The qualities of Sarah Palin

A head for business, a natural communicator—and a disaster in waiting for the Republicans

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Readers' comments




There are two ways to look at the situation: these republicans especially Rupert Murdoch are stupid! or they think the people who are following her and watching her shows are stupid, although the result is the same.

I think it is very clear.

Reluctant Polluter

When Sarah Palin says “I recently won in court to stop my book ‘America by Heart’ from being leaked, but US Govt can’t stop WikiLeaks’ treasonous act?” she doesn't confuse apples with oranges. The US government could easily stop WikiLeaks by starving it of their feed by taking seriously the task of protection for their confidential material and of vetting those with access to it.

But I'm sure the mob which used to meet any utterance by G W Bush with derisive shrieks would continue having good time on Sarah Palin's account.

Well, GWB had his eight years in the White House, right? No lampooning will stop Sarah Palin to achieve this, too. And no amount of her real or imagined slips of tongue will get the current White House tenant lease for the second term.


Are we giving Sarah Palin too much credit here? I guess it is a mark of the times that Sarah Palin is still going strong when in the past people would have been eliminated from contention for any kind of public office for flubs like the ones she has come up with. We must really be lacking good states(wo)men.


Even though a third of her picks didn't win in the last election, doesn't that mean two thirds did? Ronald Reagan was divisive but Barrack Obama isn't? Give me a break. Once you get out of Washington D.C. or Manhattan, you find a lot of people that are not happy with the people running our national government right now.


Economurph wrote: "Pelosi recently suggested that unemployment benefits stimulate economic growth".

However short-term, giving people with zero income some money to spend will increase private-sector demand. If that's overall growth is questionable, but it's a debatable point anyway.


She is bold - She is outspoken, confrontational, dismissive and condescending. She embraced the Tea Party simply because they gave her an audience when no one else would listen to her slogans about taking government back, or with euphemisms of, "don't retreat reload" as a metaphor to support the divisive language used by a popular talk show radio host. The new social media that you refer to is the grapevine of bloggers of non-essential circumstances that pollute the internet highway with unqualified rhetoric - in the "takes one to know one" mainstream of those who believe that Sarah Palin actually stands for anything of real substance and who are no different then the Rush Limbaugh ditto heads.

Natural communicator? "How's that hopey changey thing working for ya?" Pioneer colloquialism might work if you're running for town sheriff, but her communication skills certainly lack the essential elements of intellectual and rationale thought, as so many of her comments and responses do, and is the reason why she refuses to be challenged by the mainstream media; not because they are hostile, but because they challenge her ideas, or lack thereof.

Sarah Palin's pretense towards communication broadens the divide in the American social sphere of democracy that already bleeds with divisions amongst the core political parties, which in and of itself brands her as a status quo politician that is short on ideas, experience, expertise, and the ability to bridge the gaps of both domestic and foreign policy failures.

Sarah Palin will run as an ego driven candidate and as the proverbial car saleswoman who will try to convince the American voters that her product brand will run farther, faster, longer and better than all the other brands combined, and go out of her way to avoid the rest of us who have already looked under the hood and know that the engine is missing!


To me, Palin is the zenith of the Bumper sticker political culture that has grown up over the years. in Bumper stricker politics, sound bites replace discourse and debate. Palin is very media savvy, but in terms of true politics (ie the sort that leads to compromise and action) she is the worst of al kinds. She may win the 2012 election, but she will soon learn that tweets don't make good policy


So what if the Republicans right now don't like her? The idea that there is a rift in the GOP between typical republicans and tea partiers is an illusion. If Sarah Palin wins, she's still a conservative Republican. She's saying everything the Republicans have said for over a decade, but simplified. She's just winning over all these voters that never vote because they were too dumb, or felt left out of the process. All the Republicans will vote for her come election day, because they hate Democrats. With that plus the independents she'll net, plus the tea partiers who used to not vote much, plus the fact that Democrats are disappointed in Obama would make a tight election, except for maybe in California.

Honestly, she probably could beat Obama because he's become a complete pansy. The Dems need to throw Hillary into the ring, and she should've been it in the first place. Hillary is ballsy and smart, and Obama is showing himself to be detached from the responsibilities of his office. Not only does he need to be a President by the definition given in our Constitution, but he also needs to balance that with what the country as a whole expects from the President.

It's like even when he's speaking, he isn't there, which is the total opposite of Sarah Palin, who is present everywhere! Any time anyone talks politics, she is the elephant in the room. She is tied to so many levels of political discourse. Some of us make fun of her, some of us praise her, some of us hate her, some of us are afraid of her, some of us just find her attractive, some of us are intrigued and interested by her.

Sarah Palin has become fully embedded and realized in the American consciousness, and Barack Obama and the Democrats have become more ghostly and faint. We hope a lot less than we did the day he was a elected, and are now more aware of the resistance to change this country has.

