Not an Idiot......Really

Probably the only Big Gulp she's had in years (WSJ video)

Politicians, like parents, always seem a lot smarter after they're out of power. No longer must they state their positions in 15-second sound bites or be afraid to acknowledge that some of the opposing arguments are valid.  No longer will they have to defend party members whose personal behavior is indefensible. They can reveal nuance, flexibility, and self-deprecation.

One politician whose public persona was a media caricature is Sarah Palin. (To be even-handed, another is Joe Biden, the current butt of late night humor.)

Your humble observer is of the opinion that comedy requires at least some intelligence, which Sarah Palin displayed at the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference.

At one point, Ms. Palin paused in her rabble-rousing speech to take a big sip from a Big Gulp she pulled out from behind the podium. “Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp’s safe,” she said, a dig at the New York mayor’s attempted ban on large soft drinks. [snip]

She joked that young Republicans ought to be “thinking Sam Adams, not drinking Sam Adams.”

During her defense of the Second Amendment, she spoke admiringly of the gun rack her husband, Todd, bought her for Christmas and the gun she bought him to stock it. “He’s got the rifle. I got the rack,” she quipped.

Mrs. Palin won't be on a national ticket again, and it's anyone's guess where she'll settle in. But just as her VP nomination startled in 2008, she'll surprise us before she's done. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Well Worth the Effort

Earlier this month author, columnist, and TV commentator George Will lectured at Washington University on religion and politics in American life (hat tip Ann Althouse). It's a sweeping overview that spends as much time in the 18th and 19th centuries as the 20th and 21st, but if one has 30-45 minutes to spare, the text is well worth the effort. Excerpts:

Next comes perhaps the most important word in the Declaration, the word "secure." To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." Government's primary purpose is to secure pre-existing rights. Government does not create rights. It does not dispense them.

[Woodrow Wilson] criticized [the Declaration of Independence] root and branch, beginning with the doctrine of natural rights.

His criticism began there precisely because that doctrine dictates limited government, which he considered a cramped, unscientific understanding of the new possibilities of politics. Wilson disparaged the doctrine of natural rights as "Fourth of July sentiments." He did so because this doctrine limited progressives'' plans to make government more scientific in the service of a politics that is more ambitious.

Progressives tend to exalt the role of far-sighted leaders, and hence to exalt the role of the president. This, too, puts them at odds with the Founders.

The words "leader" or "leaders' appears just 13 times in the Federalist Papers. Once is a reference to those who led the Revolution. The other dozen times are all in contexts of disparagement. The Founders were wary of the people's potential for irrational and unruly passions, and therefore were wary of leaders who would seek to ascend to power by arousing waves of such passions.

William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in 1955 that the purpose of his conservative magazine, the National Review, was to "stand[] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." After Mr. Buckley's passing, there are very few individuals with the heft and intellectual chops to stand against the tidal expansion of government and its overwhelming support from academia, entertainment, and mass media. One such voice is George Will; may he live long and prosper.