Down-home truths

The cold and the frost are here, and as I watch the 2008 United States vice-presidential debate the temperature drops below freezing; Sarah Palin sends a shiver down my spine.

As the nights draw darkly, temperatures tremble in the breeze, and dawn won’t break till morning I can begin to feel the creek in my bones that signals the onset of another cold Alaskan winter. This afternoon I moved my bed into a warmer room. I wedged it up against the stove with a chair. If I don’t have it jammed it squeaks and rattles and frightens the life out of me. The thought struck me that in this respect it couldn’t be unlike a Sarah Palin presidency.

Palin comparison
Although there’s a certain economy of discourses of truth adhered to at these events that is not to my taste, I watched the 2008 United States vice-presidential debate. Perhaps the cold was making me hungry, but the exchange reminded me of nothing more than fish. Joe Biden shark-smiled teeth like razors, but the thriller from Wasilla too proved she’s more than a minnow: Alaskan king salmon are popular for sport because they put up a good fight when you get them on the hook. Palin might sometimes look like a fish out of water but her Last Frontier pioneer spirit we see her through a ropey start to the bitter end, whichever way this tough cookie crumbles. Or put another way, there’s that small-town parochial partisan pettiness that’ll keep her fighting all the way. (One of her first acts as Wasilla mayor was to fire the police chief who’d supported her opponent.)

Whiter shade of Palin
Wasilla is also the name of the Ossetian god of storms. So it is in a way appropriate that Palin should cause a storm in a teacup on entering politics and a furor on her ascent to the national stage. However, the town’s name actually commemorates a Dena' ina Athabascan Indian Chief whose name meant “breath of air”. Whether this was fresh air or hot air was not specified. There might have been a lot of the latter down in Whitman County Thursday, but it’ll be an ill wind blowing in Washington if there’s a Palin Vice Presidency in the wind, and then we’ll all be left to twist in an extended metaphor that’s worn thinner than the Sarah Palin end of a regressive and ignorant conservative wedge.

Palin to insignificance
Regardless of which way the vice-presidential wind is blowing, the wind in the land of the midnight sun is very definitely cold. The doors bang and the windows rattle and the wind gently rocks the dilapidated cabin. I close my eyes for a while and listen to the chill wind shrieking around the old relic. It's a John McCain of a house and a wind that’s not unlike the Sarah Palin candidacy.

Folksy tales from the brave new world

I know it doesn’t matter – and you know it doesn’t matter – but if he didn’t quote The Tempest with quite such a simpering smile I wouldn't find myself wondering whether he can bowl as well as Obama.

But Joe Biden did. And while he does, and being of the old Wilde school of not attributing his sources, Palin’s modesty to misattribute her quotes is all the more notable. Those given to Anglo-American comparison should note that it was with something more subtle than the way our own Chameleon Cameron crowbarred a Thatcher salute into an otherwise rather progressive season of political party conferences, Sarah Palin's shining city on a hill was calculated to give the illusion that she’d quoted Ronald Reagan twice, and almost made you think that she’s read more Reagan than Winthrop. This illusion meant that she could court the Reaganites of the grand old party faithful without outraging the moderates, a reconciliation whose Tory counterpart Chameleon Cameron has still to fathom.

Unlike Cameron’s speech, in which they were both crammed uncomfortably into his one person, the 2008 United States vice-presidential debate saw accommodation and partisanship healthily apportioned between the two candidates, but at times with equally comic results: the beautiful and (genuinely) moving family-guy Biden emotion was sadly undermined by his repeated claim to “love” Sen. John McCain.

Fattening up for jolly old Christmas

The weight of leadership makes political posturing hard on the knees. To hold sway when the fat is in the fire it’s important to be a heavyweight. So I’m growing my very own potbelly.

The first phase of my plan to get fat got underway last night with a double helping of mince and potato, followed swiftly by a crunchy, oaten apple crumble and washed down with three – yes, three – tall glasses of cool milk. And I’m drinking milk as I type.

The great thing about drinking milk is that it fills you up and gives you energy; dairy fats prepare the belly for a night out, which means that I was able to happily chase it with a few pints of heavy and a pub quiz to work on the beer belly. I can see it shaping up nicely into a jolly old Christmas paunch.

As we all know, a man of a certain age should be fat. This is true in all situations in all walks of life, either side of the pond: Chameleon Cameron struggles (however admirably) after the gravity that Gordon Brown has in spades; for all his Presbyterian prudence, the latter carries more weight because he carries more weight; likewise, Obama’s greatest danger is that he is literally a lightweight.

If one can’t muster statesmanly rotundity, one must at least try for a mild podginess, an ambassador’s paunch; in order to properly lead a political party, let alone a country, one should be a plodder, a clunker. A deep booming voice supported by an expansive diaphragm can stir the souls of nations and plumb the depths of the hearts of men. It speaks to them, rather than squeaks at them (like a certain country mouse candidate generally expected to shrill her way through the 2008 United States vice presidential debate on a untried wing and a divisive and arrogant prayer who shall remain nameless).

This is the hope that Obama’s wet-eared youth must promise – and, in the old country, it is everything that D. Miliband isn’t. The Chameleon Cameron has more chance, but he must root himself, plant his feet firmly and stand tall (shoulders back) – and try to look as if his Eton-fag frame could support the weight of governmental office. When he understands this he’ll understand that the least he could do is to put on a few pounds.

If jolly old Christmas (my target for achieving fatness) teaches us anything it is the Kriss-Kringlesque manliness of jolly fatty-men. Jovial hearty fatty men may be a cliché. (There are plenty of angry fatties, and a really angry one, red faced and sweating, isn’t at all pleasant.) And we’ve all been told depressingly how Santa Clause would be ill if he was real. But the happy flipside that proves the stereotype is rarely mentioned. Angry fatty men get heart attacks and die, leaving only the jolly ones to chuckle with us as life’s black comedy.

Besides, when fatty men are merry they are merry. A moment’s thought will confirm that you know the fat drunk party animal is much more fun than the drunken skinny guy in any barroom (even if only because his stagger is augmented with a wobble factor). So eat and drink and pile on the pounds and one day you – yes, you – will be President of the United States.