WASHINGTON – The arrival of Sarah Palin brings a special something to the 2016 campaign, like a little LSD added to the punch bowl. Are we watching C-SPAN, or a reality TV show, or a “Saturday Night Live” skit? It is impossible to tell without consulting the channel guide.
Ted Cruz may have secured the coveted Duck Dynasty blessing. But Palin is the original and best representative of Kardashian conservatism. Her endorsement of Donald Trump was entirely devoid of policy content – a speech that did not even aspire to shallowness. It is enough that Trump is “going rogue” and “ticking people off” and “making media heads spin.”
Palin has been entirely consumed and replaced by her own bitterness against a Republican establishment she feels betrayed her, and against a media that mocked her. More than anything else she clings to resentment and rage. And her revolution, over time, has become comprehensive; not just a revolt against elites, but a revolt against syntax and taste and preparation and reason.
The phenomenon of Palin raises the question: Does populism need to be anti-intellectual? The answer is “no.” The populist mythology surrounding Abraham Lincoln was not only the rail-splitter born in a log cabin, but the youth who studied books by candlelight. He was, indeed, dismissed as a rube. But he wasn’t one. He quoted Shakespeare with ease and suffused politics with thought.
Populism, by definition, is anti-elitist. But that is very different from being anti-intellectual. It was William F. Buckley who provided the best description of conservative anti-elitism. “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.” The assumption of wisdom in average people is the basis for free-market economics and, ultimately, for democratic theory. But every conservative would hope that the phone-book ruling class would possess some knowledge of our national history, some acquaintance with our founding documents, some ability to make reasoned political arguments.