I don't think that Sarah Palin did badly in the debate tonight. But at the same time, I do have to say that I'm not particularly impressed with her overall performance over the last few weeks. Certainly, I'm not as optimistic about her as I was in this post in August. As in August, I'm only modestly concerned about her lack of experience (though it would be better to have a Veep nominee with greater foreign policy background, as I pointed out at that time). But I am somewhat disturbed by her apparent lack of knowledge about various important issues.
I'm not going to go through the litany of her various gaffes. They have been extensively documented elsewhere. Taken individually, many of them are probably defensible - explicable by her getting tongue-tied or having a bad day or other random factors. However, the sheer number of them does suggest that she really does lack knowledge on some of these issues and that the gaffes are not just aberrations (or at least that many of them aren't).
As I have said before, my main reason for viewing a McCain-Palin victory as the lesser of evils in this election is that it is the only way to maintain divided government, which I view as an important obstacle to growth in the size and scope of government; it is particularly important given the extensive big government agenda outlined by Barack Obama, which he will be able to implement with the help of a strongly Democratic Congress. I also still think that Palin is more libertarian then most other major-party politicians, though she certainly ran away from that with her populist rhetoric in tonight's debate (probably for tactical reasons).
At the same time, ignorance about major domestic and foreign policy issues is a negative for a leader who, if McCain wins, will be within a heartbeat of the presidency - a presidency held by a 73-year old man whose health could deteriorate. No president can actually be an expert on the full range of issues faced by modern government; there are far too many of them. But it is important for him or her to have a basic knowledge that on some important issues Palin seems to lack. Palin probably has the ability to increase her knowledge. Ignorance, as I have often pointed out, is not the same thing as stupidity. She is a capable politician who has been successful in previous offices. However, other things equal, I would prefer a VP who doesn't require on the job training.
I don't think that Palin's weaknesses on this point should be decisive in choosing whom to vote for this fall. There are too many other vastly more important issues. Even when I was more positive about Palin than I am now, I still said that her "presence on the [Republican] ticket" made it only "marginally more appealing" to me. However, because I did give a more positive assessment of her in this space in the past, I thought it would be appropriate to share my revised views. At this point, what was once in my mind a marginal positive is at best a wash; her libertarian tendencies are to a large extent offset by her apparent ignorance on various key issues. Among other things, that ignorance would make it more difficult for her to influence policy in a libertarian direction in a McCain-Palin administration.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Debate:
- Reassessing Palin:
She's is a demagogue, a monster in tights. She was obviously coached within an inch of her life and she kept steering the debate back to her talking points like a robot.
By contrast Joe was relaxed, genial, sharp as a tack and HUMAN. He completely upended her rehearsed defences of McCain and left her with nothing to say ... why ... because she was afraid to stray off her notes unless it involved cliches and folksy BS that she churns out like there's no tomorrow.
She's a pretty face on a broken and discredited ideology that they're trying to rev up with "reform" and "maverick" BS. Joe took the ground out from under her time and again on that fiction.
Really America ... wake the hell up and move on ... Obama #1
And O! is what fully qualified in your elitist view to be President of the United States of America b/c he went to what Columbia and Hardon Law preschool! F**K you.
Anyways, who runs away from alleged 'libertarianism' for 'tactical' reasons? This is the most far-left GOP ticket ever. They need more libertarianism in it, not less. A vote for Obama is a vote for socialism: so is a vote for McCain. Supporting either is not only deluding yourself in thinking you're doing what is right for the country, but your perpetuating the stranglehold of those people most intent on destroying it.
Did I hear her correctly; supporting The Constitution because of it's "flexibility" with respect to her changing the role of the Vice Presidency to involve herself in both the legislative and executive branches?
Thanks for the kind words. You may have noticed that I never said that Obama was "fully qualified." He has flaws of his own. Those flaws don't in any way diminish Palin's weaknesses, however.
What troubles me is how the republicans are insistent that academic success is actually an 'elitist' thing to have. That it's better not to be that successful. This is but a sliver of why the GOP has gone to hell in a handbasket.
She isn't Libertarian at all, its sad that you rationalize to hard to line your choices up to your ideology.
hair plugs tanner and all, goshdarnit!
although you do have a point...he lied like a human, condescended like a human, and was amazingly bald like a human.
more human than human even??
Gosh-darn'it, why don't we get some fresh faces in that ole stinky White House, dog-gone-it.
Anybody who would seriously want either of them as President is truly demented. They both serve a political purpose for the top of their respective tickets--that's it.
and this further drives into my point about the GOP: so long as one is able to have a good persona, the ability to repeat talking points is all that is further necessary to be a qualified candidate. Does anyone honestly think George W. Bush, who, on its face, was more qualified than Palin back in 2000, understood these matters? Again, i don't expect a dissertation on Adam Smith, but I do think it's important to have read the damn book.
This is what the legacy of Russell Kirk has come to? A beauty queen?
