In her Facebook reflections on the events in Arizona, Sarah Palin observes that our government was not designed for “perfect men and women.” It is because we are not angels, she says , that we require a system of government that acknowledges “the inevitable conflicts” produced by our “imperfect passions” and yet provides mechanisms — free speech, vigorous debate — that allow us to settle those conflicts without resorting to “dueling pistols.” That, she declares, is the system the Founders designed, and it is part of “why America is exceptional,” an assertion she makes twice.
This mixture of Calvinist pessimism and unabashed patriotism is writ large in Palin’s recent book, “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag.” The book opens with a celebration of Frank Capra’s Jefferson Smith, the hero of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939). Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart) is an accidental senator who finds his idealism mocked and blocked by corrupt politicians, greedy industrialists and propagandistic newspapers. The climax of the movie is Smith’s filibuster, in the course of which he cites the Declaration of Independence, written by his namesake, Thomas Jefferson. At this moment Smith embodies Capra’s typical hero — a man who draws his strength from an internal reservoir of virtue, a man who refuses to deed his integrity to some impersonal structure of government or business, a man who is, above all, free.
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