’08 & The Classroom Motif

’08 & The Classroom Motif

As columnist Bob Herbert noted yesterday, Sarah Palin resembles that unprepared student who clearly doesn’t know much about anything.  When Charlie Gibson asked Mrs. Palin about the Bush doctrine, it all became abundantly clear:  Mrs. Palin indeed looked like…a moose caught in headlights.  Put simply, in educator’s jargon, Mrs. Palin came off as a student BADLY misplaced in a class where she simply does not belong and where she will most likely fail.  This could all change, of course, if she cheats; if her symbolic parents—her Rovian surrogates—at the RNC make her jump a grade level, or two, or, hell, ten, on policy; and/or if she shows she can glide by with a low pass in the D range because her “parents” did most of her homework to counterbalance a pathetically low performance on the job. 

But what’s most interesting in all of this is the classroom motif that has manifested in the 08’ meta narrative, especially with Mrs. Palin’s meteoric emergence.  We hear reports about Mrs. Palin in terms of whether she passed or failed.  We hear stories of how Mrs. Palin is “cramming” on foreign policy matters because she knows so little.  Yet disturbingly enough, much of the American public digs her “studious” appearance because of her dress and the eyeglasses even though she is perhaps one of the most unqualified republican female politicians Mr. McCain could’ve selected:  Imagine had he considered Governor Christine Todd Whitman, Governor Jodi Rell, or Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison?  Clearly, these women would be appropriately placed in the narrative of national classroom politics, and, better yet, each of them would be a suitable VP choice for Mr. McCain’s presidential ticket.  Perhaps the mainstream media should consider why Mr. McCain LEFT THESE WOMEN BEHIND for a woman whose skills and experience indicate she should stay on the elementary school playground.