Will she or won’t she? There are reports she is about to begin a mini tour of eastern States. Is this a sign? Who else is there lining up for the Republican ticket? Are there any big hitters? Or is it clear already that Obama cannot be stopped? Sarah Palin has charisma and is a media heavyweight. She is also a woman. She has devoted followers, but, outside the United States she is seen as little more than a joke, almost clueless about the world at large, who, if elected would isolate the US in international affairs and destroy its leadership of the free world. The question, however, is not what the rest of the world thinks, because it does not vote in US Presidential elections, but what do Americans think? At the moment they are not sure.
Obama has restored America’s reputation and authority in the world, within the new dynamic of its reduced economic power and the rise of China, upon which it is economically dependent. This loss of American economic sovereignty has much to do with past Republican Presidents, namely Reagan, and the two Bushes. Their arithmetic which told them that it was okay to run record balance of trade and budget deficits in tandem, year in, year out and to build an economy on consumer debt, is why their country has wound up where it has.
Now Republicans want to cut spending and government, or more specifically, federal involvement in both. There is evidence, borne out by their election successes mid- term, that their country agrees. So, do they have a chance in 2012? Only if there is evidence that they have a good chance, will any known name be willing to run. If that evidence does exist, Sarah Palin will run and she will win the nomination.
What then? It might be worth remembering at this point Barry Goldwater, the first ultra conservative Republican since Reconstruction, who reversed the posture of the party, so that it opposed Federal interference with State’s Rights, the Civil Rights Act and other stuff, which would have caused Lincoln to turn in his grave, but delighted that part of America which remained emotionally tied to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. He won the 1964 Republican nomination to tumultuous acclaim from his party activists. He lost the election for the Presidency by a landslide, carrying only his own state, Arizona, and five states in the Deep south, the first Republican ever to do so.
Whether Sarah Palin would go down to such a spectacular defeat would, if she runs, depend upon America’s mood and its vision of itself today. Because today it is not on the up any more. Other powers are rising faster, it is in debt on a scale which defies numbers and millions are workless. This may be a moment to return to the principles of the American dream, which is essentially that every American is free to do his or hers, without government weighing down upon them and taking taxes from their pockets, where the federal authority is small and where the community and the home state is big. If America feels that it can recover its place in the world order by returning to these older truths, not only will she put up a good enough fight to assure the nomination in 2016, but she may, just may, win outright.
Astride the road leading to the prospect of President Palin stands the considerable reality of President Barak Obama. He has restored America’s international reputation, is curbing the Wall Street excesses, is giving Americans the chance of universal healthcare for the first time in their history and, AND he successfully ordered the killing of Osama Bin Laden. That is quite a list. Whether it is enough to assure his second term depends whether modern America is, deep down, the same sort of country as the United States of 1964.
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