Vice Presidential Candidates - They're Just Like Us!

I've been writing this post for several days now (so it's not all that timely), trying to make it not about Sarah Palin. I tried to make it about both of the current elections in North America. I tried to make it about democracy in general. I had Old Testament allusions. I even brought in Winston Churchill.

But I can't force it where it won't go. It's about Sarah Palin, and no attempt to broaden it changes the fact that I've alternated between laughter (with an edge of hysteria), nausea, and stone-faced stares at the circus on my television for the past two weeks.

(That this isn't even my election doesn't reduce my anxiety. It actually makes it worse, knowing that I am profoundly impacted by her presence on the ticket, and knowing that I am powerless to do anything about it.)

To be clear, my all-around astonishment/disgust/head-shaking at her nomination is not (entirely) a result of her being Republican. I'd like to think I'd be similarly upset by a like bit of stunt casting by the Democrats.

Because that's exactly what this is - stunt casting. And worse than her nomination itself is the fact that it's working.

To recap: a person who has been mayor of a town smaller than Steinbach and has been governor of a state with more caribou than people for less than two years is being presented as someone who should be elected to the second-highest position in the land. Someone who, as first-runner-up, will take over if Miss America for some reason cannot fulfill the duties of her crown.

A person who has fewer stamps in her passport than I do, yet would be that oft-cited heartbeat away from the launch button of a nuclear arsenal. Someone whose foreign policy experience is limited to being able to see Russia yet who makes off-the-cuff remarks on national television about the possibility of war with that country.

Yet she has tremendous support. Her nomination has rejuvenated the GOP, and swing voters by the thousands are declaring that they will mark an X beside her name in November.

From whence comes this insanity, you ask? It's captured by a viewer's comment The Husband read after Palin's pre-written-teleprompter-delivered-heavily-edited speech at the Republican convention:

"I just love Sarah Palin and I'm totally going to vote for her. She's just like me. I don't have a sister, but if I had a sister, I'd want her to be just like Sarah Palin."

In fact, this entire "vote for the hockey mom" campaign is directed toward people like this, people who focus more on her experiences as a mother, her "down-to-earth" way of speaking, and her declaration that she's going to "shake things up in Washington" because it reminds them of themselves. People who look in the mirror and like what they see, and extend that approval towards the candidate that most closely resembles the person in the mirror, not the person who makes the best case in the "why I should be vice-president" debate.

(The danger with voting for the person in the mirror is that most of the American public - and, I would argue, Sarah Palin - would fail spectacularly if handed the reins of power to the highest position in the land. We - and I include myself in this - lack the insight and the broad perspective required to make decisions that affect not only 300 million Americans but, in fact, the entire world.)

Now, lots of people would argue with my recap above and say that having past experience is no indicator of future success (funnily enough, a lot of the same people who said that it was when it came to Obama). If that's the case, then all the voter has to go on is not the way the candidate answers "what did you do," but simply what they say when asked, "what would you do?"

Yet Sarah Palin has provided almost no answers to the WWSPD question since her nomination. Until a few days ago, the only interview she had given since being catapaulted to national attention was, quite tellingly, to People magazine. Her speech at the convention was the parroting of the party line written by others, and even her recent ABC interview sounded like a rehashing of the answers she has been fed by her coaches ever since the media was told that she was not going to give any interviews until she was comfortable, but that she was ready to answer any of their questions (um...).

Despite knowing nothing more about this candidate than what the media has been able to dig up about her beauty-queen-Troopergate-pregnant-daughter-special-needs-son past and the few soundbites she herself has given when allowed in front of the microphone, people are declaring in droves that she deserves their vote and that she will bring change to the country.

And it is this that makes my stomach churn: that so many would base their decision on whether they like her. Because she seems like a nice person. Because she's pretty. Because she's a woman. Because she's got problems just like regular folks. Because she's got a son in Iraq.

I don't want this to be some sort of ad hominem attack; these things are all true. But they are not stand-ins for actual knowledge about her, knowledge which is scanty at best and, in my opinion, quite damning at its worst.

And in that sense, this does become a post about the entire democratic process. Americans and Canadians are all neck-deep in politicians these days, each clamouring to be heard. As voters, we are called on to make judgments about the candidates and the parties and to decide which we think will steer our respective countries in the best direction.

As voters, we owe it to ourselves, to our countries, and to every person worldwide affected by our choice of leader to do our research. Is it difficult to sift through all of the messages? Is it a monumental task to check out party platforms, to compare policies, and to predict who will be revealed to have been lying the least?

Does it take a lot of effort to look past the pretty faces, the smear campaigns, and the carefully-staged photo ops? Does it take even more effort to be open-minded when it comes to all the candidates, and refuse to vote for someone simply because you voted that way in the past or because they're just like you?

Yes.

But to slack off is to risk doing what so many are doing when it comes to Sarah Palin - replacing actual knowledge with media-driven conjecture and allowing a not-so-carefully-constructed-but-oh-so-shiny facade to dazzle them and make them blind to the need to ask some very serious questions.