John McCain once explained why he is better qualified to be president than Rudy Guiliani, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney. His words look ironic in retrospect.
“I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”
–John McCain, Republican Presidential debate in Orlando, Fla., October 21, 2007.
The obvious logical inference to take away from McCain’s remark is that he doesn’t see his running mate as prepared and that he thinks she is going to need on-the-job training. Gov. Palin has much less gubernatorial experience than either Huckabee or Romney, and I don’t think we want to make any comparison between Guiliani’s experience running New York City’s five boroughs and Palin’s experience running the village of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 9,780). We all have positions on the issues and policies we’d like to see changed or continued, but nothing trumps national security. You can’t have a commander-in-chief that has never met a foreign leader in her life, who has no idea what the Bush Doctrine is or why it matters, and who thinks staring across the Bering Sea at Russia is good experience in understanding the conflict in the Caucuses. It is 4877 miles from Nome, Alaska to T’bilisi, Georgia. That’s about the same distance as between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Washingon DC. How well do you think the Mayor of DC understands Argentinian politics and military intentions?
Now things might be different if Gov. Palin displayed a thoroughgoing familiarity of foreign policy issues. But she doesn’t. She has no idea what U.S. foreign policy has been, nor any independent idea of what it should be in the future. She doesn’t even know who attacked us on 9/11 or why we are sending her son over to Iraq to fight. Here’s how James Fallows put it this morning.
What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the “Bush Doctrine” exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.
A debate has opened up about strategy. Should the Democrats talk about Palin’s lack of qualifications or should they talk about the economy. The answer is both, but everyone wants to win every argument. Here’s how Chris Cillizza puts it:
One other potential complication that presents itself when considering the efficacy of Obama’s new aggressive approach is that it is focused entirely on painting McCain as out of touch on the economy at a time when many Democrats are clearly itching for the Illinois senator to go at Palin in a meaningful way.
The liberal base of the Democratic party detests Palin in a visceral way and wants to destroy her, regardless of whether it is a sound political strategy or not.
I’d like to point out that I don’t detest Sarah Palin in a visceral way, but I do oppose her on political grounds. Mainly, I’m offended that she would have the hubris to think she’s qualified to be president when she doesn’t even know the first thing about world affairs.
Palin is a hybrid of George W. Bush and Dan Quayle. That’s hardly the kind of track record we want to duplicate. Is it?
The ladies of The View take on McCain:
watch
Is this going to make me feel even sicker than I feel right now after hearing some of the reactions to Palin’s interview?
Nope, it’s actually pretty funny that the women ganged up on him and used the L-word. Lie. He looked muy uncomfortable.
good, then I will watch it – I need a lift right now.
you can rant and i can rant and it doesn’t mean a damn thing boo. unless the dems and the o man decide that there has to be a broad based “attack” mccain and palin directly and forcefully and repeatedly, this farce is over.
to hell with the belief that the folks in this country will understand the “facts” and vote appropriately, mccain has to be called out as a liar and palin has to be called out as an incompetent.
nice just doesn’t work.
The idea that ‘anyone’ can be president is attractive to some folks for some reason. This idea is what should be killed off – it’s some weird monarchist tendency that isn’t a typical trait of a democracy.
We don’t need ‘Raymond’ or ‘Reba’ in the whitehouse.
For the impressionable masses, there have simply been too many cute ‘Everyman goes to Washington’ movies like ‘Dave’ to ignore. You know them, the flicks where the little guy poses/is accidentally elected as president and calls his back-home accountant buddy and they fix the budget and all the worlds problems overnight.
Unreasonable or not, I think many people think that this sort of insta-reform is a guaranteed result of a ‘little guy’ grabbing the reigns of power.
Words can come back to haunt you, and McCain’s words re. experience is a good, substantial basis for a question during the upcoming debates. But will we hear it? Doubtful.
On the other hand, I’m now sure that most Americans care about experience, as opposed, say, to answering the question, would I like to have a beer with this good ol’ boy? It would seem that for Bush, the most inexperienced presidential candidate regarding foreign affairs ever, this was a more important question, and a lot, enough, people responded, yes. And so we began eight years of hell.
I wish I shared your optimism that people care more about experience than personality or “relatability”. The gushing over Palin being “one of us” is just sickening to me….like literally, sickening. I don’t want someone in the White House who is just like me. I’m stupid and too emotional and sort of vindictive and lazy and I overeat….
This Palin thing is making me physically sick too.
Yes. That’s a good point. But, on the other hand, it took a while but finally the American public have come to view Bush as incompetent. At first people resisted the conclusion that he was incompetent because the media and Middle-America bought into the narrative that liberals were being mean to Bush and they liked him as a way to stick it in liberals’ eyes. Well, Middle America finally figured it out and they don’t want an incompetent boob as their President anymore. They finally agreed with liberals like me that think he’s incompetent.
But McCain’s image will be harder to crack. But we have a precedent with cracking Bush’s image so the Democrats need to get chipping away at the Mavericky, honorable, reformer that is unimpeachable on foreign policy. It’s probably too late already but there is some hope because truth is on the Democrats’ side here. The Republicans are yet again running a campaign on Big Lies and going Ape-shit on their opponents so the Democrats need to pound home the fact Palin is an unqualified fundamentalist right-wing crook and hack, and McCain is a reckless warmonger who is a hypocrite to boot.
