Observations On Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Convention

On this, the day following the first (and likely last) Tea Party convention, I find myself once again amazed and perplexed by two not necessarily unrelated phenomena: the popularity of Sarah Palin and the vacuity of the self-proclaimed movement.

First, on Palin. Palin the person is now, for better or worse, one of those “personalities” the doings of whom will from now on be reported to us faithfully by the media, which, upon filing someone in this category, ensures that we will not escape such important details as Palin family dynamics and continuing baby drama involving her daughter or her son who has Down’s. Now, obviously, Palin is a political figure, and when she does political things like making appearances at political conventions, that’s deserving of reporting. But the media certainly does not have to report about how Palin feels about a presidential advisor’s potty mouth. To quote such an unnamed source, that would be “f***ing retarded.”

All right that was a bit of a ramble and a sidetrack. The thing that mystifies me about Palin is just how exceptionally average she is in a lot of ways—average in that she has about the same knowledge concerning foreign affairs and how government works as your average blue collar worker in America. Average in her intellect. Average—or perhaps mundane is the better descriptor—in her pursuit of the crass interpretation of the American dream: riches and power. Where she excels, however, is in connecting with people like her. Thus, the rousing movement that has thrust her to the top, like a rubber ducky on a tsunami. The problem is, she’s still just a rubber ducky.

Now, how about that rousing movement? According to organizers of the convention in Memphis (and granted, many tea party movers and shakers advocated boycotting it, so it is difficult to say what the orthodoxy is of the tea partiers beyond generally being pissed off), the movement stood for the principles of limited government, strong free markets, and a strong national defense. The attack on deficit spending likely is tied to the limited government idea, though that has not been laid out as such.

A few observations on these principles—incidentally, I have to quote the aforesaid presidential advisor once again on another thing he said yesterday (not of the potty-mouthed variety). In reaction to most Republican politicians tenaciously defending pork barrel projects and federal spending in their states and districts immediately following declarations of their outrage and steadfast determination to stand up to the out-of-control tax-and-spend Democratic Congress: “you can be firm on your opinions; it’s your principles you can be flexible on.” So true.

Okay, the observations:

1. Limited government. I think the most obvious interference of government in our lives has to be restrictions imposed on our personal liberty to engage in activities that do not interfere with the lives of others. You all know where I’m going here, right? That’s right! Gay marriage! Find me the heterosexual person whose life has been ruined by the gay couple down the street, and I’ll show you someone who has some severe mental problems. This issue has got to be one of the most obvious and clear examples of minority rights deserving of protection ever, right up there with guaranteeing equal rights to non-white people and women. Counter-arguments essentially come down to either a version of the religious views of a segment of the population being imposed on others (unconstitutional and unfair) or latent feelings of hatred. “I hate you” is not an effective argument and should not be countenanced.

So, how about the tea partiers views on this issue? Surely, with their strong beliefs in limited government, they’re on the forefront, right? Yes, of course I’m being facetious. Mainly—I think, that is, because it is difficult to tell—they’re upset about health care reform requiring a mandate to buy health insurance. Never mind that they already have to buckle their seat belts, buy auto liability insurance, wear hard hats in construction zones, get a permit to build a building, get a driver’s license to drive a car, get a gun permit to own a gun, etc., etc. Having to buy health insurance! Outrageous! By God, people have the right to go about their business uninsured!

You know what? This might work but for the fact that hospitals are required by law to treat people regardless of whether they have insurance or not. Maybe the tea partiers should advocate repealing that law. Then, at least, we would be saving some money. Of course, we’d have some pretty horrid stories about people dying in hospital parking lots. That probably would be pretty nasty. But, hey, they were free to buy or not buy health insurance, right?

Incidentally, I have to bring this up, because I keep hearing it and it’s just wrong: the contention that health care reform would force Americans to pay for the health care costs of illegal immigrants. Folks, we pay for the health care costs of illegal immigrants already when they drop in on our ERs and get treated. Again, if you don’t like it, you can change the law. But I don’t think that would be a good thing—people dying everywhere due to being denied at the hospital. It’s immoral. In fact, I think most doctors would consider it a violation of the Hippocratic oath not to treat someone in such dire circumstances. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we can keep refusing to bring illegal immigrants into the system, but reform of any kind will not work until we do, because there is a huge illegal community out there and it is driving a concomitant huge amount of costs. Unfortunately, it is political suicide to advocate for anything that would benefit illegal immigrants.

2. Strong Free Markets. Generally, when people talk about “strong free markets” or “a vigorous free market system,” they mean removing regulations from free markets. That is, restoration of an unregulated free market system. I say “restoration” because that is what that would be, a return to late 19th century-style capitalism. You know, when we didn’t have things like child labor laws, environmental controls, anti-trust laws, work-safety regulations, food control laws, transparency laws (like financial disclosures), and anti-discriminatory laws.

Look, I think we saw where rolling back some regulations got us—perhaps the worst example of this was the partial repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in the late 90s, extended further in the early 2000s. (You can read about the Glass-Steagall Act, a bill that was passed in the 1930s to disentangle insurance and bank companies and prohibit certain bank investments here. Suffice to say, it was a pretty good law that I don’t think is a stretch to say probably would have prevented the financial collapse that occurred in 2008). And personally, I’m a fan of laws that prohibit abuses of employees or the accrual of tremendous economic power. In fact, my belief in anti-trust laws lead to my ultimate rejection of a career in economics, which subject at the time was dominated by Chicago school efficient market theory idealists. Not to go into this too much, but when it seemed to me that these brilliant people were assuming away all the hard stuff rather than dealing with it and then placing complex mathematical apparatuses on top of it—lending it, in my opinion, a faux appearance of great detail and accuracy—I had to jump ship.

Anyway, it is interesting and surprising to me that a strong free market tenet can be built into a populist movement in 2010, when it seems so clear that lack of regulation and actions taken to deregulate the financial community directly led to our present economic circumstances. But, hey, I guess people can be irrational sometimes. (Yup, that last sentence was internally referential and ironic, and I’m quite proud of it.)

3. Strong Defense. Well, we’ve got a strong defense, and the Pentagon’s budget went up some more this year. Has it ever gone down? We’ve also got two wars going on that we’re supporting. This is clearly not a controversial position to take—with the exception of people like Dennis Kucinich (he of the “Department of Peace”), it’s rare to find a politician who thinks we should have a “weak” defense or even who would propose reducing the Pentagon’s budget. I personally believe that we spend too much on ways to destroy things and people, but I wouldn’t want us to be taken unawares by a Nazi-like regime.

I have to link this to the budget deficit. I believe that if we crunched the numbers, if we took out the Iraq War—which was prosecuted based on a mistake, whether you support it now or not—and the recent economic collapse, we’d probably have a budget surplus at this point—or maybe we’d be just even. It certainly wouldn’t stand as it does now, over $1 trillion in the red. So, what I would ask the tea baggers is: do you support peremptory military intervention like the Iraq War or do you support deficit reduction, because you can’t have it both ways.

In sum, I think when you dig into the Tea Party movement, you find a lack of original ideas and a shallowness of thought. That is commonly the case with populist movements, I suppose—populist movements by their nature sink to the lowest common denominator of thought, otherwise they couldn’t have such wide appeal. They don’t call ‘em “populist” for nothin’!