The Palin Effect

[grantcart]

From a future Political Science Text book:


The Palin Effect: An extraordinary set of circumstances thought to be so fanciful in nature as to be nearly impossible whereby a person comes onto the national stage from nowhere and simultaneously makes George Bush look competent and Charlie Gibson look intelligent. The circumstances required for the effect to take place are so convoluted and unlikely that they read like an old Andy Hardy movie where an erstwhile bunch of kids put on a talent show to raise money to help pay for the war in Iraq.

The name came into general usage from the 2008 election campaign when Senator John McCain unable to get the king makers of the Republican convention to agree with his wish to appoint his old pals to the presidential ticket decided to get back at them with the appointment of the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential Nominee of the party.

While the appointment initially created a sensation the selection began to look increasing strange when the candidate tried to make her policy positions clear to the general public. McCain made no effort to vet the nominee and literally dozens of contradictory policy positions and mini-scandals erupted in a matter of days.

The climax of the effort to sustain a credible campaign was reached in her first public interview by ABC newsman Charlie Gibson. Gibson was undoubtedly chosen for asking then Senator Obama twenty minutes of mind numbing idiotic questions during a debate which exhaustively chronicled a long list of trivial questions that long plagued the candidacy of the future President. In the Gibson/Palin interview Gibson asked Palin first about a pork barrel project that she had championed and then presented herself as being its critic, and secondly about how she intended to reform the Bush administration having supported him for 8 years including stating that "thank God for George Bush, the greatest President of the 20th century (sic)". This led to the following epitaph of Palin's national political career:


"Palin was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it and she supported the Bush Administration until she wanted to reform it."


The comparison actually made George Bush look like a reasonably competent leader and revived Gibsons career.


There was a grassroots campaign in 2012 to bring Palin back as a Presidential candidate but it was short lived when it was discovered the effort was planned and almost exclusively supported by underground democratic elements in the blogoshpere.

[Window]

1. Well done. LOL! K/R.

:kick:

[grantcart]

2. tks

[mwb970]

3. Great, except "erstwhile" doesn't mean "earnest".

It means "former". So you have a "former bunch of kids" putting on a show in that Andy Hardy movie. (Definition here.)

Don't feel bad, I thought it meant "earnest" until I was well over 40. :blush: It sure sounds like it means "earnest"!

[grantcart]

5. at 1:00 in the morning it does lol

actually I think I would have made that mistake 24 hours a day.

Before your correction sent me to the dictionary I thought they were synonyms. Is that a common mistake?

[grantcart]

4. .....

actually I think I would have made that mistake 24 hours a day.

Before your correction sent me to the dictionary I thought they were synonyms. Is that a common mistake?