists and religious nuts defining the party’s base, as they still do. This was a farce; a joke; a disaster. Palin had no notion of basic high school history. She barely understood what the Cold War was.

She didn’t know what the Federal Reserve did. She believed that her First Amendment rights meant she was protected from press inquiries. She couldn’t tell you why there’s a North and a South Korea. And she had an inability to distinguish between her own view of the world – which always rationalized everything that Sarah Palin did – and reality. This discovery then led to the elaborate and panicked strategy of shielding Palin from any direct press scrutiny – she held zero open press conferences in the campaign – and the desperate attempts to cram as much into her brain before the one-on-one media interviews and the veep debate. She also, as Schmidt details, had a capacity for saying things that were demonstrably untrue, even repeating them forcefully after the world had moved on. The Dish chronicled this bizarre record as it unfolded, but the more we found out about her, the loopier she seemed.

Inside, we now know, it became clear to many McCain aides that it was simply irresponsible to allow her to assume the office of vice-presidency. Their patriotism eventually came to the fore, as they contemplated the horror of this total novice and ignoramus – however sexy and eager to learn – actually running the United States. The responsible thing to have done, of course, would have been to have taken her off the ticket early on. But that, of course, would have destroyed what was left of McCain’s chances. For a presidential candidate to concede that his first significant presidential decision had been a total fiasco would be to concede that he shouldn’t be president. And indeed, McCain shouldn’t have been president. In fact, he should in my view resign from the Senate because his conduct of the last campaign revealed that he put narrow partisan interests ahead of core patriotic ones. He was prepared to allow someone to replace him as president who, his own staff believed, could be “mentally unstable.”

Think about that for a minute. A campaign for president had as its vice-presidential nominee someone many of the campaign strategists believed was “mentally unstable.” The idea that in office they could have relegated Palin to a vice-president as beauty queen was also revealed to be surreal given Palin’s propensity for going rogue and the fact that she wielded much more clout within the GOP than McCain did. Not only was she vastly unqualified to be president, as vice-president she would have rendered McCain the Potemkin president.

This was indeed surreal. It should never have happened. That such a figure came near the presidency of the United States is so alarming an insight into the self-serving cynicism of the political elite that one understands where the rabid populism now comes from. 

(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty.)

Blumenthal summarizes:

We have two new polls out in Massachusetts on the January 19 special election to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, and their results could not be more different. The new survey conducted Saturday through Wednesday last week by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center on behalf of the Boston Globe shows Democrat Martha Coakley leading by 17 percentage points (53% to 36%), while a new automated poll conducted on Thursday and Friday by Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows a dead heat, with Brown one point ahead (48% to 47%). A third survey conducted on Monday by Rasmussen Reports has Coakley ahead by nine (50% to 41%).

And analyzes:

The big spread in results among the polls, and differences apparent within two of them, are all consistent in supporting one finding: The lower the turnout, the better the odds for Scott Brown. These differences indicate that the voters most interested and most likely to vote are Republican, while Democrats are more blase.

Nate Silver also looks at the conflicting polls.

This weekend we saw Lieberman and McCain defend a foreign government against their own White House. Cheney the Younger launched her latest venom and a bombshell of hypocrisy came out of Ulster. The Dish aired juicy bits of gossip from "Game Change" here, here, here, here, and here, with reader reaction here, here, and here. 

Chait scrutinized Islamic culture while Charles Kurzman and Ijlal Naqvi assessed Islamic politics. Roger Ailes appeared scared and unscrupulous. E.D Kain, Kottke, Friedersdorf, Jonah Lehrer, Caleb Crain, Filthy Critic, and Andrew shared their thoughts on Avatar. Tom Elrod made the case for Pixar conservatism.

