All About Eve, er Sarah Palin contd.
Michael Wolff has one thing right about some of the performance meaning of Palin’s speech the other night: politicians will show more and more emotion. Palin is a clear first in this department in terms of Presidential politics and Wolff is right that it is a huge part of her appeal.
It doesn’t matter if she only runs the gamut of emotions from A to B as Dorothy Parker once said of Katherine Hepburn. Up till now, as Wolff points out, Presidential candidates have never left A. Until now.
Palin looked like Eve Harrington to me from minute one back in September 08. She has Eve’s weaknesses but also her strengths.
I think the general public trend toward emotion is a good one but only when coupled with transparency and reason and interaction. Many people do not feel heard through intellectual measures only. Many people are not sequential thinkers. The fact that people other than white men tend to actually show emotion more often (I think mostly by nurture) has been used against them in politics for a long time.
When our culture supports a mix of reason and emotion together in our Presidential politics (think Martin Luther King or Sojourner Truth) that will be a wonderful day.
