as the Democrats try to neutralize the Palin pick. Charles Schumer is already claiming she takes the experience argument against Obama off the table, other Democrats are warning (in appropriately sepulchral tones) that she might be “a disaster”—one even dismissed her as “Geraldine Quayle.” For the latter, I think once America gets its first good look at Sarah Palin, I don’t think anyone will buy that; she’s bright, capable, and a quick study. What’s more, it isn’t quite true that she has no foreign-policy experience—remember, Alaska doesn’t border the US, it borders Canada and Russia. She certainly doesn’t measure up to Joe Biden in that respect, but that’s what the GOP ticket has John McCain for. And with all due respect, Sen. Schumer: don’t just look at the calendar, look at the accomplishments. That’s where the experience differential between Gov. Palin and Sen. Obama is very real.To go one step further, I think the Democrats are making a major mistake here. They’re trying to neutralize her with ridicule as a lightweight, hoping for the quick wipeout right out of the box, instead of treating her seriously; and while that would work if she were a lightweight, she isn’t, and she’s faced worse before. What this means is that, when she comes to the debate with Joe Biden, the expectations for her will be low, because after all, Sen. Biden is a vicious this, that and the other thing—and as George W. Bush found, she will find that low expectations can be a real help. She won’t need to “win” the debate with Sen. Biden to win the debate: all she’ll need to do is look respectable and not make a fool of herself, and the Democratic attack on her will go down like a house of cards. If in fact she stands up to Sen. Biden and performs well—as I’m convinced she will if the campaign staff prepare her properly—then the attacks on her will backfire in a big way. And if Sen. Biden has one of his “Uncle Joe” moments and she handles it well, she could flip him clean off the stage.
According to Wikipedia, she has admitted to using(not just trying)Pot, when it was legal in Alaska. Then in the same interview she turned around and tried to explain she didn’t like it. Would you keep and drink Pepsi, if you didn’t like it? Somehow, once this becomes common knowledge, I think a lot of staunch conservatives are gonna choke and turn colors!
Man, you’re about twenty years behind the times. If this is what the party of Bill Clinton is going to be down to in trying to deal with Sarah Palin, this was an even better pick than I thought.
I cannot believe this choice!!
While she may have strong personal character, hold similar ideals/views as McCain, Mayor of Wasila and approx. 18 months as Governor of Alaska does not make one qualified to be Vice President – and one heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the country. This is not a beauty pageant!
The hope is to fortify McCain with the Republican base and target the Hilary disenfranchised voters, but I’m not sure that Palin = Hilary. Reality is Hilary and Palin are on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum…the only thing they share in common is being female. Hilary voter’s are smart enough to to examine a candidate’s credientals, not their sex.
With the economy in trouble and foreign policy a bigger issue than ever, McCain’s – to me – demonstrated his lack of clear thinking and proper judgement by picking an obscure candidate with little experience in these key areas. McCain – who wants to be known for being able to reach across the aisle – should have put his differences aside and reached across to find a more experienced candidate such as Romney.
While I will give her a chance, I must say that McCain has taken his strong argument against Obama off the table – the experience to lead. Hopefully, this indicates that McCain will now focus more on laying out a detailed plan vs. negative campaigning against Obama.
Actually, you’re wrong on several points.
1) Sarah Palin has more executive experience than everyone else in the race combined. In particular, she has Barack Obama lapped in leadership experience, since he hasn’t led anything since the Harvard Law Review. (His tenure there was impressive in some ways, to be sure.) He certainly wasn’t one of the leaders of the Senate. As such, John McCain can continue making the experience argument, though he’ll have to do so with some care.
2) Gov. Palin actually has considerable economic experience, including some at the national level, for her age. I’ll grant her inexperience in foreign policy; what puzzles me is how exactly Mitt Romney was supposed to be better in that respect. Gov. Palin has at least had to deal with Canada; where was Gov. Romney’s foreign policy experience–his time running the SLC Olympics?
3) Why was Gov. Palin obscure? Because she’s governor of Alaska, which most of the country never thinks about. Is that relevant to anything? Not really. As such, her obscurity is no great argument against her selection.
