The conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, remarks in today’s NY Times that:
Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
It must be said that people writing on this blog do tend to have sought quite a bit of education. But we can easily see that there are plenty of people who haven’t and who nonetheless have been great successes on their own terms, or on the terms that we would ourselves be happy with. Virginia Woolf was brilliant and produced great work, but she did not go to college. Steve Jobs has brought a large creativity to Apple and he didn’t finish at Reed. Many people do what they care about at a high level, from teaching little kids to being a sustaining presence in their community and onto making, building and nurturing. There are all sorts of heros.
None of that means, however, that any one of these other people could do what Virginia Woolf did or accomplish what Steve Jobs has done. So why is there this persistent idea that nonetheless they could be a wonderful president?
If Malcolm Gladwell is right, then the hugely successful – the outliers – tend to put in a staggering amount of effort into their success. However much they might hide it, they are swots, to use the English term. There are elements in both England and the US that are really very anti-the-swots. Is part of Palin’s appeal just the reluctance to let the swots have the prize?
And, finally, why did she do that?!? Just quit her job? I expect to see her show up on Fox TV with a hugely lucrative contract and a lot of power, but this seems to be a minorty opinion.