Populism

Great long article on Sarah Palin by Michael Joseph Gross in Vanity Fair: "anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath."

I was most struck by this characterization of her success:

Palin owes her power to identity politics, pitched with moralistic topspin. She exploits the same populist impulse that fueled the career of William Jennings Bryan—an impulse described by one Bryan biographer as “the yearning for a society run by and for ordinary people who lead virtuous lives.”

Now since Sarah Palin's life has become a media whirlwind that is anything but ordinary, and she has always been both a beauty queen and a jerk, you have to wonder how long she can keep this appeal. But the longing for a world in which problems can be solved by simple goodness is deep, and I suspect she can ride this a long way.