Sarah Sixpack

This blog has a new tagline, "grounded in a recognizable American lifestyle," courtesy of this article about Sarah Palin in Politico. Because it's equally true of your humble blogger, who humbly submits his name for consideration for the GOP presidential ticket in 2012.

(I never realized Politico was quite such a cyber-birdcage liner.)

For a generation now, Republicans have pounded home the message that government is the problem, because it's full of pointy-headed elites who think they know what Joe Sixpack needs better than Joe himself. Well, bushwah! Better to have Joe Sixpack himself lead the government, guided by good old-fashioned American common sense, plus how his bunions are feeling on a given morning. Or for a shot of variety, let's nominate sexy Sarah Sixpack, who will dominate China and Russia but submit to her husband, who will bring home the tax cuts and fry them up in a pan.

It seems to me this is where Republican political logic points us. The last thing we want are people in high office who are smart or conscientious or the least bit finicky. Let's elect leaders who are average at best: recognizable and relatable to us. Semi-competence and lack of vision are just what this country needs in a candidate. An umimpressive resume` is an essential qualification.

Republican political logic, sadly, has jumped the shark. Sure we recognize the Palin family, just like we recognize (and maybe try to avoid) a ne'er-do-well relative who borrows money and never repays it. There's always a market for practical common-sense leadership, but the GOP brand name used to connote stability and respectability. The soap-opera-fication of the party has not gone over well. Too many scenes out of an episode of Montel Williams. Too many Congressional page scandals, too many shotgun accidents, too many wide stances.

I feel like I've been posting here a lot lately, but I guess I haven't posted since it came out that Sarah Palin is about to become a grandmother. I don't want to roast the Governor for that, I think very few people on the left or right want to vilify her or her daughter. But I think many of us could really do without the alternately petty and prurient melodrama. The daughter is pregnant. Her boyfriend talks like an ass on his MySpace page. The family is conducting a vendetta against the sister's ex-husband. Sarah is spiteful toward all her political foes. It's soap opera stuff. Americans love it in many contexts but we're tired of it in our politics. If McCain couldn't give us Accomplished or Experienced, he could have done a better job of giving us Stable and Wholesome.