Bingo. Give that man 100 silver dollars.
Just once I would like to see a candidate or a moderator point out that so-called "alternative energy" would contribute little to our imported oil problem. The alternatives generate electricty (expensively) and not the liquid fuels we need for our transportation fleet.
What's not human about hair plugs? Seriously. Humans like stylish hair and they're willing to pay for it. Big woop.
Also, condescending is truly in the eye of the beholder and Ms. Palin ain't quite as down home as she would like Joe six-pack to believe.
Now maybe Palin is really so dumb, or uninterested in the issues that the McCain team couldn't give her some grasp on foreign policy. However, despite giving Obama money in response to her nomination I can't believe that.
I think a more likely explanation is that Palin has the wrong political instincts. I suspect Palin's political instincts are tuned for Alaska not a presidential race and when the McCain advisors realized how she presented the positions when she had to improvize they got scared and demanded she shut up.
Sadyly, word choice often matters more than substance. I mean McCain clearly believes that our troops our doing a good deed by staying in Iraq and staving off greater bloodshed. He also believes like most christians that sacrificing to help others is god's work so if this was about logic anyone who didn't have a problem with McCain wouldn't have a problem with someone who (hypothetically) said our soldiers were doing God's work in Iraq. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. What I'm saying is that Palin probably instinctively phrased her answers in ways that sounded like "staying in Iraq is god's work," than "if we leave Iraq it will just cause more bloodshed" even if she meant the same thing.
Apparently, Spain didn't get your memo. Fully 10% of their energy is supplied by wind farms, and there are times (because of high winds), that it supplies up to a *quarter* of it's needs. If Spain can do that, we can at least get to half. Unless you think American ingenuity doesn't match that of Spain?
That says it all ... about commenter 'JS5'. What a sordid sorry confession.
Biden, on the other hand, said many things that we could not have.
If you disagree, please provide something that she said (other than a personal experience anecdote, like meeting with Kissinger) that any of us couldn't have said already.
Which just sorta proves my point: If she is qualified for VP, so is half America.
As a practical matter, we'll have trouble with that because our grid is not set up to transport energy over long distances. We cannot, for example, set up a zillion windfarms in the flyover states and use that to power the coastal areas without a massive update to our grid.
Then, there is the additional problem of the fact that wind power is unpredictable. We need sufficient amounts of non-wind, stable energy sources to meet peak loads at low-wind times.
Such as? After all, we are VC readers and thus exceptionally intelligent and informed.
Also, given the embarrassing level of political ignorance in this country, I doubt that half of America could say what Governor Palin said.
"Name something you've changed your mind about as a result of changing circumstances."
Biden: I changed my mind and decided that I needed to impose ideological litmus tests for judicial nominees.
Palin: Nothing.
I believe these GOP tickets (among possibly others) were to the left of McCain-Palin:
1976: Ford-Dole
1972 and 1968: Nixon-Agnew
1960: Nixon-Lodge
1956 and 1952: Eisenhower-Nixon
1948: Dewey-Warren
1944: Dewey-Bricker
1936: Landon-Knox
1904: Roosevelt-Fairbanks
In support of this, I point out that until the Republican party became dominated by a mindless devotion to the claim of being anti-big-government (but supporting massive government intrusion into people's private lives and spending far too much prosecuting mindless war), the Republican party was dominated by a much more moderate viewpoint. Richard Nixon championed the Family Assistance Plan, a more liberal welfare program than any that has ever existed at any time since then in the United States.
"Apparently, Spain didn't get your memo. Fully 10% of their energy is supplied by wind farms,..."
Spain might get 10% of it's electrical energy from wind farms. But electrical energy does not run cars and trucks because batteries don't have enough energy density. For that you need liquid fuels which have an energy density more 20 times our best batteries.
Even if the US built a terawatt of wind turbine capacity we would still have to import oil to run our cars and trucks. I don't understand your point. Please explain.
ticket? Even Bill feel-your-pain, first-black-president, man-from-Hope Clinton never looked squarely into the camera and spoke directly to Joe six-pack, calling him out by name, winking at him a few times for good measure.
The intelligentsia clearly is not Governor Palin's target audience. Indeed, I'd bet that how well she was perceived to do in the debate would prove to be inversely correlated with the listener's IQ and educational background. (Go ahead Palin lovers, fire away.)
How is Ford-Dole to the left of McCain-Palin? On abortion yes, but the president has little to say about abortion expect possibly through a SCOTUS appointment.
McCain is basically a liberal in that he accepts the basic tenets of multiculturalism. Look at his enthusiastic support of amnesty for illegal aliens.
You've got that lefty talking point down pat, boy. Congratulations. Renewed your Communist Party membership yet? Then you can stand in the adoring throng and say, hand on heart, "and I hepped".
Thanks for a thoughtful post, showing a willingness to admit to mixed emotions and serious reservations about your support of Palin. It's a welcome relief from the partisan certainty, from both ends of the political spectrum, that passes for reasoned argument on the VC.
