Well, this certainly ought to drive the MSM crazy. From the National Journal:

Of the many unflattering caricatures of Sarah Palin that litter the political landscape, the notion that she is a dummy or a puppet — a mere figure for manipulation by a superior brain — is probably the most prevalent. She has even been given a mock “endorsement,” bestowed in a YouTube video by the so-called Ventriloquist Dummies of America Association, for her supposed likeness to an inert object of play.

So let’s just say this at the top: Palin is not anyone’s puppet. It is not true for her, just as it was not true for George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and a long list of politicians who have been accused of having their strings pulled by one puppet master or another.


Washington’s impression of Palin as clueless harks back to what was once a standard Washington perspective on Reagan as “an amiable dunce,” as he was memorably called by the Democratic “wise man” Clark Clifford at a party in Georgetown in 1981, the first year of the Reagan presidency. Like other “politician-as-puppet” criticisms, that one has failed to survive careful scrutiny. A rough consensus has emerged that Reagan was a conviction politician who was sometimes misinformed and often passive but who, on the big issues, knew exactly where he wanted to go…

To put it another way, political figures who can be verbally clumsy or who may seem dumb, as intelligence is conventionally judged by those with high SAT scores, may be smart where it really counts; they may well possess inner convictions that make them anything but easy to manipulate. Palin, having gotten as far as she has in a tough racket, the arena of politics, deserves not to be dismissed as a dolt but rather to be studied for what seems to be working.

Be sure to read the whole article by Paul Starobin and think of it as the kickoff to Campaign 2012. Then come back here and let us have your thoughts of a Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, here’s a bunch of other politicians, many of whom were derided as puppets, morons or amiable dunces by the Rhodes Scholars of the media and the wise men of Washington:

Who’s laughing now?