Yet, again today, I find myself lectured about Sarah Palin’s inexperience by someone who knows nothing about her accomplishments. He didn’t know what she had done as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission nor as Governor of the Last Frontier. All he seemed to know was that she had been mayor of a small town and had said some silly things in her interview with Katie Couric.
Not only was he ignorant of Palin’s record, but he remain oblivious to his own candidate’s accomplishments, unable to name a single thing Obama had done.
For Palin critics, somehow experience and accomplishment matters only for Republican women. And they’ll just pretend that if they don’t know about her accomplishments, they don’t exist.
If we judged Obama, or even Joe Biden, Palin’s rival for the Vice Presidency, by the standards Palin’s critics use to judge her, we’d be laughing those two Democrats out of the United States Senate as well as out of serious political discourse, given the number of silly things they have said over their political careers, heck, the crazy things they’ve said just in the course of this campaign. You know, just ignore the record and focus on the gaffes.
Maybe I dwell on this point overmuch. But, it is simply amazing how ill-informed so many supposedly well-informed people are about Sarah Palin. It’s one thing to oppose her because you disagree with her policies or agenda. It’s quite another to fault her for lack of experience while remaining ignorant of her record.
Wasn’t it Pew that found that the more educated watch Colbert and Stewart, but were less informed than those who listen to Rush & Hannity?
Makes me question the validity of the demographics of exit polls when they showed that the most educated voted for Obama in the primaries, Kerry, Gore etc.
In general, the rule is that, the more education one has, the more one tends to vote Republican — until you get to he PhD/postgrad ones, in which they are strongly Democrat.
No surprise; the basic ideology of the Democrat Party is that the intellectual elite should paternalistically rule the stupid. I think it was a Simpsons episode once.
I believe it was Peggy Noonan who said Sarah Palin “doesn’t seem to know what she doesn’t know.” I thought that comment nailed it. People on both the right and left see a lack of intellectual vigor in Governor Palin. She has had some achievements as Governor, yes. But she does not display the broad base policy knowledge one should have for the office of the Vice-Presidency.
Example: I know a family friend in Virginia who was an early supporter of Senator McCain. He supported McCain in the primaries before any votes had even been cast. This friend if a political moderate, but tends to vote Republican. He valued McCain’s experience. He now says he is likely to vote for Barack Obama, mostly because of Senator McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. When I heard this recently, I was very surprised. This is the sort of damage Governor Palin is doing to the Republican ticket. It is these types of voters in Northern Virginia that McCain is losing now and is why you’ve seen Senator Obama open a lead in the Commonwealth.
But, Erik, you’re not even addressing the point of the post, that people don’t even know her record.
Do you?
Do you see any intellectual rigor in Joe Biden?
I don’t.
As to the broad-based policy knowledge, well, she can gain that. She has shown something neither Biden nor Obama has shown, the ability to make a decision and act accordingly.
Yes, I have read about her achievements taking on the oil and gas companies in Alaska and her success in moving along the proposed natural gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope. (Despite the fact that during the debate she implied it was under construction, when in fact no construction has yet begun because federal permits have not been secured.) I also know she signed ethics reform as Governor. These are all good things. But at the same time, when asked to name a Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade she disagreed with, she couldn’t name one. And often times her answers to economic questions are similarly incoherent. Fareed Zakaria called her answers “gibberish.” I agree. Likewise, her chipper “maybe so” response in regard to whether or not the United States might have to to to war with Russia was also damaging.
And this is why you’ve seen her popularity plummet. The Charle Gibson interview was bad and the Katie Couric interview was devastating. She probably lost 10-15% points in her favorable rating because of it, numbers she just won’t get back in this election cycle. She could give an artful dissertation on Hamlet and people would still think she is an intellectual lightweight. First impressions like that are just really hard to undo.
As to Biden, he’s been in the Senate my entire life. He’s been grappling with the issues facing America for over 35 years. Whether or not he started with broad base policy knowledge all those years ago, he seems to have it now. So yes, I do see intellectual vigor in Biden.
Erik, glad you know of her record. You seem to be one of the few Palin critics who’s aware of what she’s done.
Given Zakaria’s liberal leanings (and support for Obama), I wouldn’t trust him as a non-partisan observer of Palin’s answers.
I agree she hurt herself with the Couric interview.
