Palin's future

from an email I just wrote to a friend and colleague:

Palin's going to make it easy for the GOP to make her the scapegoat - she really is a bit nuts, I think. She's very careless about the lies and inconsistency, so there is already quite a "video trail" - she will be pursued by an ever expanding video montage of contradictions and inanities from her own mouth.

Those who believe that she will continue to be a force to be reckoned with in American politics are surely right about her charisma and natural on-camera talent. No doubt about these. But the American people have proven that they're not idiots - they rejected Palin because they saw that behind these qualities there is no substance. She is a Potemkin figure-head who has nothing to offer except her own hollow ambition, and maybe an occasional wink.

As I've argued before on this blog, ideological politics have been displaced by a more pragmatic approach - this will continue on both sides of the aisle, I believe. A person such as Palin is only viable in an ideological movement, because in such a movement leaders are not called upon to think for themselves or set the terms of the debate - they are called upon to be emblems of the existing ideology and then, once they're in power, to make decisions according to the pre-existing ideological template.

In a more pragmatic era, leaders have to actually know something and make decisions based on their own readings of situations - a set of capabilities that Palin neither possesses nor respects. She has no future in politics except as the leader of an ideological movement that is currently on its way to definite minority status. That's not to say she won't be with us for a long time to come, but president of the USA? Nope.