"inspired drivel"

A prominent politician recently gave a speech to a crowd. The writer from Time Magazine described the speech as "inspired drivel, a series of distortions and oversimplifications, totally bereft of nourishing policy proposals -- the sort of thing calculated, carefully calculated, to drive lamestream media types like me frothing to their keyboards."

I've never read a better description of one of Barack Obama's speeches. After all, what drivel has ever been more inspiring than "Hope," and "Change We Can Believe In"? How excited did it make so many when the President of the United States proclaimed with such confidence that he could provide healthcare to tens of millions of currently uninsured Americans, all while driving costs down? Sure, there are no nourishing proposals of how exactly to accomplish that in the real world, but who cares with such inspiring drivel?

But alas, Klein isn't writing about Barack Obama. He's writing about Sarah Palin, who last week gave a rousing speech to a Tea Party crowd, to whom she asked, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?"

Klein continues: "Palin is a big fat target, eminently available for derision. But I will not deride." Except that he just did. "Because brilliance must be respected, especially when it involves marketing in an era when image almost always passes for substance." Marketing that passes for substance? That was the entirety of Barack Obama's campaign! He ran as a moderate who turned out to be as far left as any president in recent memory. Sarah Palin ran as what she is -- a limited government, free-market social conservative. She was never bashful about any of that, even though she was running on the same ticket with a moderate Republican candidate for president.

Klein goes on to theorize about Palin's popularity.

Palin hits the same mystic chords as Clinton. A woman who goes to war against the 19-year-old boy who knocked up her daughter and then posed for Playgirl is far more comprehensible to most Americans than deficit spending is.

Apparently Klein does not consider the lowly, unwashed masses intelligent enough to comprehend the idea of spending money that one does not have. Admittedly, the idea is a little mysterious, especially on the scale that it has been happening in Washington. But surely Klein does not have so little faith in his readers and would-be readers that he would sooner think that Sarah Palin is popular with them because they feel her pain?

And if Sarah Palin can't possibly be popular with the American people because they are upset with deficit spending and recognize in her someone who at least would not do so much of it, then how does he explain Obama's waning popularity? And the ever astounding unpopularity of Congress? Is it that Obama and the rest have no pain for the Americans to feel?

I would suggest that a great deal of voters in this country are finally starting to comprehend exactly what deficit spending is, and they don't like it, and they know this president and this Congress are doing it quite a lot.