Everything in Its Own Time

Christine O’Donnell made the rounds this morning on ABC, and honestly, when I heard it while still half-asleep, I was tempted to switch the channel just to avoid dealing with her pleas to be taken seriously. It is difficult to overcome silly mistakes in a campaign. Years ago, I was pleased that I hadn’t tried very hard to end up on the campaign staff of a candidate that foolishly decided to make a commercial featuring the candidate’s name in a children’s song. Beyond looking silly, it forever associated the candidate with the awful tune, and I couldn’t blame a single voter for avoiding that individual when casting their ballots.

While making an admission about dabbling in witchcraft on national cable television is not the best thing to have in one’s closet as an aspiring politician, it certainly isn’t as bad as causing an annoying tune to be caught in the heads of potential supporters. (I am saying this purely from the perspective of annoyance level, as opposed to anything more substantive.) The media has latched onto this faux pas, like a group of sharks grasping a diving cage full of raw meat – blood in the water, as they say. It is no wonder that the GOP isn’t doing much to support O’Donnell, and perhaps that might be part of what is behind Sarah Palin’s scheduling difficulties. O’Donnell pulled her “I’m not a witch” ad (or at least I couldn’t load her campaign’s copy on YouTube.) But, thankfully, someone else managed to post it. I looked at it in earnest for the first time this evening, hoping to find some sign of why Palin might not be as enthusiastic as she’s been leading people to believe about O’Donnell.

Other than O’Donnell’s imploring nature, the only thing I found particularly annoying about the ad (other than the whole “I’m not a witch” thing) was the “I am you” statement. If she wasn’t trying to pull herself out of the mess that she was in, maybe that could have worked. That wasn’t the case, and it came off like she was begging people to believe that she was at least a little bit “like” them – forget about being them. And there it was.

Maybe Palin isn’t so enthusiastic about O’Donnell because it’s too hard to see her as “one of us.” She’s too “out there”, if that’s possible. Sure, she follows the same basic political theories that Palin does, and is really good at talking about them, when she’s in “the zone.” But there’s the weird factor involved, and while many lefties like to say Palin is cuckoo, O’Donnell makes her look sane and sedate in some ways. Like the whole First Amendment thing with Coons. Sure, she may have stumped him with her question, but it’s not a great accomplishment when you throw Roberts’ Rules out the window to get it. Even Palin is smart enough to realize that you don’t prove you’re smarter than your opponent in a debate by breaking the rules to trap them. (For those that don’t “get it”, the debate rules are simpler than the content of the debate itself, so if you can’t understand the rules and follow them, you can’t come off as honestly having a clue about anything you’re talking about in the first place!)

So, we’ll have to wait and see. At least it won’t be a long wait. For myself, I’m not putting any money on this one, but I sincerely doubt that Palin’s scheduling issues are going to be resolved before election day – I don’t see the Palin train arriving in Delaware anytime soon.