Todd Gitlin on Sarah Palin: "Your Department of Law"

"Your Department of Law" | TPMCafe: Kate Snow of ABC News scores the Big Get with Sarah Palin, and elicits this amazing quotation:

as for whether another pursuit of national office...would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

Snow's droll, too-true follow-up line:

There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

What there is is a legal counsel. He or she counsels but does not "throw" anything "out."

Ten years ago, it was de rigueur for news organizations to go to every Democrat under the sun and press them on their views of Bill Clinton's carrying on with Monica Lewinsky. May we expect the same full-court press on every Republican, to see how they feel about having campaigned, not so long ago, to put this woman one 73-year-old heartbeat away from the Oval Office?

Shall we hear more from Bill Kristol, he who granted his imprimatur to the Governor way back when she was peaceably ensconced in Juneau?

Or Ross Douthat, who on Monday informed his NYT readers that "Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard." And that: "Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true."

Greg Marx at CJR refutes Douthat's faux populism. Sarah Palin is beloved by the Republican base, period. There's no evidence that anyone else loves her (besides Tina Fey and comedy-lovers everywhere).

Truth is, anyone can be a great success story on the op-ed page of the NYT even if he's been to Harvard.

Comments

[Bloix]

What's with the "this woman" (see the Andrew Sullivan commenter, above)? The problem with Palin is not that she's a woman, and these repeated contemptuous references to her gender make me wonder at the real reason for these people's objections to her.