{"id":876,"date":"2008-10-04T09:34:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-04T13:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=876"},"modified":"2008-10-04T19:03:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-04T23:03:15","slug":"why-i-genuinely-like-sarah-palin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2008\/10\/04\/why-i-genuinely-like-sarah-palin\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I genuinely like Sarah Palin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>She&#8217;s no nonsense, has no chip on her shoulder, has a sense of humor. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sitnews.us\/0406Viewpoints\/042706_sarah_palin.html\">Bright<\/a> and persistent though no policy fiend or <strong>wonkette<\/strong>. \u00a0Videos of her from <strong>before <\/strong>the nomination are more telling than recent appearances &#8212; not artificial, just herself.\u00a0 ( Examples: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VrBe9AJyb-k\">sports reporting and personal history<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5H-26MOxH34\">on difficult supreme court decisions<\/a> |\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yh-lW2opLyQ\">on citizenship and responsibility<\/a> )<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s still compatible with being humanly vindictive, devoutly unscientific, a compulsive fabricator (I&#8217;ve noticed a lot of that in both parties and at every level &#8212; this, or at least the ability to say something with total confidence regardless of its truth, must be selected for in our [societal, international] political process), unprepared for the international scene, and a <font color=\"maroon\">terrifying<\/font> <strong>potential<\/strong> C-in-Ch.\u00a0 I hope she survives the election season with her dignity and political karma intact.<\/p>\n<p>As for recent embarrassing appearances &#8212; conventional wisdom suggests any interviews or public appearances in a major election require extremely careful locution to avoid falling afoul of bad soundbites&#8230; something brought to the fore by the fallout from just a few public speeches.\u00a0 The brilliant <strong>Brian Williams<\/strong>,\u00a0 one of the few people I know who grok what it means to give a truly <strong>neutral<\/strong> description of something, gave a pitch-perfect description of this yesterday night in this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZmzeLsj8rbI\">Letterman chat<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The funny thing about that conventional wisdom is that we have <strong>so many <\/strong>modern counter-examples, where speaking one&#8217;s heart and mind, being open and even <strong>politically incorrect<\/strong>, works out in the end &#8212; including significantly for McCain himself.\u00a0\u00a0 But I&#8217;ve noticed that when the stakes rise, and the &#8216;highest-powered&#8217; consultants step in, even risk-taking projects <strong>turn <\/strong>conservative.\u00a0 Not because that is the best strategy, but because our <strong>rudimentary <\/strong>system of measuring success favors risk-averse consultants (hello, McKinsey) and risk-seeking <strong>dealmakers <\/strong>(hello, Wall Street).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She&#8217;s no nonsense, has no chip on her shoulder, has a sense of humor. \u00a0Bright and persistent though no policy fiend or wonkette. \u00a0Videos of her from before the nomination are more telling than recent appearances &#8212; not artificial, just herself.\u00a0 ( Examples: sports reporting and personal history | on difficult supreme court decisions |\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-e8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}