Given the reflective mood demonstrated in your post, I'd like to hear a bit more honest discussion of two issues that have been raised by your post and the comments about it: (1) ignorance and (2) being human.
You said the following regarding ignorance in relation to Sarah Palin: "Ignorance, as I have often pointed out, is not the same thing as stupidity." I definitely agree, and I don't think that Palin is stupid, but I do get the feeling that she may be insufficiently intellectually curious and a bit too proud of her ignorance to try to change it significantly.
On the issue of being human, mac7 described Biden as decidedly "HUMAN" -- and I agree. That doesn't mean he isn't also a bit long-winded, not too linear in his train of thought, and possessing a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve. Of course, he is human, after all. What I haven't been able to connect with, however, is the oft-repeated comments about how down-to-earth and "human" Palin is.
I live in rural America and I know and like people who think and act like Palin does, but I haven't yet seen the deep concern for other people that many seem to attribute to Palin. She conveys a moral certainty and a fierce protective instinct about her own way of life, but she hasn't been able to convey (at least to me) the genuine human concern and understanding she professes publicly.
I have to acknowledge that I am an Obama supporter, so I have my own opinions about the candidates, and I can understand why some voters who think differently than I do might want to support McCain-Palin. What I remain unconvinced about, however, is whether Palin has the humanity to care deeply enough about the welfare of all Americans and the motivation to work to overcome her current ignorance. As the original post correctly notes, "Palin probably has the ability to increase her knowledge" but does she have the desire to do so?
Right, and the dear prayer of Republicans is that this will splash onto Obama, as if ambition and aptitude don't count for anything.
If anything, I'm convinced that none of what we're hearing from her is Sarah Palin, save perhaps the accent. That everyone seems to agree that we're seeing the result of coaching over the past month indicates to me that her becoming Vice President would no doubt require people like David Addington to run her ship (not to mention that she has brought nothing of her own to the party so far). The system would not allow otherwise; she is and would be at the mercy of her advisors who are currently working feverishly to mold her into a winning character before the election. Where do you think Todd Palin is on that list? One thing is for sure in this eventuality: after eight years of Cheney, Lieberman isn't going to want to go through some Canadian-raising Palin crony every time Krauthammer tells him to have someone assassinated.
Let's face it, the Republicans have gone from Buckley to Bolshevik in a few short decades.
President Ford presided over the beginning of an era of peace, and did not favor extending foreign entanglements. McCain has repeatedly spoken of the possibility of staying in Iraq for 100 years. This is not a position I believe Gerald Ford would have shared. Please provide any evidence you may have to disabuse me of this belief.
Even if the US built a terawatt of wind turbine capacity we would still have to import oil to run our cars and trucks. I don't understand your point. Please explain."
I agree with you completely. And I'm not saying that alternative energy can supply all or even most of energy needs.
Yet -- much of a electricity that we use to power our homes and businesses, our street lights and our computers, is generated by coal or oil. We can significantly reduce our use of coal and oil by replacing it with alternative energies, such as solar and wind.
Theo: "As a practical matter, we'll have trouble with that because our grid is not set up to transport energy over long distances. We cannot, for example, set up a zillion windfarms in the flyover states and use that to power the coastal areas without a massive update to our grid."
Yet, the majority of population lives on two coasts. There are fairly steady winds off both coasts, and you can divide up the populations in to small grids where you don't have to transport it over long distances. Is it expensive to redo our grids? yes. Will it lead to a significant reduction in reliance upon oil and gas? Yes.
"Then, there is the additional problem of the fact that wind power is unpredictable. We need sufficient amounts of non-wind, stable energy sources to meet peak loads at low-wind times."
True. However, coastal winds are often steady. There are also other forms of alternative energy, such as turbines that spin with the flow of rivers and the flow of the tides. Can't get more steady than that.
There will be day, I hope, where the majority of our electricity needs are provided by renewable sources, and oil and coal will be used mainly for backup -- a reverse of the current situation, if you will.
Like what?
Both candidates just recited his or her respective ticket's standard talking points since the convention. Biden was better at it than Palin, but not in any way that seemed particularly impressive.
The only thing I've learned from these debates is that none of the 4 candidates, in the midst of the most serious economic crisis of the last quarter century, are willing to provide believable descriptions of the economic and fiscal policies their administration will seek to adopt once elected.
Did Ford want to withdraw troops from Germany and Korea? Or anywhere else? JFK, LBJ and Hubert Humfrey were all liberals, but they wanted to extend American power overseas.
I didn't catch all of the debate - in fact, missed most of it - but thought that she did a fine job. It was not the home run of her acceptance speech a month ago, but she did a good job of working with the new McCain mantra: that he and Palin are the real agents of change.
