Bizarrobama

As a child, one of the more amusing and yet disturbingly frightening characters for me in the cartoon pantheon was Superman’s strange doppelganger from the Bizarro world. This image is what finally helped to identify something which has been tugging at the back of my mind for nearly two weeks; I finally remembered where it was that I’d seen Sarah Palin before. It was the 2004 Democratic presidential convention, only at that time she was a tall, lanky black man with a funny-sounding name. If you squint your eyes a bit, reverse party affiliation in your Bizarro mirror, swap out a Y chromosome for an extra X and vacuum out most of the melanin, he becomes Sarah Palin. When looking for political opinion, I rarely turn to the Chicago Sun Times and even less frequently to movie critic Roger Ebert, but he may be on to something today.

Obama first burst onto the scene like an A-List celebrity who strolls in and suddenly ignites the passions of the otherwise listless crowd in a definitely D-List dive. Rational observers looked askance at a political resume which could only charitably be described as “thin” to be sure; community organizer, state legislator and less then one term in the United States Senate. (Substitute PTA, small town mayor and less than one term as state Governor and you should feel the tingle of your first Bizarro moment.) Dual camps of supporters quickly formed, with some saying that such experience was certainly enough to qualify one for the Oval Office and others claiming that experience was overrated anyway.

Most of us who don’t live in or around Chicago had never heard of Obama, but that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of a quickly massing body of supporters. We are observing the same phenomenon with Palin. There are a small handful of people who continually obsess over political news – not only the news that is happening, but also contemplating what might happen. Those people knew who Sarah Palin was for several months. As to the rest of you, (at least those in the lower 48) let’s just admit that you’d never heard of the woman beyond perhaps knowing she was a governor before the day of John McCain’s announcement. In the ensuing thirteen days you’ve been flooded with information at a rate too fast to process. On the one hand you’ve been deluged with a narrative about Palin’s compelling life story… the small town mother of a rather large brood, toting a hunting rifle and vanquishing the corrupt influences in an entrenched power structure. From the other side you are showered with troubling tidbits. An ongoing investigation into possible abuse of power, a record of “porkbusting” and fiscal responsibility which looks to be anything but and a penchant for personal vendettas executed from positions of high power are only a few.

As in most areas of life, timing seems to be everything. The various questions surrounding Obama weren’t enough to slow down his loyal army of acolytes until he had finished slogging through the primary process. Now, though, after nearly two years of seeing him on the trail, there is a growing sense of an electorate who might be tiring of his unique, compelling story and soaring speeches. We’re still in the white hot blaze of Palin’s unveiling and there are roughly eight weeks to go until the election. Will that initial burst of energy be enough to carry her over the line, or will the flames die down enough for voters to realize that there is sometimes less to the movie than a good trailer might lead you to believe?

Empty suit, meet empty pants suit.