Of the many unflattering caricatures of Sarah Palin that litter the political landscape, the notion that she is a dummy or a puppet — a mere figure for manipulation by a superior brain — is probably the most prevalent. She has even been given a mock “endorsement,” bestowed in a YouTube video by the so-called Ventriloquist Dummies of America Association, for her supposed likeness to an inert object of play.
So let’s just say this at the top: Palin is not anyone’s puppet. It is not true for her, just as it was not true for George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and a long list of politicians who have been accused of having their strings pulled by one puppet master or another.
The image of the politician as puppet is among the oldest tropes in American politics. When William McKinley ran for president in 1896, political cartoonists had fun sketching him seated on the knee of Mark Hanna, a reputed Svengali of that era. No less a figure than John Adams, the Republic’s second president, came to believe that George Washington, as the first chief executive, had been a puppet of the conniving Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s brilliant Treasury secretary. Perhaps Adams’s judgment was influenced by his wife, Abigail, who once wrote of Hamilton, “O, I have read his Heart in his wicked eyes many a time. The very devil is in them.”
But on this point, history’s verdict is clear: Successful politicians are almost never anyone’s dummy. Although it sometimes takes the passage of time and the release of documentary evidence to establish that judgment, there is virtually no case of such a figure proving true to caricature — an empty vessel, a stick figure, a parrot.
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Notes:
I think we all know who the real puppet is and it’s nice to see real men coming out to defend Sarah and the women like her. The US needs a lot more of this. It’s what gentlemen do without a second thought.
Here’s another thing I picked up today. Fox News is ballyhooing a “straw poll” much bandied about by the chattering classes all pissing their pants.
The Washington Times duplicated it and we get the real truth. Sarah is far out in front. Of course, polls are for dogs but I thought I might as well throw this situation in, if for no other reason than to screw Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. What a hoot.
I’ve never thought of Palin as being a puppet. The same can not be said of Oblamebush whom I have always thought of as a marionette.
Obviously, I agree Pat.
The lady is doing fine as she continues to give Obama a real lesson in politics (and a heart attack). I just sit back and watch the feathers fly as I consider that if she had been in the Number One spot in the last election the US might be enjoying a very clever female president this very day. It didn’t happen because McCain panicked and failed to truly turn her loose.
Now it’s Sarah’s turn.
We’ll see how that goes (and in my pointy headed view it’s going very well). With a wink and a grin she’s destroying “the one”, not so much by what she is doing. More because of what he is doing. Democrats are a target rich environment.
She is an adult and that’s a very difficult concept for the media to understand. Paul Martin chumming up to Bozo from the rock band U2 etc. that’s what the media understands.