http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/227276

Tribe rallies for Palin-McCain

Sunday News
Published: Sep 14, 2008

By GIL SMART, Smart Remarks

So Sarah Palin came to town Tuesday, and brought some guy with her.

Oh. Right.

John McCain is at the top of this ticket, right? It certainly hasn't seemed
that way over the past few weeks, as Palin has generated the bulk of both
the headlines and excitement. The Palin-McCain ticket performed before an
estimated 7,000 at Franklin & Marshall College. Do you think there would
have been that many had McCain selected Joe Lieberman, reportedly his first
choice, as his vice-presidential candidate? Or Mitt Romney?

Hardly. Palin has invigorated a ticket that had excited virtually no one.
Were Palin to run against McCain in a primary battle today, she'd crush
him. The conservative "base" still doesn't like McCain — but they love
Palin, for one reason and one reason only: She's one of them.

It is tribalism writ large.

There is a similar visceral tribalism on the left, perhaps more pronounced
in generations past. But it is most pronounced, now, amongst movement
conservatives. Their embrace of Palin is a case in point. Many still know
virtually nothing about her, or her record. But they do know she's a
small-town, middle-class Christian. She walked the walk in giving birth to
a Down syndrome child. She is just like them; she is of the tribe. And that
is enough.

Not for all conservatives, mind you. "We have seen," wrote Daniel Larison
on the American Conservative Web site, "how this instinct to endow a
politician with virtues blinds people to the pol's flaws, and I fear it is
happening all over again with Palin. I see that people feel the choice to
be magnificent, and I don't doubt that this is a sincere feeling, but I
would suggest that we need to do less feeling and more thinking."

Fat chance.

I don't doubt the sincerity of the tribalistic impulse either; what I do
doubt is its validity. Because to the tribe, Palin's experience, or lack of
it, really doesn't matter. Her knowledge, or lack of it, about Iraq or any
other issue doesn't matter. She supported the "Bridge to Nowhere" before
opposing it? Doesn't matter. All that matters is that she's of the tribe,
infused with the inherent tribal honesty and ethicality and common sense.

So she can necessarily be trusted to make the "right" decision in every
situation. Her heart is in the right place, and because of that she'll
execute the duties of the vice president — maybe even president! — capably.

This "vicarious identification and clannishness," noted a commenter on
Larison's site, are "basic survival instincts that precede and sometimes
conflict with enlightenment values and the prudence necessitated by
personal responsibility." But it also represents a devolution, a
regression, in our politics.

This instinctual approach is directly responsible for the George W. Bush
years, though don't think the tribe will accept any culpability for it. For
the tribe cannot be wrong; as a result, we get Mitt Romney telling the
rapturous throngs at the GOP convention, "We need a change all right —
change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington!" Never mind
that conservatives have run Washington for the bulk of the past decade; the
tribe cannot fail. If there has been failure, it is obviously the fault of
the tribe's enemies.

Once you understand this mentality you understand both the enthusiasm for
Palin, and why McCain picked her. His move was cynically brilliant. Let the
base get excited, let them pack the rallies and donate the money and snarl
at the liberals. Let the tribe put its shoulder to the wheel, for this
election can now be seen as a validation of the tribe itself.

Very useful, this tribe. So let them think it really is Palin-McCain.

Until Nov. 5, that is.