As to Biden, well, just because he’s grappling with these issues doesn’t mean he has any intellectual vigor. He had, in those 35-odd years, been spectacularly wrong on nearly every major foreign policy issue and has never offered anything more than standard liberal boilerplate on any given issue. Indeed, he’s shown himself to be a man of entirely conventional thinking. Just watch video of him when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. When not reading from a script, he became even more incoherent than Sarah Palin with Katie Couric. It was downright embarrassing. He couldn’t go toe-to-toe with any Republican nominee. And at the time, he’d been in the Senate nearly two decades.
In two years, Sarah Palin will have a better understanding of Supreme Court decisions than Joe Biden had then and may even have now.
Just being in the Senate does not make a man wise or allow him any intellectual rigor. Would a man of that kind of rigor need to make up as many things as he did in the Vice Presidential debate?
Here’s what liberals like Erik consider intellectual rigor:
Joe Biden has been a member of congress for around 30 years, has sat on the senate judiciary committee most if not all of that time — and in the debate proved he still doesn’t know which article of the constitution establishes his own branch of government, nor that the constitution mandates that the vice president will not only break tie votes, but indeed presides over the senate.
There is no excuse for him not knowing these facts. None! he has sworn ~30 times to uphold a constitution he isn’t even familiar with!
But hes a smooth bullshitter. After decades of bullshitting, he sounds convincing. And liberals dont have the faintest clue that Biden doesnt know what hes talking about, because neither do they. They only care that he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. That he has his facts completely wrong is irrelevant to them.
That is what passes for intellectual rigor on the left.
I disagree that the Couric interview hurt Palin. I also do not believe there are any undecided voters. However, I do believe that there are voters who will vote for the one who is ahead in the polls.
McCain has gone after the “moderates” and “independents.” These people, if they exist at all, are jellyfish. They are not constant and are as likely not to vote as they are to choose a candidate and stick with him.
Obama should be many points ahead considering the fact that this is an election after eight years of Republican administration and the unpopularity of George Bush.
Palin draws enormous crowds. Her interview with Couric was proof of what the MSM produces when they have the chance to edit somebody. (What might they have done with Joe the Gaff Biden, if they had been so inclined?)
Any way you slice it, Palin is more qualified to be President (she is running for Vice President) than is Obama who is running for President.
The Republicans are having a tug of war between Joe the Plumber and Peggy Noonan and William Kristol. Frankly, I would happily watch a debate between Joe the Plumber and either of those two wordsmiths. Joe understands his conservative principles. Noonan and Kristol still have to be accepted on the Georgetown cocktail circuit. A pox on them. They have traded character for acceptance.
How much intellectual rigor is evident in a man who insists that “J-O-B-S” is a three-letter word?
Don’t know why you keep defending this hack. She cares nothing for you, would rather see you treated as second class citizens. Yet again she has made her view clear that she doesn’t think you deserve equal rights: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/467179.aspx
Even Joe Biden admits Obama is not ready to handle a crisis
Don’t know why you keep defending this hack. She cares nothing for you, would rather see you treated as second class citizens.
Ah yes, Scotty, while Democrat gays like yourself and your organizations fully endorse and support FMA supporters.
Is the silly lefty Scotty willing to say that anyone who opposes gay marriage and thinks that marriage is a “sacred union” that should be denied to gays is a homophobic hatemongering bigot? Call us back if you are.
It gets better.
This just in!
Wise sage Chevy Chase does not approve of Sarah Palin’s appearance on SNL, and doesn’t think she was funny.
PS. Mr. Chase, what funny thing have you done lately. Oh, in the interview, he does compare Palin to Mrs. Butterworth. Now that’s almost funny… almost.
What’s so great about an assclown who’s been in the Senate for 30+ years and has always been wrong? When has he ever held a real job?
Erik, Scotty – the point GPW is making (obvious if you read it) is that if the same standards being applied to Palin were applied to Obama, he’d be out of the running. Period.
Hell’s bells – Obama isn’t being held to the same standards as “Joe the Plumber”. I actually heard some media type wonder why the McCain campaign didn’t do a better job of “vetting” Joe. (So now we need to be “vetted” by political campaigns to ask a question?!) We’re hearing more about Joe’s tax problems than we’re hearing about Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) tax evasion.
I think Palin’s judgement is superior to Biden’s. He’s had 30+ years of “grappling with issues facing America”… whatever that means.