The opposite of leadership; or, Why it's always projection

CNN at the NRA convention in Houston, via BooMan:

Palin argued the president was practicing the "politics of emotion" by "flying in grieving parents on Air Force One, making them backdrops in his perpetual campaign-style press events."

Par for the course, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee faulted the media for being a "reliable, poodle-skirted cheerleader for a president who writes the book on exploiting tragedy."

Politics of emotion, she argued, won't make the country safer. "It's the opposite of leadership. It's the manipulation of the people by the politicians for their own political ends. It's not just self-serving. It's destructive and it must stop."

Our media. From Glamour Daze.

Leadership is:

1. the politics of Vulcan rationality
2. making grieving parents take the bus
3. not campaigning for things

What interests me the most is the implication that Obama is using the Newtown families, for example, for some hidden purposes of his own; not, that is, to pass gun control legislation, but to achieve an end he doesn't name. What do you suppose it could be? Is he a short-seller betting heavily on a fall in Remington shares? Does he represent a clandestine freemasonry or trade union of burglars hoping to rid Middle America of the ubiquitous semi-automatic under the bed? Is he part of a vast conspiracy against the Third Amendment aiming at quartering troops in everybody's master bedroom?

She's not going to think it through that far, naturally; or she'll toss her grappling hooks to New World Order or Socialism and just hang on. But she knows that you can use emotion to suspend people's judgment and make them do what you want, chiefly involving their checkbooks. It's always projection because that's all the sociopathic imagination can do, really.