“Middle America finally figured it out and they don’t want an incompetent boob as their President anymore. “
But they apparently are all enthused about having an ignorant, incompetent religious fanatic wack job as their Vice President. The ability to memorize talking points and deliver them with faux confidence is what really matters to the American electorate.
I have said that Palin is the most dangerous person in America, but I was wrong. The most dangerous thing in America is the American electorate.
Well, right. It’s an effective tactic. Or has been. Odds are it will work again in the short term–meaning this election. Especially if there is another diplomatic or even military scuffle in the next month or so. Say with Iran. McCain is just waiting to do his Ape Charge and charge out with Ape fists flailing and beating his chest. Palin has shown that she will be equally pig-headed and reckless with our foreign policy. So I think her “gaffe” supporting war against Russia helps McCain–at least in the short term. There is no way Obama can beat them at their game of belligerent militarism. They probably saw the uptick in polls for McCain during the Georgian conflict and the candidate is most at ease in his crazy Patton routine, belligerently urging an all-out attack on all fronts–to hell with any civilians or diplomacy. So look for this Ape routine to come shortly. And the Ape shit he will be throwing directly at Obama’s eyes will be stinky (coward! coddles terrorists, etc.).
But, it’s not a foolproof tactic. Bush’s armor was finally removed and he was revealed for the incompetent boob he is.
But, like I said the odds are bad. The Democrats are guilty of gross political malpractice and God knows the smart money is not on them to win any sort of political contest.
So, in other words, we might as well resign ourselves to four more years that will be even worse than they eight this country has just put the world through.
That is just about the most depressing prospect I can imagine. I don’t even know what I will do when that happens. I mean, a person can leave this poor excuse for a country, but everything the U.S. government does has terrible reverberations throughout the world, and one cannot leave the world – at least not if they intend to remain alive.
US Constitution, Article II, Section 1
Please don’t bother me with tabloid stories, I’m busy trying to decide between a Constitutional scholar and a warrior who can’t even avoid capture with an airplane.
I hope this post means that you are feeling much better.
I thought you just posted you’re not feeling too good, headachy and all?
without doubt, but there are two very good essays at salon today about why we better be wary.
the first: “I fear for my country”
and on the subject of “culture wars”, the second: What small-town America is saying about Obama
both are recommended reading.
forewarned is forearmed, and obama, whether through biden or other surrogates, needs to start hammering on mcstain and palin both.
Palin mght very well be McCain’s soul mate, but that doesn’t make her a qualified candidate for VP. Beyond the obvious, I am hoping that we will stop jumping at the daily Palin story like lap dogs begging for a dog biscuit. The media runs the Palin story daily cause everyone (including us) is talking about it/her. To paraphrase Obama, Enough! We should be doing everything we can to minimize her impact on the national election. The first thing we can do IMO, is to STOP TALKING ABOUT HER.
I feel better now.
“The first thing we can do IMO, is to STOP TALKING ABOUT HER.“
I’m not so sure about that. Remember that ignoring the swiftboat lies is a big part of what did Kerry in. I think we need to keep exposing her, but stick to substantive matters. I’m glad we are not talking about Brittany or Bristol or Brisbane, or whatever that kids name is.
Your point is well taken. My comment concerns spreading the dialogue the MSM is feeding us about wonderful straight shooting Sarah. The more we squirm, the better she looks.
I agree with you that Obama should not sit still. Given enough rope, I think she has the ability (or disability) to hang herself. Today was not a good day for McCain/Palin. Contradictions aplenty. The bridge nobody wanted to pay for is revisited. She acknowledges earmarks for Alaska while McCain says she accepted no earmarks. This makes for um… interesting reading. Palin’s hubby to be called to testify over troopergate.
Obama/Biden should Call her out on her false statements. Wringing our hands over how the public seems to be enamored with the beautiful, anti-establishment, maverick conservative from Alaska, is counterproductive.
“Today was not a good day for McCain/Palin.“
That depends. By any objective criteria you are right, it was not a good day. However, what really matters is how the voters and potential voters see it, and I’m telling you, I have been absolutely shocked at some of the reactions I have heard to the first half of her interview – from reasonably sophisticated dyed-in-the-wool liberals who ought to know better! Based on the little bit I have seen and read of the interview I think she made a fool of herself, but many people think she did rather well.
On a numb nut conservative forum I occasionally visit the talking point yesterday was that it doesn’t matter that she didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was because they didn’t know what it was. “Its obscure”, Its a lot of different things”, “It was a stupic question”.
Bottom line, she’s one of us and so it is good she didn’t know.
…the real problem is that Obama is woefully unprepared to run a presidential campaign. He continues to follow the old failed campaign strategy of Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. He is passive and only reacts to the other side. He lets the Steve Schmidt machine define him as fluff and steal his position as the candidate of change.
Obama has to immediately fire his top campaign strategists and hire Drew Westen. He needs to take his gloves off and come out swinging. He needs to initiate the attack instead of always weakly responding to Schmidt’s smears. It’s criminal Obama doesn’t use all the ammunition laying there at his disposal.
He needs to quit going on about boring abstract policy stuff and start pointing out the lipstick on the pig maverick who is actually a Washington insider and tool of the lobbyists. Times a wasting.