Somebody Lend Victor Davis Hanson an Original Idea

National Review is promoting a new, subtle-as-a-brick satire by Victor Davis Hanson titled “President Palin,” a 1000-word exercise in imagining how Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be treated by the liberal media if she, not Barack Obama, were making the terrible gaffes that Hanson obsesses over. For example:

“Ted Stevens may have gotten off,” wrote Bob Herbert in the New York Times, “but he taught our Sarah something first — like using $100-a-pound beef for her state dinners. And what’s this $50 mil for her inauguration gala? Since when do you fly in your favorite pizza-maker from across the country on our dime? Or send the presidential 747 for a spin over the Big Apple for a third-of-a-million-dollar joyride? Does Palin think she’s still in Alaska and has to have everything flown in from the South 48 by jumbo jet?”

Hilarious! Except that Hanson made this exact same joke six months ago in “Sarah Biden,” a similarly gut-busting romp wherein Palin, not Joe Biden, was making the terrible gaffes that Hanson obsesses over.

Palin — who has had past associations with reactionary groups — caused a storm earlier when she characterized Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama in seemingly racialist terms: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Such stereotyping suggested that the Alaskan was not aware of the multiracial nature of American politics — an impression confirmed when in her earlier gubernatorial run, she had once suggested that to enter a donut shop was synonymous with meeting an Indian immigrant.

The Biden column was just kind of strange—his gaffes were well-reported on, as evidenced by the fact that Victor Davis Hanson was able to cite them without much explanation, and they’d occured over decades (Hanson brought up Biden’s 1987 plagiarism incident) while Palin managed to fumble her public image in two short months. This new column is less strange, but infinitely lazier. It’s the kind of stuff that could endanger Hanson’s pose as an intellectual classicist who puts a gloss on Rush Limbaugh jokes.