Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Palin and the blogosphere

Defenses of Sarah Palin keep rolling in, including in the Montana blogosphere. Most of the defenses make no sense. There is the claim that Palin has more experience than Barack Obama, for instance, and the claim that she has more experience than John Edwards did when he ran for vice president.

Neither claim makes much sense to me, but even if they did, so what? John Edwards lost, and not even his most fervent supporters would argue that he had a huge reservoir of experience to draw on. Obama's campaign is based on the argument that he can be a good president without vast experience. And Republican opposition to his claim is based on the argument that he can't -- that he is vastly underprepared and naive and would endanger the country during a time of grave international threats. So putting up someone against him who is at best only marginally more experienced than he is betrays the whole Republican argument. That's especially true when it is rapidly becoming apparent that Palin made serious blunders in her tenure as mayor -- the very experience that we are told now qualifies her to be president -- and that she has told some pretty substantial lies about those blunders, including a stunning whopper right in her very first speech as a vice presidential candidate.

Palin's supporters can argue until they turn blue -- and they probably will -- that her experience trumps Obama's. But what it really does is undermine the case that experience should be an issue at all. I don't see how that can be good for Republicans.

As a side note, claims are surfacing that it is "sexist" to suggest that a new mom with a special needs child and an unwed, pregnant teenager ought to be sticking closer to home. No doubt there is merit in the charge. But take the mom out of the picture. Speaking not as a mom, but as a husband and father, if I were in that situation I would think long and hard before taking a brand-new, time-consuming job that required me to move literally all the way across the country. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it -- vice president is a pretty heady job -- but a part of me would always wonder whether I had done the right thing, particularly knowing with near certainty that taking the job would mean my daughter's problems would become national fodder for late-night comics.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sexism....to me, would be treating Ms. Palin differently because she is a woman. SHould the media being ignoring her qualifications because she is female? SHould they just accept that McCain says she is good so it MUST be true? What the hell is going on here?

Pennsylvania Republican Party leader Renee Amore said that as an African-American woman, "I understand racism and I understand sexism.... These smears are meant to distract the American people from the fact that Gov. Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama."

When asked to name a specific time when she considered the mainstream media's reporting to be sexist, Amore could not name one, pointing, instead to the general tone of the coverage.

Unknown said...

Hammer ... Nail ... One shot. You drove it home, Dave. You must be using an Estwing.

Anonymous said...

Palin's a book burner. End of story.

jcurmudge said...

And Mitt Romney suggests that Al Gore ground his private jet to save energy. I wasn't aware that all 5,000 plus at that Convention "walked" to St. Paul.

Anonymous said...

David, and Rob, if Governor Palin was a Democrat, you guys would be ecstatic at how politically correct your ticket was.

If you wish to deny it, go ahead, but it wasn't a coincidence that Barack Hussein Obama gave his acceptance speech 45 years to the date of the "I have a dream speech" by MLK.

By choosing Gov. Palin, what Sen. McCain did was to show the world that he is NOT GWB, and that his VP pick is no Dick Cheney.

That strategy just ruined the entire Democrats campaign strategy, to try to make Sen McCain another GWB, which he is not.

Barack Hussein Obama himself said that the ability to run a campaign, and beat Hillary, showed how good his administrative abilities are.

Let's see if that sells, now that the real campaign starts.

So my question to you, is which ticket is most PC?

The ticket putting forth the black candidate, or the ticket with the soccer Mom?

David said...

Eric, I agree that picking a VP candidate who is not Dick Cheney would be a must in any successful presidential campaign.

Chuck Rightmire said...

I keep looking back at the vice presidents and vp candidates I have known and there are three that she reminds me of: Thomas Eagleton (McGovern's first pick) because of her Khomeni eyes and desparate need for couseling; Dan Quayle for her desperate lack of experience and inability to read a speech; and, mostly, Spiro Agnew for her background in Alaska's nasty politics. And as she paraded her children on stage last night, I was wondering how any five-month pregant gril could look as thin as her daughter did. And she has made her children campaign material and legitimate (or is that illegitimate targes?).