[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
If an extraterrestrial beamed down to Earth at 8:59 p.m. Eastern time last night and watched the second presidential debate, I'm sure he would have thought John McCain had some good ideas. Sure, he would have thought that McCain was cranky. Definitely condescending (referring to Barack Obama as "that one" and assuming a questioner had never heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). And I'm sure he would have wondered why the organizers filled the audience with McCain associates, since he kept referring to everyone in the crowd as "my friends." But even the most ardent Obama supporter would have to admit that our ET acquaintance would think McCain had some good ideas to addresses the problems the country is now fighting, such as the need for energy independence, global warming, and reforming government and Wall Street. And our visitor from another solar system would have to be impressed with McCain's adamant assertions of the great judgement he has shown on foreign policy issues and his ability to work with Democrats.
But without the benefit of knowing the records of the two candidates, the ET wouldn't know that the John McCain he saw at the debate bore no resemblance to how John McCain, the senator from Arizona, has behaved. And based on the polls over the last two-plus weeks, it seems like the American people know the difference, at least enough of them to put McCain's hopes for the presidency in real trouble.
McCain said repeatedly during the debate that voters should check his record. One can only believe that he made that challenge hoping that nobody would actually do it.
McCain talked over and over again last night about how he had regularly opposed his party, but as Joe Biden pointed out in the vice presidential debate, McCain rarely went against George W. Bush on any issue of importance to Americans. In fact, McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 89 percent of the time since Bush took office (according to a Congressional Quarterly voting study). As for making his fellow Republicans mad, McCain's words were pure fiction. He voted 98 percent of the time with his fellow Republicans (43 of 44) in 2007.
McCain's claims of working for energy independence were especially silly in light of his record. McCain took millions of dollars from oil companies, all while advocating for massive tax breaks for them and offshore drilling, their two pet issues. McCain also supported the actions of his key economic advisor, former senator Phil Gramm, when he forced through language in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that allowed for the deregulation of oil speculating, which was directly responsible for much of the recent rise in gas prices. And, as Obama has pointed out throughout the campaign, as a senator, McCain voted against bills supporting renewable energy sources multiple times. McCain has been a senator and a candidate in the hip pocket of the oil companies. How would he ever go against them to advocate for green energies that would de-emphasize the oil companies' central product?
McCain's obsession with offshore drilling also demonstrates that he has no real interest in supporting alternative energy policies. There simply isn't enough oil in the U.S. to feed our oil addiction. Even if we did drill offshore, the Bush administration's Energy Information Administration has found that it would have little effect on the price of oil and would at best result in production in 2017. Offshore drilling is a boondoggle meant to divert people's attention from the larger energy issue that has to be addressed, all while giving oil companies what they want.
In light of McCain's love affair with big oil, it should come as no surprise that his claims of being a champion of global warming measures don't match up with his history in the senate. The League of Conservation Voters gave McCain a score of zero for 2007, and in his senate career, he voted against environmental measures three-quarters of the time. McCain cited his support of a global warming bill with Joe Lieberman, but that legislation lacked the teeth to really address the problem. When Lieberman and other Democrats proposed a tougher bill earlier this year, McCain opposed it. Yet again, McCain's debate rhetoric was not supported by his record.
What about McCain's strong claims that he was a reformer who would clean up the excesses on Wall Street? McCain condemned Obama for taking money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but McCain's hands are hardly clean. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, accepted $2 million in fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with payments reportedly made to his company as recently as August. As Obama said in the debate, he never lobbied for the lenders, but Davis did. McCain talks about adding oversight to the financial industry, but he has a long record supporting the very deregulation that allowed the current subprime mortgage debacle to occur in the first place. Even as the crisis was in full swing, McCain professed recently, "I'm always for less regulation ... I'm fundamentally a deregulator." Aside from the one bill McCain talked about in the debate, he has no record as a senator of trying to clean up the financial industry. Quite the opposite.
