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Bob Cesca on 'Joe Six-Pack'

By Chuck Ansbacher

Wednesday October 1, 2008

Here’s the difference, though, between President Bush’s Joe Six-pack persona and Sarah Palin’s. For better or worse, George Bush — and I can’t believe I’m writing this — had attained a respectable level of schooling while also coming from a family deeply rooted in American politics. In other words, be it the fake Crawford “ranch” and his cowboy drag, George W. Bush is mostly pretending. He’s “Joe Six-pack” insofar as he’s running away from his silver-spooned, cheerleading, Skull & Bones background. That doesn’t mean he’s any less ignorant. He’s still a disconnected, incompetent nothing. But at least he possesses something resembling the heft required of the office. And it’s worth noting for the sake of context that he initially ran for president as the “guy you want to have a beer with” in 1999 and 2000 — a time of relative peace and prosperity. Bored Americans figured, Whatever. Might as well.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is, by all indications, a bonafide hooplehead — so dangerously out of her depth and so delusional — perhaps blinded by ambition — that she is in total denial about the real-world ramifications of her ineptitude. Instead, she’s excusing her embarrassing television interviews and farcical candidacy as an historical breakthrough for “normal Joe Six-pack Americans.”