Problematically, the debates are structured in such a way so that one can either throw punches, make some vague-sounding discussions of policy, or discuss facts, but not more than one out of the three at a day. Two minutes (or 90 seconds, depending on the question, IIRC) simply is not a lot of time to do anything save from screw up.
So I guess you'll be confiscating at least one of my degrees, neurodoc.... ;)
But she reads any and all the papers!
"Yet -- much of a electricity that we use to power our homes and businesses, our street lights and our computers, is generated by coal or oil."
Less than 1% of our electrical energy is generated from oil. So wind power and other alternatives will do virtually nothing to curb our oil imports.
Here are the figures:
Coal: 49%
Oil: .8%
Reactors: 19%
Gas: 20%
Hydro: 8%
Others: 4% (approx)
America has ample supplies of coal and natural gas. Oil is the problem because domestic production peaked in 1970.
One big problem with wind power is storage. When the wind stops blowing, you need to fill in with gas-generated electricity. Another problem. Wind power is extremely expensive-- more than 10 cents per Kwh as compared to coal which is 4 cents.
See the problem?
Not to pile on, but how so? Sure, I couldn't truthfully say I've been to Chad and seen the genocide....nor could I say I've asked mothers about the economy at a soccer game. Or...uh....
As for turbines in rivers: I have exactly one data point on this, but the Hoover Dam produces enough electricity to power 100,000 homes, which is approximately 1% of California. There's an issue of scale - sure, we can use river power for some amount of clean energy, but it is not nearly enough to power the half of America that you suggest.
I imagine (although have not seen the data) that you would encounter the same problem with tidal power (and the additional problem with the fact that, although predictable, tidal power may not line up with peak load use).
Why not just go for nuclear?
Alas, that was about all she accomplished. It still amazes me how McCain outplayed Obama for weeks leading up to the convention and slowly whittled away Obama's lead despite a huge disadvantage in funding and exposure, then seemed poised for a knockout after the convention, only to be done in by a sheer once-in-a-lifetime stroke of monumentally bad luck. The financial meltdown is basically like a nuclear bomb detonated on McCain-Palin's doorstep. Barack Obama must think he's just won fate's lottery. With the media already in the tank for him and now this, if he can't win the White House in November he'll never be able to live down the disgrace of it.
In the future, everyone will be vice-president for 15 minutes.
-- Good post from Prof. Somin. As I said on another thread, if anybody wants to vote McCain, okay then, say so. Just quit trying to convince us (or yourself) that Sarah Palin is a good reason to do so.
The media, who has an agenda for the Obama campaign, can't suppress the fact the McCain and Palin were victorious in both debates. It's all damage control now. That's why Gov. Palin has been attacked from the start, because she is dangerous to the dems. Even my 89-year old aunt sees that.
Don't waste your time looking at the cooked polls. That's what people did in the last election, thinking that Gore should have won when we validly did not.
Think for yourself.
That is exactly the ridiculous type of argument we keep hearing from the Obama crowd-- "We are smarter than you are, so we should run the country..." Actually, I know that many of us Palin supporters have at least as many degrees as you do. (I know, the next argument is that "your degrees aren't from good schools, so they don't count.") Unfortunately, you (generic you, not personal) Obama supporters don't seem to be able to read or hear--- Your candidate has told us some of what he wants to do, both in speeches and in his books, and every time those statements are criticized, the response is "He didn't say that", rather than any rational discussion as to why those positions are good or desirable. McCain and Palin have said some stupid things too, which we can discuss, but don't try to tell me that Obama hasn't written, said, or done all the things there is clear evidence of. His voting record (such as it is), his speeches, and his writings all show that he is at best a far-left ideologue, and a reasoned argument can be made that he is at base a socialist. Heck, even the UK laborites see him as "extremely liberal". And yet some of our "Highly educated" fellow readers here on Volokh continue to deny he is far-left in his political outlook.
Please, people. Let's get some real thought and discussion of policy into this election and get off simply regurgitating the political talking points.
Thank you, Mary McGoon.
I'm not saying R's or D's are smarter or more educated--I'm talking about the messaging. It sucks, and it's an affront to any thinking person, including you.
His voting record (such as it is), his speeches, and his writings all show that he is at best a far-left ideologue
Far-left? In global terms? Perhaps in contrast to the centrist and mundane pragmatism of Cheney and Rove.
It's an incredibly cynical and patronizing strategy. For instance, at the same time mainstream conservatism was pushing the "freedom fries" nonsense, Paul Bremer -- a Francophile with impeccable conservative credentials -- was chosen to lead the CPA in Iraq. Of the conservative elite, a good many of them are culturally cosmopolitan and have advanced degrees and sometimes academic appointments from universities that are supposedly bastions of leftist radicalism. In other words, in terms of lifestyle they look pretty similar to their liberal counterparts. Anyone who has spent any time in D.C. will know this first-hand. It's just something they tell people who they presume are less sophisticated.
"within a heartbeat of the presidency"
You've got that lefty talking point down pat, boy.