4) Character isn’t a qualification? I beg to differ. In particular, I think having the character to resign your position to protest the corruption of your party/state’s leadership, as she did, and then come back and run against that leadership, taking their hammer blows, in order to begin to clean up that corruption is a significant indicator that in fact she is ready to be president–as ready as all but the most experienced politicians ever can be, anyway.
I for one am completely energized by this choice. I supported Sen. McCain, and admired him, but had not yet felt excited, whereas I knew Sen. Obama was already percieved as exciting, even if you disagreed with him. However, Gov. Palin is exciting exactly because of her character and story. Love, love, love this choice!
There are plenty of people with “foreign policy experience” that I wouldn’t want anywhere near the White House: Albright, Christopher, most people who work for the State Department. Foreign policy experience is a nebulous term and is of dubious importance: What matters is worldview, which is driven by principles.
Hi – I live in Juneau Alaska. I find it hard to believe that John McCain has picked Sarah Palin as his VP. Sarah Palin is not for the working class. In Alaska, Sarh Palin is the driving force behind relocating our state capital of Alaska from Juneau Alaska to Anchorage Alaska even though this will devastate the economy of all Southeast Alaska. Thousands of hard working families and businesses will be destroyed because of this. The values in our homes have already gone down and Sarah has brought fear to our kitchen tables. Juneau is the life line for all Southeast Alaska small communities. And moving our state capital has nothing to do with meeting the needs of constituents,as Sarah Palin stated, it’s about making deals with developer friends from Wasilla and Anchorage Alaska and a select few benefiting.
Sarah Palin is also currently under investigation by our legislature because she abused her powers and had a commissioner fired for not firing her sisters Ex-husband from a state job.
Sarah Palin does not listen to the voice of Alaskans. Sarah Palin has misrepresented the will of Alaskans and states that “all of Alaska” wants off shore oil drilling in Alaska, this is not true. Sarah is for BIG OIL. Sarah supports TED STEVENS and she lied on TV when she said should stood up against Ted Stevens and the “Bridge to No-where”, because she did support the “Bridge to No-where. Sarah Palin continues Ted Stevens’s legacy of Alaska being the breeding ground for the type of Good Old Boy GOP cronyism, corruption and dishonesty that the Republicans are famous for.
She has ignored the fact that Alaskans have voted twice against Aerial wolf hunts and when Sarah Palin first took office she had a BOUNTY put on wolves, which is illegal to do.
Sarah Palin is against the listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and is behind the suit filed in U.S. District Court challenging U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Alaskans and the whole world want the polar bear protected. Sarah says the polar bears are doing just fine.
Here is a clip from Alaskas Capital City news paper:
The question that should be asked first by our Governor and legislators who introduce bills is…. Is it fair and does it serve the interests of all the people. It is our right to expect our Governor and representatives to have a moral sense of stewardship towards all constituents and not to intentionally bring fear into our families’ lives… In the interest of family, of mutual benefit, and fairness to all, our Governor should end the capital / legislature move debate. One other request for our Gov. Stop this covert, hidden, secretive movement of state jobs from Juneau and Southeast to up north. We are in effect being mugged in broad daylight by the capital creep.
(capital creep refers to state job being moved in secret)
In the end Sarah Palin is just a Mayor from Wassila Alaska (and not so good of a Mayor) that was then elected Governor because of the republican majority of our state and this makes her Vice Presidential material and maybe President of the United States? What a stretch.
If this election about judgment, the choice of Sarah Pahin shows poor judgment on McCain’s part.
Any intelligent person knows that when you choose to have sexual relations at 43 you have a very high probability of having a child with Downs Syndrome. She used poor judgment not using birth control. Would she use better judgment dealing with our economy? Would she use better judgment dealing with our enemies?
I for one am not willing to take a chance with our nation that she would use better judgment in Washington.
If anyone is spinning this, it’s the GOP. They’re trying to convince the country that not even having two years of executive branch experience somehow trumps 12 years of legislative branch experience (8 at state level, 4 in the Senate).
I don’t know whether or not this is more insulting than dangling a woman in front of female voters in an attempt to get our votes.
No, I’ll go with the latter.
The former only goes to show their lack education. Some of our greatest presidents were former senators, one of them a Republican. They may need to shut up and use another argument before someone calls them on this and makes the entire party look stupid.
Too Late the Republican Party HAS made themselves look stupid. This isn’t about what’s best for the country…it’s about the Republicans doing whatever they can to get into the white house… pathetic! Hey let’s spin this woman as the next Hilary that should sway the fence Dems to come to our side…yeah sounds like a plan. Who’s out there in the demographic we need; Female, young…Gov of Alaska comes up let’s get her. PAAALEEEASE
A Palin/Biden debate could be pretty disastrous for Biden. I still remember the first Gore/Bush debate. Bush got trounced hard, but because he didn’t, I don’t know, throw poo at the audience or drool on himself, it was taken as a wash. Low expectations can be a serious advantage in a thing like this…
And Rob, you keep mentioning Romney. I can say pretty confidently that Romney wouldn’t be preferable to very much as P or VP. There just isn’t that much to recommend the guy.
(NB: Previous iteration of comment deleted due to memory failure on part of blogger.)
Doug, that’s one of the reasons I keep mentioning Romney–and I was initially planning to vote for him.
As for the commenters immediately above yours, I recognize some of them already. For some reason, when 80-90% of the voters like a politician (as they do Sarah Palin in Alaska), the remainder get really disgruntled, and really shrill. I will say a couple things, though.
One, to Toni: if you don’t understand that actually governing something of any size is more of a qualification for governing than doing a job which does not involve governing, then I don’t know what to say to you. I’m fairly certain that you wouldn’t call that reality “spin” unless you were trying to grab whatever you could to discredit the Republican ticket. Then too, there’s the matter of their respective accomplishments in office, a comparison Gov. Palin wins easily.
To “Alaska Girl”: let’s leave aside the fact that it’s unproven that Gov. Palin actually fired Walt Monegan for the reason you say. Let’s consider that waxing indignant on this requires you to defend the employment of a state trooper, Mike Wooten, who:
–tasered his 11-year-old stepson after bullying the kid into letting him, while other members of the family (including the child’s mother, his wife) were begging him not to do it;
–threatened his father-in-law, telling him he would “eat a f***ing lead bullet” if he helped his daughter, Wooten’s wife, get a divorce attorney;
–has been caught drinking beer in his patrol car;
–and who moved the head of the Alaska State Troopers, Col. Julia Grimes, to write of him, “The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession.”
If this is the kind of guy you’re willing to defend in order to try to bring down Gov. Palin, please, do so–put it on the front page of every paper in the country. We’ll be happy to tell the Mike Wooten story and post the headline all over the Internet, “Democrats Defend Child Abuser.” For me, I’m with Beldar: “The only question I have is: Why is that miscreant still wearing a badge?”
The Leftist NObama crowd better stay away from the poker tables until they learn how to keep their hands quiet. If they really thought that Gov. Palin was a weak pick for VP, they would be dancing and partying while they prepared for a slam dunk in November. Contrast that with how they have reacted in the past few days — hysteria and mindless spin. Let’s face it, Palin is a huge hit and the NObamists are scared to death that John McCain has completely outflanked them like a great military tactician would on the battlefield. You can bet that Bill and Hillary are licking their chops, too, and must be really restraining their glee.
Good point, except for one thing: if the Clintons were truly gleeful about the pick, they’d be slamming the Left for its unbridled sexism. We’d be getting “I told you so”s from both of them. I think Sen. Clinton really doesn’t know what to think–she doesn’t want Sen. Obama to win, but if he loses, there’s a definite chance she’s up against President Palin in 2012, and I don’t think she wants someone else to get to be the first female POTUS.
I’m I the only one who has read this?
http://www.crosscut.com/politics-government/17341
No, but you may be one of the few people who takes it as gospel. There are, after all, other people in Wasilla who are also writing, and they paint a rather different picture.