Well, Gov. Palin is not an alcoholic (recovering or otherwise). That being said...

Kurt Vonnegut commented before he died, that he wished Americans would familiarize themselves with some aspects of psychology. In particular, he wanted us to familiarize ourselves with the symptoms of a sociopath. This information is no longer available only in textbooks, and once you start looking at it, I think it changes political discourse, because certain behavior and speech patterns become recognizable, and you can't, in good conscience, defend them anymore. In other words, in his 80's, I think Vonnegut was wishing us well, and giving us a gift.

Palin never had a chance to wreak havoc on a national or world stage.

If you read Jonathan Raban in the London Review of Books, he flew up to Alaska and talked to the local journos and politicos-- they had a ton of dirt, to make Bill Clinton and the 'bimbos' (which was widely known in Arkansas) seem trivial.

The woman excels in what is best described as 'small minded ruthlessness'.

She had no interest in, or understanding of, policy. What she does understand is how to use politics to promote Sarah Palin, and to 'get' her political and personal enemies.

For Sarah Palin, good policy is what promotes Sarah Palin's political ends. There isn't even any recognition of the notion of public service.

Again and again, I am put in mind of the Angela Lansbury character in the original Manchurian Candidate (the wife of the McCarthyite Senator). No interest in communism per se, but every interest in seizing ultimate political power.

Or think Spiro Agnew.

One doesn't have to have the paranoid conspiracy theories of a Hollywood thriller, to feel that American democracy just had a terrifying near miss. President McCain it could have withstood, but a President Palin, suddenly elevated to supreme power in the midst of a national tragedy, would have been a nightmare for democracy.

Bush and Palin are birds of a feather because the anti-intellectuals are ascendant in the Republican party. Self confident fools like Bush and Palin are easily controlled by the wealthy elite.

No, Palin's a more obvious, transparent version of Bush. She doesn't bother concealing her contempt/fear/hatred for what she doesn't know/understand. Bush at least made some effort to pretend he had studied the matter before deciding.

I think of Palin as an authoritarian whose appeal is fundamentally about Volk und Blut und Gott. She's scary in ways Bush never scared me. He was mean and incompetent but finally lazy and willing to defer.

I don't think Sarah defers to anybody.

The comparisons, thank God, end with the fact that Palin did not achieve the VP. That being said I do agree that both are comparable in character-- both claim to be "born again " Christians, both have delusions of granduer, and both have in essence shit for brains.

Steve Benen wrote: "Sure, Palin wasn't able to do serious national (and international) damage ..."

Well, DUH !!! Like, HELLOOO !!!

Palin wasn't able to do serious damage because PALIN DID NOT BECOME PRESIDENT.

If the Bush gang had not succeeded in stealing the 2000 election with massive voter disenfranchisement and fraud, and ultimately the assistance of right-wing partisan Republican hacks on the Supreme Court who blatantly, sneeringly violated their oaths of office to put him in power, then the legitimately elected president Al Gore would have been sworn in and Bush wouldn't have been able to do any damage either.

Definitely Same Cloth.

As has been stated (by Krugman or Rich in a recent editorial I believe), they both exhibit what is aptly called:

'WILLFUL IGNORANCE'

That's like: "I don't know much and I don't give a damn that I don't know much because I already know all I need to (and God tells me everything else I need to know). End of conversation. Now go away.".

Give Palin some credit, she's a better hunter than Bush, and a much better hunter than the current VP.

Where were all of these adminstration insiders with all of this harsh insight for the past eight years? It does alot of good now for them to kick the corpse.

I can somewhat see a Bush/Palin comparison, but I'm not sure I completely agree. Sure George Bush isn't all that bright, but he's not clueless. He's a smirking bully who steps on anyone's neck because he's well aware of where his privilaged upbring could take him. He's a dull, self-important lout.

Sarah Palin is a clown. It's not that she isn''t too bright, she's stupid. Her vacant stare and low rent smile cover a mean-spiritedness and victiviness.

George Bush is an over aged, alcholic, spoiled brat.

sarah Palin is a bitter, low class rube..

Neither belong in a position of authority.

Bush reads a lot, but Palin reads everything.

Not so sure about the comparison. Mainly because I believe that Bush, had he been given intelligence of an impending nuclear strike, would have actually done everything in his power to stop it. Palin, OTOH, would have sat back in her office, pressed the retaliation button, and waited for the Rapture to whisk her away from the impending destruction of the planet. Bush may be an idiot and a dry raving Jesus drunk, but Palin is an idiot, AND a true believer in the Joel's Army, war-humping, loony-bin Apocalypse-lusting, domionist "christianity." One is infinitely more terrifying than the other. Honestly, I'd rather have Bush.

