Sarah Palin is no more qualified for VP than Obama is for President. Nor is she less.
I admire Sarah Palin as a person and speaker, and she seems keen, as well as tough. John McCain probably is right when he states that she won’t be told to sit down. I admire and respect that trait in anyone, whether or not I agree with their ideals, because I never did respect indecisive pushovers. She clearly isn’t a wimp. She also represents a fresh face to the tired Washington scene — not because that face happens to be quite beautiful, but because behind the pretty face is the brain of a proven reformer yet uncorrupted by the den of sin that lies inside the Beltway.
While I won’t yet gush over her the way Pat Buchanan has, he made a good point: She has more governmental executive experience than Obama, or even Biden or McCain for that matter. After all, remember that we are talking about an election for the executive department here. In the end, if elected, she may prove the gamble was worth it. I surely hope so. But in the meantime, indulge some reservations…
As with Obama for President, I cannot justify Palin for VP based only on metrics of experience and credentials that constitute the political equivalent of bench press, 40-times, high jump and other measurables in athletics. Both Palin and Obama have gaping weaknesses as far as credentials or specific expertise of any sort are concerned. McCain and Biden do not, though Biden is much more of a party hack than McCain has proven to be.
Fortunately the main vote here is for President and not VP, and as I’ve mentioned before, on the Presidential side, the credentials contest is so lopsided as to be laughable. Of course, my sociopolitical beliefs line up much closer to McCain/Palin than Obama/Biden, which is what most of us will base our vote upon anyway. So goes mine.
But I admit Palin was a risky selection — more so than, say, Kay Hutchison (if McCain was hell-bent on a female VP), Romney, Huckabee or Pawlenty (whom I thought would be the choice). In a way, though, this maneuver fits a pattern with McCain’s history as a maverick. Palin most certainly is no Washington insider. If McCain gets elected — and for the sake of getting more socially conservative, constitutional literalists on the Supreme Court, I deeply hope he does — then he had better stay fit and healthy for at least one full term, until she either shows on-the-job that she’s fine, or he can replace her with more robust Presidential timber.
This looks to be a close election between candidates who are different as can be in so many respects that matter. Neither Presidential candidate is hapless cannon fodder, as with Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis (or, arguably, Bob Dole and John Kerry). We all know that the right and left are going to dig in and vote for who they’re going to vote for, period. That admittedly, and unashamedly, includes me (on the right).
Therefore, the deciding factor at large, as in Bush41-Clinton, as in Bush43-Gore, as in Bush43-Kerry, will be the relatively small but all-important bloc of the unsure or unconvinced. McCain’s best hope in this election are those swing voters away from the bastions of flaming leftism that characterize the coasts and northern cities. My hope in that regard is that middle and rural America uses its collectively superior reservoir of common sense and sensibility, in order to turn out in force and outvote the coasts and northern cities in this Presidential election.
kscharf says
It has been pretty amusing the past week to watch those within the “collectively superior reservoir of common sense and sensibility” (read: those whose opinions agree with mine) flock to Palin as the hockey mom who is just like us and the new hero of the conservative movement…all with virtually no vetting…and whose only relevant experience 22 months ago was a few years as mayor of a town of under 7000. Best I can tell, their only argument is “she’s just like us, and she gave a great speech!”
Seems that just a week ago these same folks were saying Obama is just a celebrity with no experience whose followers were duped by a charismatic and eloquent speaker and a year’s worth of vetting in the national media is not enough…”that’s just too risky”. I suppose doublethink is now a requirement of having a “collectively superior reservoir of common sense and sensibility”.
Or, perhaps, those folks were just being cynical all along and would never vote for anyone tagged a “liberal” under any circumstances, no matter the age, gender, or level of experience. I can only hope the next generation will look past labels and actually inform themselves on the issues when deciding for whom to vote. Meanwhile, if McCain manages to win, let’s hope he has a really great staff of physicians, for the good of our country.
MBuler says
Yeah, she’s just like us, gave a great speech, and as the gov of AK, is better qualified than Obama who is just a celebrity, an eloquent speaker with a years worth of ass kissing from the national media. We’ve already had a taste of the “vetting” Sarah is going to get. Desperate, contrived, irrelevant crap! Tag Obama any way you want, I’ll never vote for anyone with his voting record on the issues important to me. If something happens to McCain after he wins we’re better off with Sarah than BHO.
MarkHedley says
“kscarf” Did you notice that he actually criticized something about Palin? Don’t get all defensive and misrepresent it. Because that’s exactly what you did. As you suggest yourself, stick to the issues. I don’t see any doublethink at all in Roger’s post. And middle Americans, thank you very much sure DO understand reality and common sense better than the loudmouths in Hollywood and big media. I know. I am a native Nebraskan myself (Go Huskers) and talk to people in small town America all the time in my travelling job. Since you probably won’t hear us on the TV, because we don’t fit the pro Obama agenda of the east and west coast media, I’ll educate you on something. A large majority of real working folks on the ranch and in the small towns see Senator Hussein Obama for what he is. A blowhard pandering pretender with all style and no substance. Reduced to stammering a bunch of nonsense without his teleprompter. And a radical Senate voting and advocacy record way far left of the average middle American on issues like Iraq, national defense, priveleges for homosexual deviants, murder of the defenseless unborn, govt. spending, pork barrel spending, govt. intrusion in private property rights, and many other issues. Yes issues. List them all, make a checklist and McCain/Palin will come out on top in the average prairie home. It all boils down to good old country common sense and values. You bet my wife and I and my grown kids all are voting the issues, and that means McCain. You couldn’t pay any of us a million bucks to vote for the other guy. We don’t agree with him and don’t trust him either. Need any more reasons?