Our own Ilya Somin posted not so long ago that a good proportion of Vice Presidents wind up becoming Presidents. But math and logic are for elitists (and also for leftists -- the same thing really).
All she had to do was pick a question she felt she was having a little difficulty answering, and at the end of her answer, pause, smile, and say:
"Now, you may not like this answer, you may feel it less than complete, but in my defense, [smile, look at Biden], it is MY answer, not something said by a little known British politician and merely pawned off as my own."
As someone who has laid back in the senate for 36 years being smarmy and odious, voting for the Iraq war [like everyone else] and greatly regretting it now, and accomplishing nothing of note except his own endless reelection campaigns, Joe got creamed tonight by a real person that the average American identifies with.
Doofus 0bama picked a good ol' boy for backup.
Where's the "change" in that?
Has anybody ever proved it to be better then working smoothly in agreement government?
Anyway,post debate thought:
Did anyone else notice that when you stripped away the annoying folksyism and the talking points and the lies and the utter nonsense, what you are left with as their sales pitch to the American people is: tax cuts? I mean, that is the entire kit &kaboodle.
What an utterly bankrupt party.
Oaky, we had expectations for a flyweight and she turned out to be a lightweight assuring that we'll have an untested, inexperience President hell bend on wealth distribution.
Perhaps, but if so, for completely different reasons. For Palin, it's because she's too green, too uninformed about national and international politics. But for Biden, the problem is what he has done and who he is, and that's just not going to change -- with Biden, what you see is what you're going to get now and going forward.
And what you see and get is a glib, smiling, cocksure man who's not even half as smart as he thinks and is factually wrong about many of the things he's sure he knows. Combine that with his horrible record on the war on drugs, and there's almost nothing left to like. With Palin, there's at least the potential to surprise on the upside, but I see no such chance with Biden.
But I wonder whether that has more to do with the role she is playing now, than who she really is as a political leader. For instance, Palin strikes me as the kind of Republican who would have opposed the Wall Street bailout -- but can't talk about it because she's running with McCain who supports it. And it seems clear that Palin recognizes the "blunders" of Iraq (she even used that word) but is constrained by political considerations from being too critical of a GOP President.
Overall, I think Biden was far more effective tonight -- Palin seemed unprepared to defend McCain against Biden's consistent attacks, and to go after Obama and Biden. (I was really hoping that she would have made the point that Obama's primary campaign was based on "Clinton supported the war" despite the fact that Clinton made the same kind of equivocations that Biden did -- she should have pointed that out, and asked Biden if Obama was lying about Hillary Clinton...) Her preparations clearly (and necessarily) were concentrated on dealing with the massive media assault on her, rather than on actually advancing the McCain campaign.
But Palin did a far, far better job than Barack Obama did in his early debates -- her experience showed through, and showed that she understood the issues that she has had to deal with as governor -- and I have far fewer questions about her potential to step into the Presidency if the worst was to happen than I do about Obama's suitability and readiness to be President.
The problem with the Iraq war is that it's another situation where the intellectually coherent factually justified position is politically untenable. Well Bill Clinton could probably do it but he really does have an amazing ability to convey complex issues in a simple fashion.
Did the Iraq war turn out to be a total disastor? Yes! Was there a good reason to a senator to believe this before we invaded? Debatable! There was historical precedent that justified being nervous but the senators didn't know that the military would incompetently bungle the recovery. But even senators who strongly opposed an actual invasion of Iraq would have been doing the wrong thing by voting against the authorization to give Bush the power to invade.
I don't think anyone else in the country was listening but Kerry explained this perfectly during the who flip-flop debate. Even if you thought that Bush shouldn't invade he needed to present a credible threat to convince Sadam to fold and that meant the senate needed to authorize his use of force without attaching any strings. Now this may be a flaw in the design of our government that gives no private legislative input into executive deciscions but congress couldn't have put any preconditions on it's authorization to use force without telegraphing to Sadam that it was all bluster and we weren't really willing to invade. It was such a good plan it actually worked and Sadam chickened out right at the end. Biden, Kerry and all the rest voted correctly but were simply dragged over the cliff when Bush gave the go ahead to invade rather than accepting Sadam's last minute cave in to our threats.
Don't get me wrong I'm disgusted by the selfish and myopic anti-war arguments proffered by the democrats (and many republicans). As if how much it costs to keep our soldiers in Iraq or Iraqi oil income is an important issue to balance against the possibility of widespread ethnic cleansing and resultant human suffering. I actually think liberating Iraq was probably the right choice but the execution was awful and the assumption that everyone should jump straight to full on representitive government was hopelessly naieve. However, the congressmen voting to authorize force weren't necessarily signing on to any idea of the kind.