Barbara Ehrenreich knocked happy thoughts, Ross set his sights on Darwin, and Andrew discussed his virus. Fallows' latest long-form piece is here. Readers reax to the Chait-Manzi debate here. Our latest recession update is here. A ton of creepy ads here.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

I teach in a well-off suburban public high school in the midwest. My students excel; they’re hardworking and ambitious. My class is a demanding elective. The subject matter includes lots of critical thinking. Politics is a common topic. We have frequent opinionated political discussion which usually feeds rich, committed writing. These kids are well above the average high school student in nearly every way–communication skills, experience, close reading, careful pessimism, involvement. They are mature enough to balance the value of strong personal or family opinions with the value of balance in public discussion or their school research and writing. They can evaluate an audience. They succeed and come off as smart, articulate, mature, and balanced. Except when it comes to Sarah Palin.

My conservative students can’t discuss or write about Palin to my satisfaction. These conservative kids can be intelligently critical of Obama and his policies; of the wars; of Bush and torture and the Constitution, and so on. They can make arguments that touch on religion and social issues they care strongly about without sliding into emotion or fallacy. They can dispute with the other students in a thoughtful and orderly way over most issues.

But when Palin enters the conversation, they become adamant, unthinking partisans. The eyes go blank. They seem starstruck and smile a lot (girls and boys.) They do not dispute evidence that she was unqualified or ill informed; they just ignore it. When they returned from an appearance Palin made nearby, four of my students behaved like they’d seen Miley Cyrus, not a potential leader of the free world. When it comes to Palin 2012, they tend to nod knowingly with a little secret smile and say “You’ll see.”

And any political argument that flows from or around Palin becomes empty, uncompromising, and irrational. Suddenly they say “believe” or “trust” or “faith” a lot. They are suddenly uninterested in reading or checking claims, or even discussing issues. It’s all personality and emotion all the time. This is a real problem. I don’t think it’s me. I am a very experienced teacher and I’ve always had good success in maintaining a challenging neutrality for these students. They usually can’t even figure out how I vote. I’ve never had any trouble before keeping them in a productive path while respecting their opinions. But when Palin appears, their writing becomes unsatisfactory, their arguments become vague, their logic becomes spotty, their evidence contradictory or false.

I’ve happily worked with writers who idolized Brigham Young and Jesse Helms (and Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader, too.) In these classes I usually find conservative students very good at polishing arguments, making cases, and improving their writing. But Palin seems to suck the logic out of the room. The factual basis of claims is integral to my kids’ work, and Palin–maybe just her, maybe her phenomenon, I don’t know–makes that difficult, and worse every week as her wild discrepancies mount.

I risk parent trouble and the imputation of bias if I do as my teacher’s experience, training, and conscience dictates. I fear that this is a true break from the already tenuous connection to reality represented by the American far-right. I’ll say this–it is the first time I can remember that I had real trouble helping students write well when they were already engaged enough to care about politics.

(Hat tip: Ezra)

Is the Green Revolution making headway in their 'red states'? Some anecdotal evidence suggests yes.

This is interesting as a way to gauge what the state of play is in Tehran:

Scandinavian media are reporting that a high-ranking Iranian diplomat in Norway has resigned over the recent clampdowns on anti-government protesters in Iran.

"It was the Iranian authorities' treatment of demonstrators during the Christmas week that made me realize I couldn't continue," Mohammed Reza Heydari was quoted as saying in a report by Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

I have to say I'm surprised by the sensitivity of the Iranian people and elite to prisoner abuse and torture. If only America's elites were as principled.

A reader writes:

XKCD already has a classic response to the news that there is no scientific proof that "the G spot" exists.

Rachel Kramer Bussel counters the claim.

Norm Geras has a number of reflections  (scroll through the links at the top) on the idea of evil:

Yes, the term 'evil' can have a religious connotation, but it doesn't have to. And unless we think we can do without the concept of evil, those of us who aren't religious had better be prepared to defend a secular notion of what evil is; because otherwise we're going to have to describe as merely 'wrong' the very worst cruelties and horrors that people perpetrate against one another, and which I was going to exemplify by quotation here, but on consideration will spare you from having to read about, and just leave to your imagination and your knowledge of the world. Anyone who has some knowledge of the world knows how rich the human record is in actions and events that scald the mind and rip the soul; and not to have a word for and a concept of these, other than 'wrong', is to be landed with an impoverished moral vocabulary.