The Economist
The Republican nomination
Who's afraid of Sarah Palin?
THERE are two reasons that I haven't really been keeping track of Sarah Palin's whimsical tour around the United States, which may or may not be ongoing. The first is because I think she's said that she's taken to the road in an effort to communicate and connect with ordinary Americans without being separated from them by the usual political scrum of cameras and klieg lights, overprotective handlers and jabbering reporters; and I have no desire to interfere with this worthy journey of self-discovery. The second is that, if she does decide to run for president, I don't think she has a realistic chance of winning the nomination, much less the election—and so it's more important to pay attention to the people who do.
However, I have been vaguely aware, through the fog of the summer cold that I'm nursing, that a lot of people have been paying attention, and are worried about the contingency that Mrs Palin might be nominated. Among the Republicans, the worry is that she could win the nomination and prove unelectable. Among Democrats, the worry is that the Republicans are wrong to be thus worried.
To all of this, I would say: why so worried? As I said, I don't think Mrs Palin has a realistic chance of winning the nomination. She surely has higher name recognition than any of the other candidates, so her low support numbers—which are objectively low, although relatively high given the bar set by other prospective candidates—suggest that voters have had a chance to think about it and are keeping their options open. That's why her chances of winning the nomination seem puny. But if I was to take a super-dose of Nyquil and wake up in January 2013 to see President Palin on the television, I would still be sanguine. I would want to go back and read some of the excellent election coverage at Democracy in America, naturally, but I would guess that somehow Mrs Palin, during the course of her campaign, had managed to answer her critics on both sides of the aisle, to present a compelling policy platform, and to demonstrate the leadership qualities—magnanimity, steadiness, and optimism—which have heretofore eluded her as a national figure.
That is, the anxieties about Mrs Palin point to a larger question: why do pundits have so little confidence in voters? The objections to Mrs Palin are about personality rather than policy. The fear is that she's too reckless, too divisive and too intemperate to be an effective president. If that's the case, there's no reason to think that voters will go for it. During the 2008 election, for example, we saw long campaigns for both nominations, with a number of candidates on each side, and the eventual choices being narrowed to a handful of people who seemed generally credible to most observers. Is it possible that Americans as a group have become much stupider in the intervening years? That would be extraordinary. And looking over other recent presidential elections, I don't see any where we would say with full and damning confidence that the voters were wrong.
If Mrs Palin presents a danger to anybody, it's to the Republican Party; if she struck out as an independent, she would presumably siphon enough votes from the eventual Republican nominee to yield a 1992-style outcome. But if primary voters present a danger, it's that they tend to regress toward the mean, collectively favouring candidates who are more colourless than those who eventually win the presidency (as in 2004).
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/republican-nomination
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