Election

though all newborns look alike. Pictures of the new twins from the most cele- Maternal Flame brated breeding stock—Jolie and Brad Pitt—went for a reported $14 million. Sarah Palin’s family-friendly appeal. An obsession in politics with breeding is both very old (hereditary monarchy) By Steve Sailer and very contemporary. The main quali- fications of the current president and WHY, IN ONE UPROARIOUS week of with a broken arm after being thrown 70 this year’s Democratic runner-up are that American politicking that not even H.L. feet. Did I mention he’s part Eskimo? they are, respectively, the scion and con- Mencken would have expected, has the Mrs. Palin’s instant ascent to frontier sort of ex-presidents. More subtly, obscure governor of Alaska, Sarah folk hero explains some of the unhinged Obama launched himself at the 2004 Palin, outraged roughly one half of the hatred felt by Obama supporters. They’d Democratic convention by devoting the country and overjoyed the other? been fantasizing about their genetically first 380 words of his famous speech to What intrigues people about elections nuanced man of the future, their political detailing the two stocks from which he aren’t the platform planks. Deep down, Tiger Woods, when they were blindsided was crossbred. He implied that, like the political contests are about picking sym- by a figure out of America’s buried past, a heir to a dynastic merger of yore—think bolic champions. Just as Barack Obama, merrily comic Wild West character in the King Henry VIII, offspring of a Lancaster- recently of the Illinois legislature, has tradition of Annie Oakley and Calamity York marriage that ended the War of the excited tens of millions by his emphasis Jane. She’s already inspired hundreds of Roses—he is the one we’ve been waiting on his bloodlines, by his implication that one-liners in the Chuck Norris mode—“As for to end the War of the Races. (Obama national racial reconciliation is “in my head of Alaska’s National Guard, Sarah left out the part about his mom being 17 DNA,” the overstuffed life story of the Palin taught troops how to scare a grenade when his polygamist father, who already caribou huntress and mother of five into not exploding”—the modern equiva- had a family, got her pregnant.) (and soon to be grandmother at age 44) lent of all the yarns about Davy Crockett. To the outrage of Obamaphiles, Palin embodies the oldest boast Americans The even more fundamental reason has horned in on all that subliminal sym- have made about their homeland: the underlying all the fury on one side and bolism with her own old-fashioned Amer- fecundity of the frontier. amusement on the other is that this ican brand. She’s had five kids while Compared to Obama’s much-lauded brouhaha centers around female fertility. throwing out the crooks and nepotists. but tedious life, cautiously plotted in In more than a few liberals, she sets And now she has a 17-year-old pregnant countless Chicago backrooms, the off the same creepy stalker behavior that daughter engaged to a strapping 18-year- Alaskan-sized lustiness of Governor Michelle Malkin has endured for years. old hockey player in one of the few places Palin’s full-throttle biography—the only- Palin has the accent of Francis McDor- left in America where a young man with a in-Alaska factoids about her keep piling mand’s classic character Marge Gunder- strong back can support a family. up like an Old West tall tale—always son, the heavily pregnant lady sheriff Thus, Blue State whites are alarmed leaves me laughing. who shoots the bad guy in “Fargo,” but, and enraged to be reminded that Red Consider, for example, Palin’s husband as Obama has discovered, Palin has an State whites can afford to outbreed them. Todd. What kind of man could be married old point guard’s sharp elbows. The little- Frontier fecundity is hardly a new to a woman so hormonally exuberant, studied but no doubt sizable Nerd Bloc is concept. In 1751, Ben Franklin pointed with her dual archetypes straight out of a excited by pictures of an attractive out that America’s low population den- Camille Paglia reverie: half Alaskan woman shooting big guns, just like in sity meant higher wages and lower land Amazon, half Venus of Willendorf? their favorite Angelina Jolie movies. prices, which in turn allowed earlier Exactly the kind you’d expect: he works Human beings can’t help feeling marriages and more children. as both a North Slope oilfield roughneck strongly about making babies. Look at In this century, the fundamental engine and a salmon fisherman. He’s also won the celebrity gossip columns. The who- painting low-density areas red and high- the state’s snowmobile championship, is-sleeping-with-whom stuff can’t com- density areas blue is what I call Afford- the 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog race, four pete with the pregnancy news. Stars able Family Formation. Where wages are times. He only finished fourth this year now auction off exclusive rights to the high compared to home prices, people because he had to ride the last 400 miles first photos of their offspring, even can afford to marry earlier and have

