This is In response to Anonymous' comment about why there wasn't outrage about RFK's lack of experience.
The concerns I have with Palin springing from Juneau to the VP job are:
1) she has no experience dealing with national or international issues; it's possible she hasn't even had any interest in national issues. There is no evidence that she has. We don't have any idea what thoughts she has on these issues. She's gungho about exploiting/ "developing" Alaska's national resources. That's it. That's all we know about what's in her head.
2) Her experience as governor is useful but there hasn't been enough of it to know whether she's doing a good job or to know what the consequences of her actions will be.
3) She hasn't been on the national scene long enough for people to be able to evaluate her. We'll have about 6 weeks from the time she does the Charlie Gibson farce-of-an-interview until election day, with early voting starting in some places in early October. You can't expect people to be comfortable with this woman being a heartbeat away.
4) She's perfectly qualified to do some version of the VP job. But that's not the issue to me; she needs to be ready to be President from the get-go. Every VP candidate should be, but it's all the more important when the Presidential candidate is so old.
RFK had held jobs in federal government and worked on national issues from the very early 1950's until his presidential run in 1968. Further, he was on the national scene that whole time; people were able to observe his high profile career.
Obama's resume is thin. But he's been on display for all to see and poke and kick for 19 months, his every move and word revealed. He's written a book on his thoughts on some of the big national issues. He taught U.S. Constitutional law for 12 years. He was interested enough in national issues to run for Senate. He served as a Senator for two years before Palin even became a governor. He's interested enough in national issues to run and run and run for President. Oh, and his undergrad degree from Columbia was in political science with emphasis in foreign affairs. We can safely conclude that he's spent gazillions of hours pondering national and international issues and has had conversations with oodles of experts on these topics while formulating policy plans.
I know, I know that mayors and governors have to make decisions and exercise executive authority in a way that Obama hasn't done in his legislative jobs. But it's possible to do that really really badly. I don't know enough yet about Palin to know whether she did a good job at these activities. I see signs it may not have gone so well. There's the sports complex that's mired in real estate litigation, there's potential abuse of power in firing people willy-nilly and spending state money to attend church events, there's questions about whether the pipeline deal is a good one.
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12 comments:
Might her 80% approval rating as gov give you some idea whether she's been a good gov?
And you missed my RFK comment. Not experience, big family.
It's not 80% right now; it's down to 67%. Look at the path of Bush's approval rating. An early high mark for less than two years in office isn't indicative of much.
Ah, re RFK. I was baffled.
farce-of-an-interview?? Based on what??
Campaign and network officials had said on Sunday that her first television interview would be a sit-down with Charles Gibson of ABC’s “World News.”
But it turns out that she is spending much of Thursday and Friday with Gibson — at the ceremony in Fairbanks, Alaska, and at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.
Campaign aides said the anchorman will get extensive, repeated access to Palin throughout her first trip home since becoming the nominee.
“ABC News will have plenty of time to question her and examine her and spend time with her,” a campaign official said. “They’ll do multiple interviews over two days. No topics are off-limits – there are no ground rules. There’s tons of time to talk to her about every topic.”
Do you really think that if the first question out of the gate is.."Let's talk about Bristol and her baby..." that there will be any other sessions?
[She] negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes - the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having "no international experience" particularly absurd.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/09/do0904.xml
Ah, here it is: ""It's pretty clear this farce is going to be close to unwatchable."
Anonymous had it right. Gibson has to play nice or she'll have no more sessions with him.
Regarding the interview, I even heard pundits on the rightie radio dial saying that you NEVER agree to a multi-session, multi-day interview. It allows the person being interviewed all the power and makes it very easy for them to say, nope no more, whenever they wish, for whatever reason they wish. The interviewer has to wait until the last session before they can ask the hard/tough stuff.
Gibson apparently asked no tough questions of Obama.
and lets McCain slide: http://mediamatters.org/items/200809090020
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