One of the criticisms progressives often make of Barack Obama is that he spends far too much time trying to make his opponents like him and not enough time worrying about what his supporters think of him. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has the opposite problem: She spends all her time speaking to those who are already within her bubble of support, and no time thinking about how she can persuade those who aren't already on her side.
Her reaction to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting has cast this tendency in stark relief. She had an opportunity to step outside of her normal way of doing things and could have actually begun to change the way people thought about her. Instead, she was true to form: defensive, snide, consumed by real and imagined slights. Her latest statement was an e-mail to Glenn Beck for him to read on the air:
"I hate violence. I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence. Thanks for all you do to send the message of truth and love and God as the answer."
First, you have the fact that this is given to Beck, whose audience is pretty much the same as her fan base. Second, it's all about her, about how she feels, and how she's the real victim here. The only way for us to have peace, apparently, is for people to stop criticizing Sarah Palin.
David Frum offers some extremely wise advice about what she should have said; all of it is worth reading, but I'll highlight this section:
(7) Think what you would like – not your supporters – but your opponents to say about you. "She was tough, but never a hater." "No matter how strongly she disagreed, she was always gracious." "I might not agree with her answer, but I could see she had thought hard about it." Then, having thought about it, go be that person.
(8) Last: suppose you were president right now. The country would want you to say something about this terrible crime. What is that something? Say it now.
Of course, Palin has yet to give the answer called for by events. Instead, her rapid response operation has focused on pounding home the message that Palin is innocent, that she has been unfairly maligned by hostile critics. Which in this case happened to be a perfectly credible message. And also perfectly inadequate. Palin's post-shooting message was about Palin, not about Giffords. It was defensive, not inspiring. And it was petty at a moment when Palin had been handed perhaps her last clear chance to show herself presidentially magnanimous.
When you're being criticized, the natural impulse is to defend yourself and hit back at your critics. It takes someone with a little more control and a bit of a longer view to suppress that impulse and do something different. That doesn't seem to be something she's capable of. She'll probably have other chances to show that she's magnanimous -- a lot will happen between now and the 2012 campaign. But at this point, it's hard to imagine her taking them.
-- Paul Waldman
