Sept. 19, 2008
Sarah Quaylin
The New Republic: The Problem With Palin Isn't Lack Of Experience. It's Lack Of Engagement.
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Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, reaches to shake hands at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nev., Sept. 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
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Play CBS Video Video Palin's Star Loses Some Luster Attacks Rise Against GOP VP Nominee
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Photo Essay Sarah Palin Alaska's youngest and first female governor tabbed to be McCain's running mate.
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Timeline Palin's Path A look at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's life and career
Ever since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I've gotten confused about all the reasons I'm supposed to dislike Barack Obama. The previous reasons, in rough chronological order, were his lack of experience, his empty rhetoric, his flip-flopping, and his "celebrity." But Palin has made each one of those critiques moot. The "celebrity" attack on Obama has a particularly Dada quality right now as starstruck Republicans bask in the charisma of their adorable veep. (Coldest state, hottest governor, read signs at her rallies.) With her hunky husband, touching family life and plucky personal story, she is the candidate of the People. And by People, I mean People magazine.
The flip side for Republicans of losing most of their attack lines was supposed to be a series of virtues Palin would bring to the ticket: She's a reformer, a steadfast opponent of earmarks, a proponent of transparency and clean government. Subsequent reporting has revealed that Palin embodies the precise opposite of every one of these virtues. She appointed unqualified cronies, abused her power to punish personal enemies, and has displayed a Cheney-esque passion for government secrecy. Her boast of having put the state airplane on eBay was undermined by subsequent revelations that she failed to actually sell it on eBay.
The swift disintegration of Palin's anti-pork credentials has been especially amusing. After initially casting Palin as a dedicated foe of earmarks, and then having it revealed that she asked for and received enormous sums of earmarked projects, the McCain campaign has fallen back to the defense that she requested fewer earmarks than other Alaska pols. This is true: Even though Palin took ten times the national per capita average in earmarked spending, in this regard she still rates somewhat below average by the standards of the petro-kleptocracy of the state from which she hails. Yet this defense raises the question of why Ted Kennedy never thought to run for president on the slogan "He Never Took a Drink In His Life," and then, when challenged, point out that other members of his family are less sober than he.
The main complaint against Palin has been her lack of experience. That's fortunate for her, since "experience"--especially measured in a linear way--fails to capture exactly what Palin lacks. Yes, two years as governor is less than you'd like, as is four years as senator. The real problem, though, is that Palin has no record of thinking about national or international policy. Bobby Jindal, another Republican veep contender, has barely more experience than Palin, but he is a respected policy intellectual. Pat Buchanan ran for president without ever having served in elective office, but he had engaged more deeply than most presidential candidates in policy questions.
Engagement, not experience, is the difference between Palin's qualifications and Obama's. Obama has a longstanding interest in national and (to a lesser extent) international issues, and has answered questions on all those issues in extensive detail. Palin has dealt almost exclusively with parochial issues in a wildly atypical state. (Her fiscal experience, which consists of divvying up oil lucre, offers better preparation to serve as president of Saudi Arabia than the United States.) It's possible Palin has harbored a long-standing, secret passion for policy wonkery, but the few signs available thus far--her convention speech that spelled out "new-clear weapons," her evident lack of familiarity with the term "Bush Doctrine"--suggest otherwise. The Republican intelligentsia is frantically tutoring her while they run out the clock until November 4.
In lieu of opening Palin to regular questioning from the press corps, of the sort the other three candidates have all undergone many times before, the McCain campaign is helpfully leaking positive appraisals of her studiousness. "Despite the worries, [Palin] struck many campaign officials as more calm and cerebral than expected," reported Newsweek. "She was quick to ask questions, and to 'engage in a back and forth' with briefers." See, the McCain campaign says she's on the ball. That settles it, right?
But, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, this admiring appraisal of the prospective veep's intellect struck a familiar chord. With a quick search, I discovered that, indeed, the same was said of Dan Quayle in 1988. Twenty years ago, The Washington Post reported, "Bush aides, who were getting their first in-depth exposure to Quayle, were impressed by his attention span, the quality of his questions and the facility with which he moved through the agenda."
Other parallels stood out as well. Conservatives received Quayle's selection rapturously. L. Brent Bozell pronounced himself "ecstatic," and Jerry Falwell called the surprise pick "a stroke of genius." After a media frenzy, Quayle's speech was well-received. The convention hall burst into cheers of "We want Dan!" NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said that Quayle executed "flawlessly," and CBS's Bruce Morton called it "a good speech."
Questions about Quayle's readiness remained, but he did his best to turn them into elite condescension toward small town America. Quayle, in his acceptance speech, spoke movingly about the small towns in Indiana where he had grown up, and later disparaged Dukakis for "sneer[ing] at common sense advice, Midwestern advice."
Today, Quayle is remembered as a disaster. But, during the campaign, his supporters believed that media skepticism of Quayle had rallied ordinary Americans to his side. Dukakis "looks down on his fellow Americans. He looks down on Bush and Dan Quayle as--in his word--'pathetic,' " wrote right-wing columnist Michael Novak. "Thus, the 'feeding frenzy' of the press in New Orleans stirred a national backlash. It united all the scorned of America as one."
