Sarah Palin

I listened to Fox the other day, and I am afraid the right doesn't get it either. We elected Obama, who is a dismal failure because of his lack of experience. His first year in office has uncovered his glaring lapses in judgement, and his inability to meter the pulse of the people who elected him. In retrospect, looking back at President Bush, he was also pretty green. President Bush was given a briefing by President Clinton and was told, explicitly, about Bin Laden and the threat that man and his organization posed. Mr. Bush was oblivious, and 9/11 happened. Mr. Clinton was in no position to deal with it, because he could not keep his pants buttoned, and as a result no one in congress was ready to approve any rush to war, because they felt that war would be just a kind of diversion from Mr. Clinton's problems. So, Mr. Bush a relatively green president is faced with something akin to what Roosevelt faced in his third term, a massive attack against this country. Mr. Bush made several glaring errors, probably due to his inexperience and defference to certain people in his administration. He got rid of Ashcroft and Powell, the two guys with the most experience in war and politics. He trusted, instead, Chaney and Rumsfeld, neither of whom had any idea how to win the peace in Iraq, or Afghanistan. The result was the catastrophy which we are witnessing now. Obama is truly a catastrophy, he did not realize for at least his first year in office, that we were in a hot war. He appointed idealogues to our highest security posts without regard to our security because he did not believe Clinton or Clinton's wife concerning the dire threats presented to us. Which brings me to Palin. Palin is an idealogue of another stripe. She is the darling of the conservative movement in this country. They like to compare her to Ronald Reagan. The major problem is while she may say most of what Reagan said, she is not perceived by the general population as having as much experience as he had. Is that important? Can a person who says all the correct things, become president in spite of a perceived lack of experience? Well, Fox News is really going to great lengths to accomplish this task. They are giving her the type of exposure to accomplish this. Exactly to what end? Can she win? Or, will she expose the weaknesses of the Republican Party again? Let's see, Bush, inexperience, 9/11, Obama, inexperience Fort Hood, Christmas Bomber, and who knows what else. Will the American People take another shot on inexperience just because she says the correct things? In 2008, Obama said all the correct things and got elected. What we found out, was that due to his lack of experience, we were at greater risk than we had been since the beginning of the Bush administration, when we didn't know how much risk we were in. The question is how does Obama play this in 2012 if he is running against Sarah Palin? And how does she respond if she is his opponent? And how do we hear the interchange? First, it is clear that the democrats will portray her as an inexperienced idealogue. Why should we run a candidate with that sort of vulnerability? Why run a candidate who can only, with any certainty, deliver Alaska? Why is Fox touting her as something like the second coming of Ronald Reagan? What they are setting us up for, is another loss, when it is most inopportune. The democrats will certainly pound into us, that her experience is questionable, while her views coincide with what many conservatives and republicans want, that level of experience will gnaw at their concience. They will convince themselves that she is okay, because she will be able to surround herself with advisors who will be able to help her through confusing times. The problem is, that is what we have now. We have a president who needs three days on the average to make a decision on anything. He needs that kind of time to guage the people's views (through polls) and to guage the views of his advisors. Bush did something similar, he usually made speeches off the cuff, before his advisors told him what to say, so he often made gaffes, but his policy was always to defer to his advisors. We need a different sort of president. We need a guy or gal who is an obscessive compulsive, hands on person. Someone who doesn't sleep until things are accomplished, and answers every question because he is personally involved with every aspect of his or her government. The only two candidates who I see like that, are Guilliani and Romney. There are other Republican rising stars who can fill that, and I feel that Palin might someday have that patina, but she does not have it yet. I fear, that her inexperience will cost us many votes that we would somehow get if we ran a person more experienced with the sort of track record that demonstrates a consistent accomplishment over decades. Sarah has accomplished a great deal in the short time she rose from mayor to governor to vice presidential candidate, however, her debate with Biden was a debacle, she treated him like a grandfather, and lost the debate and the election because she did not press her advantage in that confrontation. Her advantage was that she was a young woman, and any direct attack on the positions of Obama or Biden would have resulted in some sort of demeaning remark by him, which would have resulted in women and men feeling antipathy towards him. Instead, he got a pass, because she never attacked him. If Republicans want to win 2012, they must run the best candidate, not just a very good candidate. They must run someone who has delivered on promises, not just to a small constituency, but to a large one. They must run someone who can deliver a major state, not just one with three electoral votes. On every way of looking at this, the person with the most experience ought to run, learning on the job is not an option.