St. Paul's Counsel for Sarah Palin (and Us), Part II

It's been two months since I put up the first part of this post; I hadn't intended this to take anywhere near this long, but sometimes that's just the way things work out. For those who don't remember or didn't read the original post, I was inspired by a sermon by Seattle's Mark Driscoll on 2 Timothy 2:14-26 his sermon was addressed to leaders in the church, but as I listened it struck me that his wisdom applies equally well to those called to lead in other parts of life, including government, and that it's particularly valuable for those like Gov. Palin who have to deal with vast amounts of unfair negativity.

Now, if you want to check out the original sermon, the links to the video and sermon notes are above, as is the link to my post dealing with the first part of the Rev. Driscoll's message. The key element of his message is his summary of the kinds of people one deals with in leadership in the church, who can also be found in any sizeable organization:

1. Positives do gospel things in gospel ways for gospel reasons, bringing health, working for good, and being a blessing because they want the gospel to win. Few people are positives, and remaining one is difficult because it requires dealing with even negative people and negative situations in positive ways.

2. Negatives do ungospel things in ungospel ways for ungospel reasons, bringing sickness, division, and trouble because they want to win. Sadly, although negatives are not usually the majority, they are often vocal, determined, and well-networked, and therefore, as Charles Spurgeon said, much like bees who swarm into a painful threat.

3. Neutrals are unsure, confused, fearful, and caught in the middle. They need to be cared for by a positive shepherd or they will turn into negatives. Most people are neutrals and are swayed by the friends they keep, leaders they follow, and information they believe, and they need to grow in discernment and pursue wise friends.

As the Rev. Driscoll lays out, there are a great many kinds of negatives, and they tend to swarm like bees; the key to leading effectively in the face of negatives is that you can't allow yourself simply to react in a negative fashion and thus to become just another negative. It's necessary in dealing with the negatives to remain positive for the sake of the neutrals, or else you lose the whole shooting match.

Now, the advantage of my delay in getting this up is that I think recent events, and particularly David Letterman's vile and warped "jokes" about the Palin family, have provided a powerful illustration of the importance of what this means and what it doesn't mean. We have of course seen a number of folks over the last couple weeks urge Gov. Palin to "take the high road," by which they mean to ignore Letterman, not comment on his words, and generally let him get away unscathed. That is not taking the high road. Inaction and letting issues go unaddressed are not positive, they are passive, and passivity is not a productive approach to dealing with negatives; speaking as a pastor now in his second church, I can attest to that from personal experience.

Rather, dealing positively with negatives means acting, using one's authority, responding to people and actions which require response, but doing so in a positive way rather than in a negative way. The Rev. Driscoll outlines twenty ways to be a positive—twenty ways to respond to negatives in a positive fashion; they don't all apply in the same way outside church leadership, but most of them do, and they're all worth considering:

1. Positively emphasize what you are for instead of against.

2. Positively use your God-given authority.

3. Positively invest your words.

4. Positively do your best.

5. Positively work hard.

6. Positively study harder.

7. Positively avoid getting drawn into endless arguments.

8. Positively warn the sheep about the wolves.

9. Positively rejoice that God rules the church.

10. Positively practice repentance before preaching it.

11. Positively use your passion to be a better servant.

12. Positively grow up quickly.

13. Positively seek righteousness, faith, love, and peace with urgency.

14. Positively grow in discernment.

15. Positively be kind like Jesus.

16. Positively harness the opportunity to teach your people.

17. Positively suffer patiently like Jesus.

18. Positively correct gently.

19. Positively desire good for your enemies.

20. Positively use your energy to win converts, not arguments.

This kind of thing isn't easy to do; it isn't easy to keep out of the mudpits (or should I say mudflats?) of the negatives' personal attacks and stay focused on the issues. It's critically important, though, because what negatives are trying to do is to pull you down to their level and thus to make you the issue, instead of whatever the meaningful issues really are. If they can do that, they win—every time, even if they seem to lose.

Now, in bringing this up, I don't mean to imply that Gov. Palin has been doing a bad job of this. Quite the contrary, actually—in dealing with the whole Letterman flap, the Iron 'Cuda put on a clinic in how to respond positively to negatives. I'm not saying her performance was necessarily completely flawless, but it was gold-medal-worthy.

Particularly impressive in that regard, I think, was her interview with Matt Lauer. She was obviously focused on talking about the substantive policy issue of the day, the pipeline agreement; she accepted the need to talk about Letterman when Lauer raised brought him up, but in doing so, she deflected any attempt to make the issue about her. Most impressively (and entertainingly), when Lauer mentioned the "slutty flight attendant" crack, not only did she not express any offense, she addressed it as an insult to flight attendants and an opportunity to speak in their defense.

This was of a piece with her response to Letterman's slams on her daughters, which she took not as personal insults but as a mother defending her children, and by extension all young women and girls—which enabled her to tie Letterman together with all the other ways that our society sexualizes our daughters (as anyone who's gone shopping for girls' clothing in recent years knows well) and batters down their self-respect.

