not AlaskaThese are tough times for us political junkies. The campaign season is over, and there’s little to do but to endlessly rehash the results (our award for least surprising postmortem goes to Ken Buck for telling Adam Schrager he had “no idea” how he lost) or to count the ways in which Barack Obama is either Doomed! or Not As Doomed As You’d Think!
In a deft piece of scheduling, Obama left the country immediately after the midterms. It might have been a little more deft, of course, if he’d brought home the trade agreement from South Korea that was supposed to be the highlight of the trip. But a week without a major disaster is a good week for Obama these days.
The big political news in Colorado was that Michael Bennet has turned down the, uh, opportunity to head the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Among the many reasons he rejected the job — other than the chance it might have been career suicide — is that while it’s one thing to be a Washington insider, it’s yet another to have it tattooed on your forehead.
In case you missed it, there’s also word from Dan Maes, who wrote his postmortem on Facebook, the one place he apparently still has friends. For those of you wondering, Maes wrote that his future would include a role combining his experience as a politician and as an entrepreneur. OK, I can’t imagine what that would be either, but I heard, I swear, that Maes wants to run against Dick Wadhams for state GOP chair. That can’t possibly be true, but it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the visual.
Meanwhile in Washington, things are so slow that people have had to pretend to take note of the long-anticipated, preliminary, not-even-close-to-official National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report. The response was not altogether favorable. Paul Krugman, for one, wrote that “the kindest thing we can do now is pretend the whole thing never happened.” But, if nothing else, it did allow pundits to reprise co-chair Alan Simpson’s description of Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million (you knows).”
Fortunately, all is not lost. They say the presidential campaign begins the moment the midterm elections end. But the season really begins today. All you have to do is turn on your TV sets — and I don’t mean for the morning talk shows. You can see David Axelrod any time. And I certainly don’t mean for the Denver Broncos game, although it will be interesting to see what time D.J. Williams shows up.
What I’m talking about, of course, is tonight’s debut of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” — the new eight-week reality show on TLC. The great thing about the show — from the many clips I’ve seen (they’re everywhere on the Web) and the stories I’ve read — is that it’s so Palinesque rogue, so 2010 in its un-ironic political sensibility.
It’s not “Kate Plus 8.” It’s Sarah Plus the Whole Family and, of course, real mama grizzlies. New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley described it this way: “The snowcapped mountains, pine forests and shimmering lakes are majestic, the Palin children are adorable, and the series looks like a travelogue — wholesome, visually breathtaking and a little dull. In a way it’s like ‘The Sound of Music’ but without the romance, the Nazis or the music.”
Whatever it is, it is different. Ted Koppel has just made news by lamenting how the partisanship on Fox News and MSNBC is bad for America. He said he misses the days when network news tried to be something of a public trust. He left out, of course, that in the days of Walter and Chet and David that Nixon was somehow elected twice. Just sayin’.
Still, it’s hard to imaging Dick and Pat and the kids in this scene: Willow is upstairs and her friend, Andy, is warned by Palin not to go up to see her. “See, this gate is not just for Trig,” she says. “It’s for no boys go upstairs.” You know what happens next — he sneaks upstairs (with the cameras rolling), and Palin calls her daughter on her cellphone to make them come down.
Is that a joke on her? On us? On Letterman?
No one even knows whether Palin is running for president, which is the real tease. It’s either the strangest campaign or the strangest noncampaign in political history. She told Chris Wallace on Fox that she’d run “if the country needed me.” She put out an open letter on Facebook on Saturday to the new Republican members of Congress, advising them on their roles. Was this to assert her leadership chops — or was it to gin up interest for her TV show? In any case, it makes more sense than Palin weighing in on the Fed’s “quantitative easing” plan, telling Ben Bernanke he should “cease and desist.” You think she read up on that while she was in Denali National Park?
Whether she’s running or not running, everyone is paying attention. The latest polls have her disapproval ratings at more than 50 percent. And the nightmare scenario for Republican establishment players is that she’ll run and she’ll win the nomination and will then get clobbered in the general election — that she’ll become the Tea Party version of George McGovern.
That’s why you see Karl Rove doing his best to discourage Palin — but while risking offending her loyal following. This is a tap-dancing reality show. Rove told The Daily Telegraph, a British paper, that doing a reality show lacks “gravitas” and that “I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘That helps me see you in the Oval Office.’ “
Palin wasn’t having it, telling Chris Wallace: “Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in Bedtimes for Bonzo, bozo or something?”
Or something. Maybe you’ve seen the promo by now for Palin’s show, the one with her on a mountain saying, “And on a really clear day, you can see Russia from here — almost.”
You can see where this is going. What keeps you coming back is that you can’t tell where it’s going to end.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