Conservatives are saying the same things about Palin. "Elite opinion," insisted McCain strategist Steve Schmidt, "looks down with contempt at people who are not part of their world." As Palin herself said, "If you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone." To the right, the mere fact that the press questions her fitness proves that she is one of them.
As the original rationales for Palin melt away, this bond has become unshakable. Her lack of qualifications turns out to be her greatest qualification.
By Jonathan Chait
Reprinted with permission from The New Republic.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 72 Comments"He is my good friend," Joe Biden told a large crowd here tonight. "I get in trouble for saying this with some real strong Obama supporters. ... [But] if John McCain picked up the phone today and said, ''Joe, I need you to get in a plane and fly out to Missoula, I can''t tell you why,'' I''d get in a plane and I''d go."
Later, when asked about an effort by Republicans to portray their ticket as one of ethics and reform, Biden called McCain "a thoroughly ethical guy."
You were asked if he [Obama] was ready. You said, %u201CI think he can be ready but right now I don%u2019t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.%u201D
Cut to Biden who says:
I think that I stand by that statement.
The headless announcer steps in to ask, %u201CAnd what does he [Biden] say of John McCain?%u201D
Cut to a clip from Jon Stewart%u2019s %u201CThe Daily Show%u201D back in 2005 where Biden said:
I would be honored to run with or against John McCain because I think the country would be better off.
Sarah and the first dude are going to whup tail.
Posted by andylance1
I guess you haven''t got the memo. Palin is a light weight and most have already concluded that she has not business being on the ticket and McSame should be held in contempt for putting her on it. Every poll I have seen is showing that he is losing ground to Obama. The only folks who are fired up about her is the far-right extreme of the GOP. Those are probably the people that was in the stands to see her in Florida. Too bad that it won''t be nearly enough to help McSame win. I guess you haven''t noticed that the bounce McSame got after pickeing her has disappeared. If she had any substance it would have lasted but the more people find out about her, the less they are inclined for voting for her. Too bad for you that she couldn''t have been hid until the election was over as she might have help McSame keep his shallow lead. Thank God that the American electorate saw through the farce and the only people that was fired up about her was the extreme far right.
the 535 congress members have to be afraid she might be elected.
for mccain to continue to have her off limits to a real press grilling is really not surprising; 48% of the people are ready to vote mccain today.roll her out too early and some voters will have second thoughts
Sarah and the first dude are going to whup tail.
I loved Hillary and I support a woman''s right to work, but I must look past skin and vote for the best ticket Obama/Biden, those two men were not born into or married wealth, and they set a better example of what America should represent.
They are far more intelligent and educated than McCain /Palin, and if we are going to do what is right for our country we will vote them into office.
The guns on the conviction of the sinner, Senator Barack Obama, are about to be silenced. Sarah Palin has done her job of connecting with the everyday people who will make the difference in the election. She has managed to make the Republicans, the party of, by and for the ruling class, the hope of the people in the margin, the smarter evangelicals who might have voted for Obama, the moms who struggle so hard to raise their kids in this mom unfriendly environment, the moose hunters and those Hillary women who can%u2019t distinguish their bras from their pocketbooks.
Palin has also managed to distract us all from the consequences of the hundred billion dollar bank bailout necessitated by the blind greed of Republican mortgage scammers, a grand heist on all who work for a living whose paychecks will be cut in half by the stupendous inflation this will bring about. Stocks, mostly owned by the rich, go up; and the real income of the workers and middle class goes down. This effective transfer of wealth from worker to ruling class is a continuation of the broader capitalist Republican manipulations that have caused worker incomes to drop by 2% in the last decade while those in the top tier went up by 200%. matrix-evolutions
Mrs. Ruth and Dr. Peter V. Calabria - Lubbock, TX
and palin''s star seems to be falling too. this is from newsweek: "Since Sept. 13, Palin%u2019s unfavorables have climbed from 30 percent to 36 percent. Meanwhile, her favorables have slipped from 52 percent to 48 percent. That%u2019s a three-day net swing of -10 points, and it leaves her in the Sept. 15 Diageo/Hotline tracking poll tied for the smallest favorability split (+12) of any of the Final Four. Over the course of a single weekend, in other words, Palin went from being the most popular White House hopeful to the least."
yup, the dems are desperate all right.
The DNC is panicked over the fact that Obama cannot pull ahead, and keeps slipping in the pols; in an election that the ''elite'' believed was in the bag. Yet another election, that the dems were supposed to walk away with easily, is falling apart. The latest ''excuse'' to be floated is the race-card; he cannot win because he is black... kind of a built-in excuse for another failed election cycle. The powers-that-be see the writing on the wall, and know that the campaign is destined to implode, and the far left is laying awake in bed dreading another four years under a republican white house.
You can scream and jump up and down all you want about Sarah Palin, but the truth of the matter is, it is your far left wing that drags you down, and causes you to lose election after election to people whome you deem as idiots; what does it mean when you cannot beat an idiot in an election? What does that say about YOU?
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"The sky is falling.... The sky is falling!"
John McCain is probably the least offensive Republican today. That isn''t saying much. But Palin...There is no better proof that a McCain Administration will be more of the same repugnant garbage than the choice of Palin.
As an aside, John McCain doesn''t look healthy to me. When someone has a chronic enlargement of the left parotid it is a clear sign that something is wrong.
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