Because of her approach, Gov. Palin was able not only to keep herself from becoming the issue in the Letterman flap (except in the minds of PDS sufferers who can't see anything but their hate for the Governor) but to create a teachable moment for our country. This in turn created an opportunity for folks like Amy Siskind to step up, come to her defense, and take advantage of that teachable moment, as she's done so ably at The New Agenda and in her recent pieces for HuffPo. That's why Siskind could say of Gov. Palin that "the next wave [of feminism] has her back." If Gov. Palin had gone negative, this could not have happened in this way; because she stayed positive and responded constructively instead of merely reacting, she created the space for Siskind and others to do the same.

So, where do we come in? Well, sometimes as a leader, when you're dealing with particularly difficult negatives, you need outside help; sometimes you need someone positive to come in, assess the situation, and call out the people who are being negative. You need an authority the neutrals trust who isn't right in the middle of the situation (and thus can be generally objective) to look everyone in the eye and name names. The unfortunate thing is that, whether in Alaska or on the national scene, there's simply no one person who can do that. There are folks who can fill that role in a limited way, as Wev Shea did several weeks ago, but there's simply no one with the sort of standing necessary to play that part to any significant degree.

As such, this has to be the sort of thing that us ordinary barbarians and followers of the Iron 'Cuda have to do together; which means that we, too, must strive to be positives. That might not seem like it matters, since we're not on Gov. Palin's payroll or under her direction—we're just a bunch of private citizens who speak for ourselves—but it's true; just consider the reactions to Sinistar's brilliant "Bore in the Woods" video:



Chris Matthews picked up on this and gave us the credit for it—but even though he acknowledged that it was none of Gov. Palin's doing (and suggested "if she runs, she should hire these guys to make her ads"—nice tip of the hat, there), remember his closing comment? "Keep keeping it light, Governor; get huffy, and you lose this fight."



It was none of Gov. Palin's doing, but it reflected on her anyway; while those who would dearly love to bring her down have been pretending to believe that the ad shows the Governor shooting Mitt Romney, and using that to try to tar her name. And then, of course, there was the inimitable Carl Cannon, who wrote,

When Time magazine released its list of the world's most influential 100 people a month ago, Sarah Palin made the roll, but Romney didn't. "Was that the issue on the most beautiful people or the most influential people?" Romney responded. Romney is such a square he might have figured that Palin would mistake his dig for a compliment. She didn't: Her people produced a video—with her assistance—called "There's a bore in the woods," borrowed from a mid-1980s Reagan campaign ad.)

R. A. Mansour e-mailed Cannon and posted about his mistake, but as far as I know, he still thinks Sinistar's on the Governor's payroll.

That is, of course, an extreme example (after all, most people who write about politics know how to read, even the ones who don't read anything but Barack Obama's press releases), but it makes the point: what we say and what we do reflects on Gov. Palin even though it's completely on our own hook. If we go positive, it makes her look good; should we surrender to the temptation to go negative, that can be used against her—and the higher our profile gets (and it's climbing), the truer that will be.

This is, I think, the reason for the way the media has handled the AFT Webathon. That was a brilliant move, and a great example of dealing with negatives in a positive way—which is why it drove Gov. Palin's critics utterly bats. That's the reason for the AP article by Rachel D'Oro that R. A. fisked, that gave the barest possible mention of the Webathon while playing up Kim Chatman; it's the reason the ADN, which couldn't really avoid writing about the Webathon, chose to give the article a viciously biased headline, as VO pointed out; and it is, I think, the reason Celtic Diva launched her own little online fundraiser, and that she and Dr. Chill have gone completely over the line into indecency in publicizing it, as Joseph Russo noted.

It's the reality of this fight for us: if we go positive, they will go negative, on us and on Gov. Palin. That's just how it's going to be, and we need to realize that and be prepared for it—and to be prepared for them to keep searching for and setting new lows in the process. Why? Because Goal #1 for the anti-Palin forces is to drive her negative so they can use it against her—and if they can't manage that, then Goal #2 is to drive us negative so they can use that against her. That's how negatives work; that's their MO. As the Rev. Driscoll described them in the church, they are people who

do ungospel things in ungospel ways for ungospel reasons, bringing sickness, division, and trouble because they want to win. Sadly, although negatives are not usually the majority, they are often vocal, determined, and well-networked, and therefore, as Charles Spurgeon said, much like bees who swarm into a painful threat.

In a political context, we might say that they are people who do things that are not for the public good, in ways that do not serve the public interest, for reasons that have nothing to do with the public good, using "sickness, division and trouble" as a means to an end: that of defeating their opponents, which is the only thing they care about. And they are, as Gov. Palin's very own personal negatives in Alaska have bragged of being, "vocal, determined, and well-networked." All we can do is to be equally vocal, determined, and well-networked, to call them on their negative tactics and call out their falsehoods—without ever joining them in the gutter.

After all, as someone has wisely said, there's no point in mud-wrestling a pig—you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.