Both Bush and Palin lack any semblance of true humility. Both are arrogant beyond belief and will go to any length to show they are right (outright lie, re-invent the facts, deny what is so, etc.).

I think Palin is more Bushlike than Bush. I shudder to think of the damage she could've done with federal power.

The difference between the two is that Bush appears housetrained (but actually pees in under the sofa) and Palin is most definitely not. So in Bush's case, it took a couple years for the American public to link the stench to him.

There is one thing about the Palin nomination that I cannot get out of my head. Why did the wise old men of the GOP make the same mistake twice. Really now, behind closed doors, these wise old men have long since acknowledged to themselves that they elected an incompetent who has ruined their party. So why Palin? It is as though they were trying to throw the election.

Larry: Too little, too late. We Reality Based knew that Bush was a fuckin' idiot, a buck naked emperor, but nobody who really counted said anything when it could have mattered.

So glad to be talking about this instead of my stupid governor.

Their personalties are certainly similar beginning with their delusions of competence in the face of rather stark incompetence. In Dumbya's case that can likely be traced to people telling him he was competent even when he wasn't--his parents, his friends, Yale, his business partners, the voters of Texas, SCOTUS, and maybe in 2004 the voters of the U.S. I think the case can be made that he is a villian--certainly he is a sociopath, but the real villians are SCOTUS in 2000 and the afore mentioned voters-maybe-in 2004. Palin has a much different background and is basically trailer trash. Where she gets her delusions from is anybody's guess although I imagine she went through life with a lot of guys telling her how great she was in order to get her in the sack and then she had the experience of the voters of Wasilla, the voters of Alaska and finally John McCain to feed into the delusions. A more self aware person would have figured things out before the Couric interview, but I sense that Palin remains clueless to this very day. What I would like to know is why does the GOP come up with these clowns and why does the American voter give them the time of day?

Sarah Palin - An Arctic hillbilly version of George W. Bush with a vagina. Plain and simple.

Will the media, including the hometown Anchorage Daily News, start looking for answers to all the questions raised by Tripp Palin's birth?

To paraphrase Jack from "As Good As It Gets," when you think Palin, think Bush, then take away all reason and accountability. Then cube it.

George had/has Laura to file down some of the rough edges and sorta get him interested in being the edyoukashun president, and Sara has...Todd. Guns and snowmobiles for everybody!

George is the sardonic drunken fratboy; Sarah is the killer cheerleader mom.

I could do this all day.

... both she and Bush are cut from the same cloth?

Yep, CHEESE cloth.

Gov. Palin earned her jobs as sports reader, mayor and governor mostly through her own efforts. W. Bush has never earned any personal accomplishments; all he had to do was accept bailouts and plum jobs as gifts.

The only difference between Bush and Palin is degree of power. Period.

"Why did the wise old men of the GOP make the same mistake twice. "

Catfish, what makes you think they made a mistake? The Bush presidency was wildly successful, if you belong to a certain group of wealthy folks. I'm sure they felt a McCain-Palin admin would be similarly lucrative.

That being said, I don't think the plutocrats supported the Palin pick. Bush was one of them, after all; Sarah's a wild card and not their kind.

Look.

The Republican Party has offered the U.S. a whole series of candidates not well qualified for the Office of President or Vice President since Ike took the nomination away from the very right-wing Taft in 1952, and Ike had to choose Nixon as Veep to pacify the ultra-rightists.

Think about it. Goldwater, a Libertarian westerner without any respect for government who bought his Senate seat with inherited money; Nixon, a crook backed up by Spiro Agnew, another crook but one with much less intelligence; Reagan, a senile old man; Dan Quayle, a man of no known accomplishment not handed him by his family; George W. Bush, a recovering drunk of no achievement with a propensity to become a villain; and John McCain, the child of a powerful family who has resisted following rules all his life. Ford was an accident. He, Dole and Bush 41 were about the best every offered.

Is it any surprise that in Sarah Palin the Republican added an ignorant clown pushed by the Dominionist evangelicals to that crew?

When Palin came to Pittsburgh a month before the election a pretty nice impromptu protest took over the blocks around the hotel. More than one person was carring a sign that "Palin = Bush in a Dress" or some other variation. Both are proud of being tough, arrogant and ignorant.