Doc:
The irony of a post calling for rational discussion of the issues and positions that mentions not a single issue, position nor fact about any canidate in this race but instead merely tries to stuff Obama into a preexisting narrative based on nothing but the fact that it's an argument that has worked against liberals in the past. Now I do think intelligence is an important qualification for being president but of all people Obama is not one who thinks that only the country club set is smart enough to make decisions. His own background suggests that instead he merely believes in education and so if you can get a harvard scholarship you should take advantage of it. I mean you can't both give him flack for sounding like a professor when answer questions in debates and for not seriously addressing the issues (even if you think he is wrong).
Look, step back from the partisanship for a second and ask yourself whether Palin was trying to generate support from people who (whatever their background) like to get into the details of policy or whether she was instead trying to rally support from those who are bored by these details and want a simple emotional message instead?
In the words of one of the VC's favorite political philosophers, "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
While Obama may be good at repeating the talking points he's been given, if you watch him in the early democratic debates not only is it clear that he was pretty clueless when it came to "complicated issues", and was far worse than Palin in terms of just repeating generalizations.
More to the point is that Obama's "knowledge" is all "theoretical" -- nothing characterizes this better than the bitter/cling remarks which come right out of a college sociology class, and show an appalling lack of understanding of the true nature of those who weren't responding to his message. He has no real experience in problem solving, or grappling with complex issues (the only crisis he's ever dealt with is an identity crisis). Obama "sounds like a college professor" because his is precisely that kind of "ivory tower" perspective that bears only a passing relationship to how the world really works.
Neither. I think she's entirely capable of getting wonkish on the issues that she is familiar with, but she's only had five weeks to become familiar with "DC speak" on the vast array of complex issues confronting this nation -- and she knew she'd be savagely attacked if she got one of those "details" wrong. Palin was on defense -- the "emotional" appeal of her message was a result of the relentless media assault on her for the last four weeks, and her need as a VP candidate to take positions consistent with McCain's.
Better trolls, please.
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.
The South Side ... ivory tower, indeed.
Palin, by contrast, had to hire a city manager to do the actual work of running Wasilla.
fearing attack for getting details wrong may explain why she didn't want to name what newspapers she read; " If I say I don't read anything but Alaskan newspapers, they'll think I'm a hick". Not realizing how stupid the answer she gave was.
would the freed Sarah Palin now say: "I read all major Alaskan newspapers", or say "only read clippings my staff puts in front of me."
Wishful thinking on "getting wonkish", I suspect.
She appears to be the 2008 model of George Bush, intellectually incurious. I wonder whom she would turn to to run the show if she became President.
Your post at 7:54 Am is the first articulate explanation of the vote authorizing Bush to use force I have seen. I happen to disagree that starting the war was justified.
Incredible to have started the war with virtually no postwar planning. That is the most heartbreaking. I guess it is a problem when you win a war in a month. If it had taken 2 years to beat Hussein, maybe the planning would have caught up and prevented the Katrina like disaster Bush has presided over.
No, I don't see it. She is more fiscally conservative than GWB, which is important to me. It's McCain that drives me nuts, not this lady. However, I will vote for McCain/Palin because of my concern for the extreme leftist / income redistributionist view of Obama, combined with my Deep Concern over have a Obama / Pelosi / Reid axis in the Federal Government. Yikes!
Good luck to us all.
Now that is Change We Can Believe IN!!!!
I will pick you up at OHare or Midway. Just name the time.
You're the coach. Who's your quarterback? Either choice is defensible in theory. Either choice could blow up in your face badly, and armchair quarterbacks will then say "See, I told you ya shoulda picked the other guy."
no big woop. just amusing to me that someone described biden as "HUMAN," caps theirs. i just got my first HDTV and was struck by how completely not human biden looked as he lied through his whitened teeth.
and i say this as an exceedingly bald man.
Isn't Alaska a rather unique and easy state to govern? You can eliminate personal income taxes by raising revenue from oil companies?
More like she has been good playing t ball, so why not promote her immediately to the big leagues?
The nomination of Palin was a stroke of genius even if you totally ignore any qualifications of hers. Because if someone with a long track record, like McCain himself had been nominated for VP, none of the above sentiments would be uttered or even taken seriously.
Because without Palin, the sentiments would obviously be about Obama, expressed by the opposite side. It is very likely that not one of the people who are quoted above are capable of seeing how well they apply to Obama as well... and in many cases, better.
But now these things ARE being said, and people who aren't total hacks who hear them might wonder if these concerns might not be at least as important for the position of president as it apparently is for the position of vice-president.
This is especially true of the media, whose relative silence on Obama's lack of qualifications indicates the total lack of comment that would have occurred on the subject had Palin not been nominated. This was the ONLY way to force media execs to allow a news story with the word 'experience' in it.
Because the only way on earth that the media would make McCain's point for him, is if they believed they were doing the opposite. The same could be said for some here.
OK, but the lack of perspective here risks exposing you as nothing but an idealogue. Fortunately for yourself, you recover a bit below when you say, "I actually think liberating Iraq was probably the right choice", but then veer right back onto the plantation by adding, "but the execution was awful".