Felipe Coelho

Our president in Brazil has several characteristics in common with Ms Palin, particularly the one of being proud about ignoring basic facts that he should know either as president or as common citizen. When the financial crisis started in North America he tried to calm down the Brazilian people saying that the crisis would not cross the Atlantic Ocean (as people pointed out his error he repeated that several times...). He also made scores of tactless public remarks about other nations - no need of Wikileaks. My favorites are a pro-Obama statement before election, a joke about a city considered to have too many gays and a declaration during a visit to the Namibian capital, that she was so clean that she did not look like Africa. Even so he was considered a wise leader by The Economist as he gave a turn to the right in the already cautious and conservative financial policies inherited from the previous social-democratic government.

Isn't The Economist being too harsh with Ms Palin? She fakes that she is even more stupid than she really is (Lula does the same), playing with the image of having the same cultural deficiencies of the common citizen (Berlusconi and Lula do that as well), and this shows some cleverness. Lula said, during twenty years, that he would change everything and then, after getting elected, maintained everything the same, including many ugly political traditions in Brazil.

Don't you consider that Ms. Palin could be also be a sort of Alaskan version of Berlusconi and Lula? Of course she could be sincere, like Hitler, another demagogic politician, and then America would be in serious troubles indeed. Then one could always try selling Alaska back to the Russians...

Best regards from Rio de Janeiro


Yes she is a good communicator and preacher for sure, there are quite a few on FOX, Glen Beck for sure. But I agree with the view that it is Democrat's blessing that she run for high office, no matter how well she can communicate, airhead is airhead, airhead can talk but cannot think, and God bless America if people like her keep getting voted into office (there are quite a lot already).

jeff watchman

The Republican are scared to death of her and here's why: Delegates in the presidentual primaries are winner take all and with 8 guys running Sarah cleans their clock. That's the long and short of it.


As a Canadian voyeur into the minstrel show that is American politics, I find it fascinating that the most abhorrent of the hacks who dominate your news cycle do so with a bare minimum of media backlash. She sells copy..I get that but how much longer will this guttersnipe be allowed to spew her foolish claptrap? Maybe you should take her seriously long enough to shut her the f**k up.


I'm amazed (but not surprised) at the blatantly elitist filth spewing from these reader comments. It speaks to the priorities of the left: If the package is clean enough, actual substance is optional.

Joe Biden, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi aren't exactly shining stars in terms of mental capacity (to put it mildly), yet Palin's smarts are somehow diminished because she has stretched the English language on a few occasions?

Mr. Biden practically invented the word 'gaffe,' and Pelosi recently suggested that unemployment benefits stimulate economic growth. These individuals are 2nd & 3rd in command, yet Sarah Palin is unqualified?

The hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed liberal 'intelligentsia' is clearly out in full force these days.

Reluctant Polluter


I pushed the Recommend button under your post on Thatcher and Reagan; it's absolute truth that all the lefty moaning and pretentious eye-rolling in their address are a sore loser's reaction - the Left hasn't produced any leader even distantly as successful as them since... 1789 when members of the French National Assembly kicked supporters of the revolution to the left side of the speaker (Monsieur le Président).

But David Cameron isn't a continuation of Margaret Thatcher's line - he's a Labour-lite; a mirror image of the type of Republicans Mrs Palin and the Tea Party expose as phonies.

He has his nemesis too: it's UK Independence Party, who slowly but surely makes its way to election success akin to that of Geert Wilders' party in the Netherlands. David Cameron (they call him Daud Islameron over there) won't last. Deservedly.

Reluctant Polluter

@Michael Dunne:

All these mumblings about zillions of $$$ which Mrs Palin is making are just another Assange-like low achieved by the presumably high-brow Economist. Her earnings are absolutely irrelevant to her political activity.

Billionaires Bloomberg and Soros are way richer than Sarah Palin, and both are hyper-active politically, right? One of them keeps an elected position, though the other prefers to exercise clandestine influence. Had ketchup billions prevented John Kerry from running for president?

Examples abundant, and they make your 'analysis' useless.

Reluctant Polluter


"If that is America, then we here in Europe have clearly not understood what America is about."

a) Your opinion is far from being representative for the UK;
b) UK is not Europe;
c) When UK Independence Party becomes the kingmaker in the Parliament (soon, let's hope) Britain will quit the EUSSR;
d) This Britain will feel comfortable with Mrs. Palin's America

Io Triomphe

I honestly can't even understand why anyone takes her seriously. She's a right-wing nut-job even compared to most republicans in this day of an extremely conservative GOP. She makes no attempt at thoughtful contributions to political discourse, she's just a circus act making millions by shouting controversies. Sadly, while there was never a good reason for so many people to listen to her, McCain dragged her into the spotlight and she's probably going to be there for a while to distract Americans from paying attention to substantive issues.


First: can you see why every media outlet runs Palin stories daily?--look at all the comments on this blog. I doubt the Economist had so much traffic when they announced, for example, titanium was found in Peru.

[Second....and I almost want to be quiet about this....as an Obama supporter....please, please, Sarah, run. And I support all those bloggers that usually I disagree with. Continue with the recent Republican habit of self-deception. Convince people she can win. Snarl. Be condescending. Accuse the anti-Sarah people of condescension. Type complete nonsense with incredible ernestness. Go! Go! ]



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