In my second installment on Common Sense???, I would like to highlight an amusing, yet spot-on article about a sad trend in US politics. Washington Post contributor, Richard Cohen begins his article, Sarah Palin’s foolishness ruined U.S. politics, in the form of a movie critique.  While I for one do not plan to watch the HBO movie Game Change, having watched the debacle unfold in real time was more than enough, Cohen’s critique seems to follow the same gist as other reporters, claiming the movie makers have based their script on insider interviews.

Cohen’s article diverges from standard media coverage of the film as he moves away from a movie critique and begins to discuss a tragic result of the 2008 campaign; something I have called the Palin Election Strategy (PES)*.  Cohen defines this strategy with the election slogan, “Vote for me, I know nothing and hate the same things you do.” 

With this strategy in mind, Cohen proceeds to evaluate the 2012 Republican candidate lineup based upon the candidate’s similarities with Palin, and what he fears has become the new GOP’s platform. He finds that most of the candidates have been infected – I mean affected in some way.

More worrisome for our nation is the apparent effectiveness of this type of strategy and contagious spread of the acceptance of uninformed national candidates. I concur with Cohen when he warns the Democrats that PES might also be contagious to those outside the GOP field and voting pool.

While I enjoyed reading the article, I hate to say it, but Sara Palin is not the creator of this political strategy.  Anyone who has ever witnessed a middle-school student body election should recognize the familiarity of PES.  Hopefully planning, plenty of homework, and a real fear of embarrassment, will set our nation up for a more mature 2016 election cycle.

* I was tickled to read, “Vote for me, I know nothing and hate the same things you do.”  To me this slogan defines a great deal of the campaign rhetoric of 2012.  Palin Campaign Strategy (PES) is a title of my own making.  Hopefully PES will not become a worldwide epidemic, and it will be eradicated by 2016.  If not eradicated, I can at least hope that it will be relegated back to the world of secondary education.