The Muse

I live in South Carolina, home of the missing governor who now has made me unable to say “hiking” with a straight face. Sanford, along with Alaska governor Palin, have made very public (and rambling) statements in the past weeks, and the media dissection would still be going had Michael Jackson not died and the spree killer in Gaffney not appeared. What of these public confessions? What’s wrong with believing them at face value. Stanley Fish argued the same in a recent blog post:

So what’s the bottom line story? Simple. Sanford is in love. Palin is in pain. Sometimes what it seems to be is what it is.

I’m no fan of Sanford or Palin. I won’t go into details, but one problem I have with both of them, relevant to this discussion, is that they both seem so insulated from their constituents. Both show signs of narcissism, and (at least with respect to Sanford), I’ve come to doubt that they have any ability to connect with individuals outside of political purposes. In Sanford’s case, I have been proven wrong, and quite to the extreme. I saw him as an “everyman” while watching him ramble on about his infidelity. I’m not saying every man cheats, nor that it is excusable, but an affair and a very public apology/longing really brings out the humanity in people, right?

As for Palin, as much as she has been maligned in the public eye (and I’m not saying that isn’t all without merit), it is indeed possible that she is ready to say “the hell with it” and move on. The unwillingness to take her ramblings at face value might be a double standard (we’re led to believe, in many instances, that she simply must be shrewdly calculating her moves, something women in public life seem to be accused of more often than men). I believe she’s frustrated. She might be calculating, and this might be an early move towards 2012, but who cares? She wants out. But if she believes Alaska is better off without her, why can’t we agree that America would be, too, and forget any sort of 2012 run?

        

fowlerjk commentary