By Brigitte L. Nacos
In today’s New York Times, the magazine’s lengthy cover story by Robert Draper features Sarah Palin, the darling of the tea party crowd, as the heavy weight among the potential Republican line-up of competitors in the upcoming presidential primary season. Draper’s assessment of Palin’s political influence is as realistic as troubling. “Having crawled from the wreckage of the 2008 presidential campaign and her much-derided resignation as governor of Alaska,” he writes, Palin has “emerged as arguably the most captivating and influential Republican in America — and therefore a viable contender for the presidential nomination in 2012.”
Just as she told Barbara Walters last week that she is pondering a run for the White House in 2012, she answered “I am,” when Draper asked her whether she was “already weighing a run for president.”
Her Republican opponents who would love to stop her before she wins their party’s presidential nomination and her Democratic detractors who are certain that President Barack Obama would beat Palin handily, should take a look at Frank Rich’s column “Could She Reach the Top? You Betcha” in today’s Times.
Rich argues that her fellow-Republican critics must “man up” and “summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.” But that would make them the target of the mass of Republicans (and, obviously, many Independents) who have bought into a populism of anger directed at the political elite that Palin stirs so effectively.
As for those who are sure that Obama would easily beat Palin, Rich is right to mention the possibility of more than two candidates in the race. He mentions New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg. The Left may think again of Ralph Nader.
In the meantime, Sarah Palin continues to become richer—thanks to her contract with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, thanks to her infomercial “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on TLC, and thanks to her past and forthcoming bestseller.
To be sure, Palin and her staff know how to play the social networking card extremely well. But although she attacks what she calls “the lamestream media” relentlessly, the truth is that her political muscle and bank account grow thanks to the mainstream media’s obsession with and over-coverage of the former Alaska governor.
Just take a look at the number of stories exclusively about or mentioning Sarah Palin in the month from October 15, 2010 to November 15, 2010, in major mainstream newspapers and TV-networks:
New York Times 104;
Washington Post 83;
ABC News 91;
CBS News 47;
NBC News 79;
CNN 303.
Never mind the content of those stories. Publicity, good or bad, is what counts in the making and branding of celebrities.
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