We have reached that moment in American presidential campaigns when I realize just how far out of the mainstream of the indigenous political cultural I am.  The precise instant was last night, as I suffered through Sarah Palin's speech. 

       What struck me was my divergence with the general view, splashed across the television and print media, that her delivery of the speech was excellent.   That is not what I heard or saw.  Here is what I wrote in a comment on another blog: "OK, call me an elitist, but her
delivery was terrible. It lacked fluidity. The cadences were all wrong.
She emphasized the wrong words in certain sentences. It was painful to
listen to. If I spoke like that in any lecture I gave, I would be, and
should be, fired. It is true that she read the words off the
teleprompter without screwing them up but it was obvious that that was
all she was doing. There was little naturalness in her speech – save,
perhaps, when she blew a kiss to the other POW. It was too obvious that
the words were not her own…"

    For the record, I also never understood Ronald Reagan's charisma nor the political potential of George W. Bush.  Together with Palin, all of these people strike me as unable to think on their feet; they lack the intellectual capacity for distilling complex policy problems into concise, actionable statements.  Call me elitist.

     Reagan obviously had more experience than Palin, and a longer track record of working politically for the presidency.  Bush…well, let's not even talk about it.

      To get back to Palin, there was nothing in her speech, nothing about her speech, neither its presentation nor its content, that demonstrated, to me at least (and to this writer as well), her capacity to critically and practically engage national and international policy issues.  But this is where I fail to comprehend American political culture.  Overwhelmingly, commentators are praising the speech as " excellent," a "home run," a "grand slam."   For a baseball analogy, it struck me as a slow roller down the third base line and the umpire called her safe at first, even though the throw clearly got there before her….

    So, I guess I should just give up on commenting on US politics.  It is obviously beyond me.  The scarier thought, of course, is that Republican media smear machine might just win this thing for McCain, just as it did for Bush in 2000 and 2004.  What is a Massachusetts liberal to do?  I don't have to worry about getting out the vote in my county, which is solidly Obama.  I have no influence over popular opinion in the battleground states and no access to Obama campaign strategy.  I'll send in some more money but, beyond that, I can only really sit and wait.  Do nothing, as it were.

     And that is where the Taoism helps.  I am powerless.  Things may turn out badly: a McCain presidency and a continuation of Republican executive power is a real possibility.  After eight disastrous years of Bush, Way might continue to be lost in the country.  And, as Confucius says, it might then be best to "stay hidden."   But Taoism gives us something more, a realization that our powerlessness is not simply a momentary condition but the timeless quality of Way.  Brings this Chuang Tzu passage to mind:

If you hide your boat in a canyon, and then hide the mountain in a marsh, you may think the boat is safe and secure.  But something powerful might come in the dead of the night, heave it all onto huge shoulders and carry it away.  And then in your darkness you'd never know what happened.  Something large seems like the perfect place to hide something small, but there's something into which that too can vanish.  Only if you hide all beneath heaven inside all beneath heaven, so there's nothing more into which it can vanish – only then have you reached the vast and timeless nature of things. (86)

    The point here is not to counsel disengagement and complete political inaction.   There is still plenty that can be done to counter McCain and elect Obama.  Rather, this is a reminder that, whatever is done, there are always some things beyond our control, "…something into which that too can vanish."  Whether those unknowables will cut in favor of Obama or not is, well, unknown.  But here's hoping that Way returns to the US and Obama pulls out the victory in November.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder , over at The Atlantic, had a similiar idea about fate; though I would disagree about Palin being the "black swan."   She's a fairly predictable conservative Republican.  The real "black swan" is still out there somewhere.