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THE PRINCESS BOLD OF THE FROZEN NORTH
I enjoy giving politicians nicknames and I think I'm fairly good at it. One of my personal favorites is the moniker I hung on State Representative Karen Carter during her failed 2006 challenge to Dollar Bill: Princess BOLD. Times have changed and she's now Ms. Carter Peterson and she's not running against the Klepto Congressman but she'll always be Princess BOLD to me. The BOLD, of course, stands for the political organization that was once run by her father Ken, and former Council Presidents Jim Singleton and Oliver Thomas. BOLD like the other alphabet soup groups has run into hard times post-K; especially after Oliver the Actor went to jail for taking paltry and downright puny bribes from Pampy.
The reason I've trotted out Princess BOLD is that she was known in 2006 for her ignorance of national issues while constantly asserting: "I'm a reformer. I'm a reformer." In both her ignorance and specious claims of goo-goo reform credentials, Sarah Palin reminds me of Princess BOLD. The more we hear about her governance of Alaska, the more obvious it is that cronyism, patronage and tanning beds rule the roost so to speak. If she's a reformer, I'm T. Boone Pickens or is that T-Bone Burnett?
Speaking of cockerels, Palin's husband Todd is even called <ahem> the First Dude. Who is he? The Jeff Bridges character from The Big Lebowski with a haircut? Do we really want a Second Dude replacing the dread Lynne Cheney? Oh, the humanity. At least the Cheney's didn't give their brood weird names like Track, Trig, Bristol and Scrimshaw...
My favorite Sarah Palin assertion was when she claimed on ABC that Alaska was a "microcosm of America." Say what? Lots of states fit the bill but the state bought by one of my personal heroes, William Seward, ain't one of them. In this instance, F is for both folly and fallacy.
I've been circling around the point of this post. Although Palin is an appalling choice to be one heartbeat away from the 72 year old John McCain, it's time for the Democratic campaign to get over it and move on. Palin is the flavor of the month right now but Barack Obama shouldn't be talking about her. He should be focused on the much less popular guy at the top of the ticket, Senator Walnuts.
There have been oodles of manifestly unqualified Veep nominees in my lifetime: Miller, Agnew, Ferraro, Quayle and none of those elections turned on them. William Miller was an obscure Congressman selected by Barry Goldwater in 1964 because (I am NOT making this up) he "bugged" LBJ. If people voted based on the Vice Presidential nominee do you really think Bush-Quayle would have beaten Dukakis-Bentsen? Not after Bentsen's smackdown of J. Danforth's claim that he was as "experienced as Jack Kennedy."
What Obama really needs is a good tag line/bumpersticker one liner for his economic policy. It's definitely NOT too late for Obama to take control of the debate again but he needs another catchy and pithy slogan along the lines of "yes, we can."
While working on this post, the oldie North To Alaska lodged itself in my head. Here's Dwight Yoakam crooning that Johnny Horton classic and then segueing into the Man In Black's Ring Of Fire:
