The Sadness of Sarah Palin

One of my favorite new bloggers is becoming Ta-Nehisi Coates. Really smart, a good sense of humor, and honest about both right and left. He feels for Sarah Palin:

There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative--small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women.

... To the McCain camp, Palin isn't important as a politician, or even as a person.

[McCain] knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they'd quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel personally sad for Palin: she chose to accept McCain's offer knowing her own limitations and should have expected to have those limitations severely tested. But there is something sad about a political system, and a campaign, that takes a person who is completely out of her depth and uses her with supreme cynicism, only as a tool to achieve power. Maybe I'm going a little too far: I've read that McCain picked her because he saw -- in the two seconds he spent getting to know her -- a kindred, maverick spirit, and so, his decision was not made merely as a political calculation. But, I don't think so. In the end, McCain never took her seriously. He never gave her the respect and care of a full vetting. He wanted to win, even if it meant that her reputation could be ruined.