The Republicans have apparently settled on the notion that Sarah Palin’s “executive experience” qualifies her for the Presidency. It is worth noting that the President of the last quarter century who had the most executive experience was the one currently filling the White House. Bush had been Governor of a major state and had run several businesses. Reagan had also been Governor of a major state, but his private sector experience was substantially limited to performing in show business. Bush Sr. had been CIA director, but only briefly, and had never been a mayor or governor. Clinton had been governor of a small state, but had no private sector executive experience of significance. To find a President with executive experience comparable to Bush, you have to go back to Carter, who had a peanut business in addition to having been Governor. And Bush, of course, has been an utter disaster as President. So let’s drop the pretence that “executive experience” tells you anything about who should be in the oval office.
In fact, the “experience” argument with Palin is a trap for both sides. Yes, it makes a mockery of McCain’s whole “experience” argument, but for Obama supporters to attack Palin’s lack of experience also looks hypocritical. Obama does actually have much more relevant experience than Palin, because in the Senate he deals with national and international issues all day. His experience argument would be stronger had he been in the Senate longer, but the notion that Senate experience is not relevant is ridiculous. Palin has had very little engagement with the problems that concern the nation. The Fairbanks paper itself expressed shock at Palin’s nomination, as she had never even expressed interest in federal or national issues.
And this gets at the real problem with Palin: like Bush, she is proudly ignorant of the world. She had no opinion on the situation in Iraq and simply said she hoped we had a strategy and hoped it had nothing to do with oil. Hope is not an understanding. She doesn’t know what the vice-President does. And there is no evidence that her party, either in its leadership or at its grassroots, considers these glaring deficiencies a problem, any more than they did with Bush.
We have to say this in such a way as to make clear that it is an attack on Palin, not on rural voters generally. The Republicans are already trying in advance to spin attacks on Palin as general attacks on “her kind of person”, and we have to be sure not to fall into that trap. For example, in this age of the Internet, rural people have access to just as much information as city people; they are no longer isolated. So rural people are not generally ignorant of the world – but Sarah Palin is ignorant of the world.