The question you never address is, disastrous or awful compared to what? All wars are a disaster--have you read anything about WWI or WWII, for instance? Your pontificating above would seem to indicate not.
Lets not lose context. Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum are the same.
Paul
Mission was accomplished in april 2003, it was the lack of planning and bad judgments made during the next few months:
eg Not securing ammo dumps
Not securing govt buildings
Disbanding Iraqi army
maybe read Woodward vol 3
Yeah, that's why so many people are seeking you out to fill the job, Johnny - because it's so ridiculously easy. It's a snap. You wouldn't have any trouble at all. Try it, and tell me how well governing works out when you bring sixth-grade insults to the legislature.
I will say again: progressives put more energy into the wit of their responses than the accuracy, illustrating that the philosophy is more social cuing than intellectual.
Somehow I doubt Ilya would be caught dead writing that sentiment about Obama... but no doubt he has a ready explanation about how that's different.
would now be a good time to insert a "i bet i have a higher IQ than you" joke?
e.g.:
radio=TV
1933 Banking Crisis= 1929 Stock Market crash
How about until they have completed at least 4 years?
As, other things being equal, I would prefer a P who didn't. Unfortunately, other things are not, so I voted yesterday for the guy who does.
BTW, unless we're willing to consider Sarkozy or Putin or Bill Clinton for the job, any P/VP will require on the job training.
Does the completion requirement apply to senate terms as well?
Should one get some credit for time in a state legislature?
"Palin probably has the ability to increase her knowledge."
Probably?
Don't hold your breath. I have been waiting for eight years for an explanation of how Bush can be, at once:
(1) a smirking chimp idiot dancing bear illiterate puppet moron;
and
(2) an evil genius capable of manipulating governments and markets around the world to orchestrate global strife for the personal profit of his family and friends.
In short, don't expect hysterical idiots to do anything but rant like hysterical idiots.
Also, you needn't surrender any of those degrees, because:
i) the negative or inverse correlation between IQ/education and estimate of Palin's performance is not a perfect one (r = 1.0). So there will be exceptions, and you can be seen as one of those; and,
ii) you admit you saw very little of the debate, so we don't know how adequate/inadequate your experience of the debate really was. For example, did you catch her shoutout to "Joe six-pack" and her Tina Fey-like winks(?!) at the camera; her befuddlement over whether or not the VP is part of the executive branch; her pass on the bankruptcy question; her generalizations from Alaska to the country at large, when her state gets more back from Washington than it sends in the first place, and gets such a bounty from taxing oil and gas there; etc.?
And theo, we do understand you can't be entirely objective here, Palin being the first woman ever on a national ticket. :) (that is the emoticon for a grin, isn't it?)
Of course we need to study and learn from what was done, and guess what? The US military is actually quite good at doing meaningful after-action reviews.
But what really troubles me is the subtext that accompanies most of the claims of incompetence: if only we'd done it right, none of these troubles would have occurred. This is a preposterous enough claim regarding life in general, but in a war where your opponent isn't just Murphy's Law but rather human beings who are actively trying to counter you? GMAB.
Take, for example, the "shouldn't have disbanded the Iraqi Army" trope. Leaving aside the fact that to some extent the army was disbanding itself, who can know if the inter-sectarian fighting might not have been worse if the Sunni-dominated officer corps had been kept in place? Yes, it might have been better to have done so even at the risk of this, and some future historian might make a convincing case that this was so. But saying "and then everything would have worked smoothly afterwards" is not a serious argument.
Good grief I'm tired of this canard. First, journalism SHOULD BE "gotcha." The adversarial nature of the "fourth estate" should be to push all the buttons of politicians so that the peons (that's us) can actually see something.
To boot: Asking someone what newspapers they read is such a softball question, that the McCain campaign seems to be really reaching when they call it gotcha journalism. A pathetic attempt to reflect the poor answer back onto thos pesky biased journalists.
Now me, I only read Watchtower, and Mother Jones. And only 144,000 of us are going to heaven. So long SUCKERS! And thanks for all the fish. You're off my island. Based on that, I'm ready! Send me in coach! Pray for the
Looks like I'm ready for the VP ticket!
Most of the problem wasn't with the US military, but their political masters.
I take Woodward seriously, because he had such great access to the Bush administration, and they apparently spoke so highly of his first two volumes. Obviously, he received far less cooperation while working on volume 3.
My impression is that Garner did a good job, in view of the very limited time he had. If he had been left in charge rather than Bremer taking over, much of the mess wouldn't have happened.
And that a competent Secretary of Defence, less concerned with turf wars and more concerned with competence would have done the job. Excusing the chaos upon reaching Baghad as Sh** happens was not the answer.
If either Colin Powell or Robert Gates had been Secretary of Defence at the time, I'm confident that, if an invasion had taken place, there would have been adequate planning for the occupation period.