14 The American Conservative September 22, 2008LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED more children. For instance, Todd Palin, from the Mexican border means that to Ben Franklin a quarter of a millennium who is not a college graduate, earned blue-collar wages are high. ago: restricting immigration benefits $93,000 last year between fishing and oil- Not surprisingly, Alaska is second Americans. The political implications of field work. (He would have made even only to Mormon Utah in total fertility the Baby Gap should be equally clear to more, but to avoid the appearance of con- among non-Hispanic white women, with Republican leaders today, but there’s little flict of interest for his wife in her deal- 2.28 babies per lifetime, 38 percent evidence that John McAmnesty has ings with oil companies, he stepped higher than in crowded California. noticed. down from a management position to a This Baby Gap helps paint the electoral In Palin’s case, having this much of a unionized rank-and-file job.) According map red or blue. In 2004, Bush carried 25 life might be too much for a president. to ACCRA cost-of-living data on Best- of the top 26 states in the total fertility rate (Margaret Thatcher once told my wife Places.net, the standard of living you can (expected number of babies per woman that she was glad she had twins so she enjoy in red Wasilla, Alaska for $93,000 per lifetime) among whites, while Kerry could get having babies over and done would cost you $159,000 in blue San was victorious in the bottom 16. It’s all with and get back to work.) Still, John Francisco. Due to its remoteness and about the ratio of land and resources to McCain, who lost five planes yet survived frigidity, Alaska isn’t a cheap place to live, people. Even excluding Alaska, the coun- and who picked up the GOP nomination but housing costs in exurban Wasilla are ties that Bush carried in 2004 are four by the random chance of winning in only 35 percent of what they are in San times as large in area as Kerry’s counties. winner-take-all states, may have stumbled Francisco. Moreover, Alaska’s distance The policy implication of this was clear into another piece of luck.

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LICENSED TO UNZ.ORGSeptember 22, 2008 The American Conservative 15 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Conservatism

Connerly Cashes In The anti-preferences activist gets rich off of affirmative action. By Michael Brendan Dougherty

THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be a banner know. He and the nonprofit organizations Connerly’s nonprofits employ him for year for Ward Connerly, the former Uni- he founded helped three such measures 30 hours a week and two others full time. versity of California regent and the pass—in California in 1996, Washington The nonprofits then hire him from Con- Right’s most visible anti-affirmative- in 1998, and Michigan in 2006. nerly and Associates to make speeches. action activist. His 2000 biography, Cre- But don’t spend too much sympathy In 2003, ACRI and ACRC paid him ating Equal: My Fight Against Racial on Ward Connerly. The Right’s point man $314,079 while he managed two people. Preferences, was re-released in February. on affirmative action doesn’t need politi- By comparison, that year the National His latest book, Lessons From My Uncle cal successes to be a success. While his Action Network, which receives about $1 James, was set to hit shelves this plans sputter and his former achieve- million in public funds, only paid Al summer. More significantly, he was to be ments are overturned, Connerly is still Sharpton about $4,000. The Claremont the driving force behind a series of ballot being handsomely rewarded. Once he Institute, a neoconservative think tank in initiatives that would have forbidden received favored status from the conser- California, paid its top executive state governments from “grant[ing] pref- vative movement, his future was guaran- $132,000, and its staff is 9 times the size of erential treatment to any group or indi- teed. As an activist, Connerly has made Connerly’s. The Heritage Foundation vidual on the basis of race, sex, color, millions opposing affirmative action. As a paid its president $292,000 to manage a ethnicity or national origin in areas of businessman and consultant, he has also staff of over 180. The primary financial public contracting, public education, or made hundreds of thousands in large part responsibility that Ward Connerly had at public employment.” He marketed this because of it. his nonprofits that year was paying his effort as Super Tuesday for Equal Rights. Between 1999 and 2005, Connerly’s firm over $400,000 for Ward Connerly the George Will gave his imprimatur to nonprofits, the American Civil Rights consultant, Ward Connerly the speaker, Connerly and his mission in a Washing- Institute and the American Civil Rights Ward Connerly the political maven—and ton Post column: “Will the superstitions Coalition, didn’t challenge a single affir- occasionally a security detail to guard surrounding race ever fade away? Not mative-action law. Yet donations climbed him. before governance is cleansed of the sort to almost $2 million per year. The share Is this illegal? The IRS makes clear in of race-based policies opposed by Con- that Connerly paid to himself, or to his its statute that nonprofit organizations nerly, who intimately knows the increas- private for-profit consulting firm, Con- cannot be used to enrich one individual ing absurdity of racial classifications and nerly and Associates, also dramatically or company, but few of these cases are the folly of government preferences increased. In 1998, 22 percent of his non- prosecuted. In 2006, during the heat of based on them.” profits’ revenue was paid to Connerly in Connerly’s Michigan push, Congress- But Connerly’s plans are unraveling. salary or to his firm. By 2001, Connerly’s men John Conyers and Charles Rangel His biography is absent from most stores salary and the fees charged by Connerly asked the IRS to look into his dealings. and barely registered in conservative and Associates ate up 49 percent of the An IRS spokesman said that he could book clubs. His second book is mysteri- nonprofits’ combined revenue. Most of not comment on a case under investiga- ously delayed. His ballot ambitions were the money paid to the firm was listed on tion. Connerly defended himself by scaled back, first from 10 states to five. tax forms as “speaking fees.” In 2006, saying that he avoids any trickery on his Then legal challenges and organized when Connerly took up a concrete goal IRS forms and dutifully pays taxes on all opposition winnowed the tally down to in political activism—ending Michigan’s the money he receives. just two. affirmative-action policies—the cut of Not long after the Sacramento Bee This is unfortunate because anti-affir- nonprofit revenue paid to him and his and the House members began inquir- mative-action ballot measures usually firm rose to 66 percent of total receipts, ing about his compensation, Connerly pass when put to a vote. Connerly would nearly $1.6 million. changed procedures at his nonprofits.

16 The American Conservative September 22, 2008LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED