Sarah Palin and Fond Memories of Demagogues Past

And thereupon graced the stage a woman whose very name 99 out of 100 delegates would not have known just one week ago, yet she was greeted by thunderously supportive hoots, hollers and hosannas as if she was the Resurrection, the Light and the Way; perhaps Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, all in one.

There is -- no kidding -- a metaphysical and in this case eponymous term, palingenesis, meaning, literally, from the Greek, another beginning, one in which one's soul slips right into another's physical form. Last night I think we witnessed just that.

It must be feeling pretty crowded in there for Sarah Palin right now, given that Spiro Agnew -- and not, as so many on the convention floor thought, Reagan or Roosevelt or Lincoln -- seems to have found a way back. At long last.

John McCain thought he needed an Agnewesque pit bull with lipstick, as the Alaska governor self-deprecatingly joked -- I think -- of herself. And John McCain sure got one.

This lady knows how to play rough, which in politics means disgracefully foul. Happily, that's the best of all possible scenarios for us political junkies, who possess a congenital love for the taste of blood.

And did she ever spill some last night -- this loving Christian; this warm, forgiving acolyte of Christ; this metaphysically regenerated marvel of Nixon's attack cur, in a skirt.

Oh, Spiro, how we missed you but nevertheless had our memory banks of you tapped last night as Ms. Palin unctuously inveighed against what she called "the permanent political establishment" -- let's see, Mr. Agnew, that would be the one you helped create (see, especially, Rick Perlstein's Nixonland), would it not? -- in which she denied any membership.

Producing, pleasantly enough, one of those paradoxical bad news-good news things.

On the one hand, through her speechwriters Ms. Palin has "learned … these past few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone."

But take this you blackguards, you scurrilous lowlifes of Eastern elitism and liberal bias: "Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion -- I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

With that, the right-wing tumescence on the manly floor of the Republican National Convention commenced. These clowns will buy anything, as long as it's packaged in the most commonly demagogic denominator possible.

Still, Ms. Palin's heavier dose of venom was reserved, of course, for the real enemy of the people: He who strives to make government politically accountable and socioeconomically responsive -- you know, by promising silly stuff, like a mature global presence and domestic health care.

But beware, for he is but a wolf among you: "In small towns, we" -- the small-town we, not the cynical and citified you -- "don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," said Ms. Palin.

So the dagger flashes, and now the wolf knows how he shall be hunted by -- a reminder is necessary -- this loving Christian; this warm, forgiving acolyte of Christ.

But I'm not complaining. This stuff is great. For it is merely the stuff of the poisonously unenlightening democracy we have so effortlessly fashioned for ourselves.

On second thought, however, perhaps I have my human analogues wrong, as well as the wrong election in mind.

At first, some of us thought this presidential election might be a defining replay of the somewhat more serious, if not classier, 1960 version. Then, last night, Ms. Palin seemed to transformationally elbow her way onto stage in a 1968 manner. But on further sensory reflection, I smell more Goldwater of '64 vintage than Nixon or Agnew.

Because that Arizona senator, too, realized he couldn't defeat the promise of a Greater Society with rational discourse. So he went, reluctantly, I should add, for the cultural jugular instead, deploying or exploiting whatever sharp wedges he could find. He wasn't happy about his strategic choice, but he saw no options. It was either the slimmest hope of desperation politics, or sure defeat.

And that, it would seem, is the ghost that Ms. Palin's speechwriters channeled last night. Their words in her mouth radiated the unmistakable message that they know this thing can't be won on the dignified up-and-up. No way.

And that, furthermore, is actually the good news: They were detectably dispirited at the starting gate.