It’s not the experience stupid!
Remember Bill Clinton’s winning line: “It’s the economy, stupid!”. This election cycle the debate rages about “experience”. Does Obama have it? Does Palin? How can Obama supporters be such hypocrites to say Palin doesn’t have enough experience? Well, it’s not the experience stupid. First, let’s just name a few of the most experienced presidents and vice-presidents: Cheney, Nixon, Johnson, Truman. Let’s look at some presidents relatively inexperienced in politics at the national and international level: Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Harding. Good and bad in both groups, though it is perhaps a bit troubling that Obama’s career is most like Harding’s. Harding arrived on the national stage due to a convention speech, served as a one-term senator and then won the presidency. Anyway, the point being that the presidency seems so unique as a job that it is not always clear what “experience” really counts.
The problem with Palin is not her inexperience, it’s just simply that she is a moron. George W. Bush is often tongue-tied and mangles the English language, but he is not a moron. He has had terrible judgement, but it’s more due to a triumph of ideology over fact (a problem that Palin would likely share). In truth, as Bush has served and seen the limits of his approach, he actually has become a better president. Sadly, he can’t undo all the damage he did in his first seven years of on-the-job training. And remember, Bush worked closely with his father during his father’s campaigns and presidency, and surrounded himself by one of the most experienced staffs ever to walk into the White House.
But Palin, who seems to share all of Bush’s weaknesses, adds flat out stupidity to the mix. Witness this response from an interview with Katy Couric.
COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
— quoted by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek
This is beyond Bush’s mangling of the language. It’s not just that she doesn’t answer the question. It’s not just that it’s utter nonsense and completely incomprehensible. It’s that she seems to be laboring under the idea that she actually did answer the question.
She reminds me of some Maranatha Church members I’ve met. I’ve met some who are intelligent, knowledgeable and well-considered, but Maranatha seems to encourage their people to start proselytizing from day one. The problem is that some of these new converts only have the vaguest notion of what’s in the Bible and several of them have quoted the same few verses at me and a few have told the same story about a friend who was at a prayer meeting and a man started speaking in tongues and it was perfect “High German”. They say it like High German is somehow impressive as being a language of distinction, which shows that they have no idea what High German (Hochdeutsch) actually means:
High German is a geographical reference to where the dialect family that forms High German originates. It refers to the mountainous areas of central and southern Germany and the Alps. This is opposed to Low German, which is spoken along the flat sea coasts of the north (Wikipedia).
Along with the irrelevant and misunderstood detail, it’s always “a friend” who was there, a key marker of any urban legend.
In other words, they’re okay if they stick to the script and can recite the few verses and bogus stories they’ve been taught, but they get tripped up if the person they’re preaching to has actually read the Bible or knows what Hochdeutsch is. So it is with Sarah Palin. The $700 billion bailout was new news and the McCain campaign had not had time to give her a script. She’s the new convert, the person that most denominations would not put up on a soapbox in the public square with a Bible in hand (and even the Maranatha Church is more judicious in a public situation like that). Nevertheless, there she is and, if she has to speak for more than a few minutes or, God forbid, respond to a question for which nobody has handed her a written script, she runs out of Bible verses and urban legends and has to resort to nonsenical babbling.
At least someone should teach her to say “I don’t know” in an intelligent way as in “Well Katie, that’s a rapidly developing situation and I haven’t had the opportunity to meet with the economists who helped draft that plan, but as vice-president getting those briefings would be a top priority”.
So right now she’s locked in a closest memorizing scripts for the vice-presidential debates. If she comes off as anything other than a complete idiot, we’ll have to admit that she’s at least got a good memory, because she’s obviously starting from zero.
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