However, while Bush pretends to be some bighat Texas cowboy most of his image is a lie-- he's a blueblood who never would have become president without his surname; Palin is the real deal. She's actually truly self-made and got to where she is on her own, which makes her a slightly more compelling character. Palin is actually more Bush than Bush. Bottom line is they're both wreckless and dangerous egomaniacs and have no business being in any kind of power.

I think Palin is actually worse than Bush because she actually believes all the born-again shit and Bush just kinda goes along with it.

"True believers" are ALWAYS more dangerous.

Actually, back during the campaign I had taken to calling her Sarah W. Palin, since from what I could tell, she was basically Bush in drag.

In 2000, many people acknowledged that Bush wasn't very smart but they excused that by saying that he would surround himself with experts. We all know how that ended up which is why it was so dismaying to hear similar arguments with Palin. Her supporters were saying 1) she would not be the Pres; and 2) she would have 2 months before taking office and that was plenty of time to learn the issues. I think that those who supported Bush and Palin knowing full well that they were unqualified have not received enough of the blame.

Any similarities are superficial; Bush, a rich brat, a 3rd generation political legacy, has lived a padded and protected life. He's never needed to be ambitious.

The power of the Bush Family wealth and connections can't be underestimated.

Palin? A freakin piker. The social class in which Dubya lives would sneer at her.

However, while Bush pretends to be some bighat Texas cowboy most of his image is a lie-- he's a blueblood who never would have become president without his surname; Palin is the real deal. She's actually truly self-made and got to where she is on her own, which makes her a slightly more compelling character. Palin is actually more Bush than Bush. Bottom line is they're both wreckless and dangerous egomaniacs and have no business being in any kind of power.

Posted by: zoe kentucky on December 30, 2008 at 7:02 PM | PERMALINK
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At the risk of sounding incredibly sexist, Palin being the "real deal" because she earned everything she has gives me pause. Because a lot of what she has is based on good looks, being able to flirt, and the vanity of man for easily being beguiled by good-looking flirts. Yes, technically speaking, she's earned what she has, as I don't begrudge anybody using any LEGAL means at his or her disposal to make it in this world, and last I checked being good-looking isn't a crime. But the world is filled with lookers who are able to smile & chat their way into jobs they're otherwise not particularly qualified to have, and then use those same "skills" to keep those jobs or advance. THe world is filled with peoplewho make solely on their abilities and skills and not because they learned how to smile like a pageant contestant.

How hard she worked for what she has weighs heavily on what you consider "work."

m.e.b wrote:

"Kurt Vonnegut commented before he died, that he wished Americans would familiarize themselves with some aspects of psychology. In particular, he wanted us to familiarize ourselves with the symptoms of a sociopath..."

I read an interview with Mr. Vonnegut where he suggested a greater understanding of Mr. Bush's personality flaws could be gained by reading a book by psychologist Hervey Cleckley, "The Mask of Sanity". I suggest starting with section 21, entitled "The psychopath as businessman".

Sure, Palin wasn't able to do serious national (and international) damage, but isn't it fair to say both she and Bush are cut from the same cloth?
No, she hasn't had a chance to show her stuff. We need somebody to make the tough decisions and lead, and maybe she's the answer. Obama's just a same old, same old liberal of the type that was discredited pre Reagan.

Steve,

A quibble. I love the word "disinterested" (almost as much as I like the words "defenestrate" and "disenthrall"). While it's not strictly incorrect to use the word for "not interested" or "bored", I've always liked it better to mean "impartial", which is the more common sense of the word.

Actually, the current president is not the George W. that Ms. Palin is channeling.

What with her droppin' gs, railin' against pointy-headed intellecuals and panderin' to those who hang out in th' shallow end of th' gene pool 'n all, that gal is Jawge Wallace with a twat. You betcha.

Somehow, though, I doubt that Ms. Palin will have the strength of character to repent of her demagogy before she dies, as Governor Wallace did.

Yes, yes, Reagan proved that you could spend and spend and spend by borrowing, borrowing, and raising taxes on the working class. That really discredit...wait...there's someone stupid enough to think that this discredited liberalism?

Yes, Charlie, we realize you are a joke. I mean, Luther is joking. No serious person thinks of Reagan as much more than a senile cartoon character (yeah, Obama said nice things about the nutter/gipper, but that's politics).

"she hasn't had a chance to show her stuff. We need somebody to make the tough decisions and lead, and maybe she's the answer"

Dear God in heaven, what stuff does palin have to show? What tough decisions is she qualified to make?