Or take the whole torture routine: the US military well knew that torture is an excellent way of getting victims to say what you want to hear; but has very little to do with extracting truth. This was not a lesson that had to be learned. It was already known, just not by Bush/Cheney and their coterie.
And of course, after 3 years, what the US has recently been doing is paying those Sunnis to fight on US side rather than against.
Could it be that Palin was paranoid and thought the newspaper question was a gotcha question. If she had said "I read the local Alaskan papers and, by the way, don't you worry the [fill in blank]covers what is going on in Washington." wouldn't that have been a good answer? Did she think if she didn't say a major newspaper from the lower 48, she would have looked bad?
Obviously she was over-thinking on about eight levels during those interviews. Evidently, ex-Bush advisors have that effect: they certainly have on Bush.
Still, if I were being interviewed on CBS I would probably dodge that question too, as the opinion of the average CBS viewer on the relative credibility of various media outlets is almost diametrically opposed to my own. I'm sure an answer of Volokh Conspiracy, Instapundit, and Arts &Letters Daily would really impress your average Cronkite hanger-on.
Just to run with this -- The problem is one party has Twiddle Dee slated only for the Veep slot. The other wants Twiddle Dum to be President in three months.
Of course, her detractors are convinced that she wasn't thinking -or reading-on any level. So now that the real Sarah is being unleased, why not have her do MSM interviews?
Or a press conference - on McCain's expanded energy program?
Carry on, dude.
I've been trying to find a way to articulate my thoughts on Palin. You just did it perfectly. Thank you.
She could have said that she reads Ranger Rick magazine.
I think an honest answer would have been a good answer. Hell, I'm not that young and I don't even read newspapers anymore. I use Senator Stevens Tubes to read the news and I go to a lot of sites. I've been interviewed by business reporters before. Heck, it's a question I've been asked in job interviews a number of times. I'm a C-Level executive, but I'm not under the illusion that I'm in any way important. I'm a no-namer, and I manage to answer the question without panicking. I should think that any person running for national office should be able to answer so easy a question.
But my point was more towards the idea that that's gotcha journalism. It's not. It's one of the easiest softball pitches ever. It's T-BALL with a Cricket bat. If she can't answer that, and that's gotcha journalism, then I find that to be pretty pathetic covering from McCain campaign. It's a deflection to the "liberal media bias" hype that plays to the worst of politics.
No percentage in being honest . . . and the answer she gave (or tried to give) was so much more impressive.
"If she can't answer that, and that's gotcha journalism, then I find that to be pretty pathetic covering from McCain campaign. It's a deflection to the "liberal media bias" hype that plays to the worst of politics."
Your assumption is that she can't, instead of won't. Frankly, I'm not sure what the strategy was for going on CBS at all. Not many eyeballs, and even fewer buyers for what she's selling.
BTW, it's not only the R base that considers the Old-line Media biased (and its nearly unanimous there). The remaining undecided voters are also likely to agree. Although they don't unanimously perceive the bias as liberal, the perception is visceral, if for no other reason than it gives these voters a nice excuse for being as disengaged as they are.
In addition to the crap in the interviews, in a post on Instapundit:
"Palin has been running for just over a month. Obama has been running for more than 18 months. So I did a search on Yahoo News;
Palin and experience: 13,538 results
Obama and experience: 15,074 results
I think that pretty much sums it up."
There has not been a candidate, or a candidate's family, subjected to this kind of pressure and BS in my lifetime. This woman has been at this for a scant five weeks. When she came on the scene and The One took a few shots, he came unglued. "I won't be bullied! I won't be bullied! [Don't hit me, lady.]" I wonder if Clinton was a foreign policy maven during his first five weeks. He was glib though.
She may not get the time to be seasoned and that's unfortunate. Nevertheless, those who judge her as wanting may well be confusing preparedness and knowledge of issues with glibness. Do we really think any of these Senate bozos understand the economy? And isn't Biden the genius who proposed partition in Iraq and who thinks that Article 1 is definitive on the non-legislative nature of the vice presidency?
I suspect, if permitted, this woman would say, "I'm here to end the systemic corruption in Washington and Congress. I have dealt with it in my own state and I will put my Vice Presidency and political career on the line to eliminate it here." Clearly, she is better qualified than the other three to do that, since they are evidently part of the problem.
neurodoc: so the price of my girl crush on Sarah Barracuda is my classics degree? Harrumph!
But I took four years, from matriculation until graduation, to go through a three-year law school.
I'm not sure of Gov. Palin's reasons for taking six years to go through school - immaturity (which is often part and parcel of being young), financial issues (both in terms of finding the money for it and justifying the expense), lack of a clear goal (again, a normal part of being a teenager) - but am quite reluctant to criticise people for not finishing in the standard amount of time.
Bullshit. Journalists are so utterly ignorant of law and politically biased that they are incapable of performing that function. That ignorance and bias reduces them nothing more than leftist attack dogs.