This woman is a disgrace to women who have worked hard to EDUCATE themselves and advance in their based on hard work and not a wearing short dresses and winking.

Sharah Palin has NO KNOWLEDGE BASE and is unlikely to gain one in her lifetime. This woman graduated high school and college without learning one single thing about the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Govenment.

She also learned nothing, N.O.T.H.I.N.G., about other cultures, other religions, history, geography, etc.

She thinks that winking at foreign heads of state is what a U.S. president does? She is at the bottom of her being a racist and intolerant.
Some leader she would make.

My mother had a term for this kind of folks-"More brass than brains"

I would not agree that they are cut from the same cloth. And it isn't even close: W was technically more qualified to be president than Palin.

First off: I was against a Bush presidency when it was just a rumor that he would run for office.

But I have to give him some credit, credit which is due, something called experience. First his dad held some not insignificant positions in government. Second, he was around his dad, and even in the White House.

He went to Yale _and_ Harvard. It isn't important how well he did, or how he got in, it is important that he went to some school where he had to deal with a bunch of stuck-up jerk-offs who thought they were smarter than anyone else, and even if they were wrong, who cares. This is the land of big personalities: rich, connected, smart, lucky, hard-working...the land of competition.

As a baseline, the reason that these experiences are important is that any president must deal with similar personalities on a daily basis. If you did not grow and get educated around a bunch of smart-asses, you probably never developed an understanding that these smart-asses are sometimes spewing total nonsense. You never learn to separate wheat from chaff. I think they call this critical thinking. You need more than a basic college education to develop this facility, you need to experience moments when someone you thought was really smart, or rich, or connected, doesn't know what they are talking about.

The difference between GWB and Palin is simple. GWB at least learned that lots of these smart-asses could produce nonsense, so this is the basis of his skepticism. Palin is an idiot. She has no idea what or who to believe. Instead, she believes those who support her prior beliefs.

So, in short, GWB at least learned that smart, rich or connected people could be wrong. Palin just goes with the flow, she would be very dangerous as either VP or president.

This came up yesterday too.
These two are tied.
The comparison ends there.
Ever notice that people with so much to hide always dominate the conversation no matter what they say?
Both are accidental experts at the ultimate distraction: holding your attention while having nothing to offer.

I think they are quite different. Palin is a garden variety dolt or thug. The comparison to Agnew is apt.

Bush is a more serious criminal/sociopath.

JohnK

You seriously underestimate Sarah Palin.

GW Bush had all the advantages in life to cast him into the role of presidency.

Sarah Palin had none, and yet had reached a senior political position in the US. She was within an inch of being 1 heartbeat from the presidency, as VP to a 72 year old man who has had a very serious and lethal form of skin cancer, and who spent 5 years at the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Palin was a lot slicker operator than GWB.

She was also an outsider, and outsiders to power do not consider themselves to be bound by the same forces and constrictions of conventionality and political consensus that insiders do. See her 'deal' with Trans Canada Pipelines or her sports stadium in Wasila.

In power, she would have been far more amoral. Her record to date indicates, as others have suggested, a degree of sociopathy. This is a woman who doesn't have an opinion or view that doesn't suit her own ambition. And that would include launching a nuclear strike on Iran or arresting political opponents.

I've seen what sociopathic individuals can do when they reach positions of extreme power and trust. Basically because of the prestige of office, and a disbelief that they are capable of doing what they are actually doing, key individuals fail to act, and the 'safety mechanisms' fail, utterly.

See Bernie Madoff. Or Robert Maxwell.

US democracy has had its nearest escape since, arguably, Richard M Nixon.

I was prepared to believe Sarah Palin was just an empty-skirt dodo, with the worldview of a cedar stump and no situational awareness to speak of. But then, she looked right at me from the TV and winked. And, well, I was just sold and I got on board without further comment or criticism.

Palin in 2012!!!

One other point re Palin - I think she would not have been possible a generation ago, and that a lot of her success derives from the impressively well-organized Republican machinery. Her self-confidence developed after she retreated to her Wasilla family, from the larger circles of Hawaii and Idaho. Her ruthlessness, learned largely from her church, was not apparent until she was invited onto the City Council. She was a frump until she tuned into Repub. leadership training and networking in her race for governor, but then took very smart advantage of those resources. Add to that the viral messaging and image-dense environment that was not even in place in 2004, and you have one very lucky - and shrewd - vp candidate.

But then, she looked right at me from the TV and winked.

At you too? I am still cleaning the starbursts off my wall.