As for foreign policy, McCain accused Obama of being wrong on key decisions, but a check of the record shows that it was McCain who has gotten every important judgment of the last decade wrong. McCain, in supporting the war in Iraq, told us that victory would be easy and we would be greeted as liberators. (You can watch him say it here and here.) He also claimed that money from Iraqi oil would pay for the war. Well, five-and-a-half years, more than 4,000 lives, $700 billion, and a broken military later, we know how fatally wrong McCain was. Once the quagmire in Iraq had set in, McCain accused Obama of trying to "legislate" defeat by advocating that funding for the war in Iraq had to come with timetables for American troop withdrawals. Again, Obama turned out to be right, and McCain turned out to be wrong. Everyone seems to have come around to Obama's position, except McCain. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that timetables are necessary, and even the Bush administration has agreed to make them part of a security agreement with Iraq.
Even on McCain's pet issue, the surge, McCain got it wrong and continues to get it wrong. He can't go 30 seconds in a debate on foreign policy without insisting that the surge has worked and Obama was wrong to oppose it. But if the surge was successful, why are we still there? In Bush's January 10, 2007 address to the American people announcing the surge, he made it clear that the purpose of the increase in troops was not to provide a long-term force to suppress violence, but to temporarily quiet things down so the Iraqis could come together to solve their problems. Our military did its job (along with other unrelated factors cited for the improvement of the security situation), but coming up on two years later, most of the important benchmarks of success set out by Bush have not been met by the Iraqis. This point was noted in a report released by the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), which I examined in a June 24 article.
McCain talks as if the drop in violence was the end goal of the surge, not a means to the end of political reconciliation and Iraqi independence. By the terms of Bush's original announcement, the surge has certainly not been a success.
And McCain's bad judgment has not been limited to Iraq. McCain called Obama naive and premature in July in response to Obama's point that the real war on terror is based in Afghanistan, and that more troops were needed there to secure the country. McCain also said that the war in Iraq was not affecting the ability of the U.S. to send a sufficient amount of troops to Afghanistan. But in early July, shortly after McCain mocked Obama, Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directly contradicted McCain, saying: "I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there." Once again, McCain was wrong, and Obama was right.
McCain said that in these difficult times, America needs "a steady hand at the tiller." But "steady" is the one word that you cannot apply to John McCain. His campaign has careened from strategy to strategy, first touting experience, then going after Obama's celebrity, and then just outright lying about Obama's record. McCain was widely noted for not handling the financial crisis well, changing his assessments, sometimes within a single day (like when did performed a 180-degree turn on the bailout of AIG). He dubiously "suspended his campaign" (without actually changing any of his conduct), went to Washington (where he might have scuttled a deal that was in place), claimed he wasn't going to the first debate if the bailout wasn't passed, but then did so anyway. He has also flip-flopped on virtually every major issue (I collected some of the biggest ones here). McCain may be a lot of things, but if the last few months is any indication, "steady" certainly isn't one of them.
So if we take on McCain's challenge from the debate and check his record against his policy statements, we find that his positions on reform, regulation, energy, foreign policy, and a number of other key issues are at odds with what he has actually done while in the senate. It would seem that his newfound positions on these issues have come about only now that he wants to be president, with some of his proposals coming in the last week or two, as he has watched his prospects for election dim.
It's easy to take a position in a campaign. But the promises are empty if the candidate has a record opposing those very positions. As I've said before, McCain now claiming that he is the man to lead us through a period of reform and energy independence is like Wile E. Coyote asking to become the legal guardian of the Roadrunner while feathers spill from his mouth.
Our extraterrestrial debate visitor might think that McCain made sense, but it looks like the American people, who have watched McCain in action for the last 26 years, are starting to understand that McCain's history renders his current plans and promises empty. McCain might get the intergalactic vote, but he will need more than that to win the White House.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
McCain's Desperate Smears Signal His Failure as a Leader Under Pressure
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
John McCain has failed yet another leadership test. This time, it was on how he responds under the pressure of a crisis.
A little more than two weeks ago, Barack Obama took a commanding lead in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll, an advantage he has steadily built on ever since. (Obama's 52 percent to 44 percent lead as of today is larger than any advantage held by George W. Bush or John Kerry at any point in the 2004 general election campaign.) This turn of events came after months of the race being steadily tight, with neither candidate taking a lead of more than a handful of percentage points. McCain's campaign was staggered by a two-punch combination of the candidate's unsteady handling of the financial crisis (There is no problem! There is a problem! I'm suspending my campaign! I'm going to Washington! I scuttled the deal! I'm not debating! Okay, I'll debate!) and the public perception of his ticket's defeat in both the first presidential debate (in which McCain looked angrier than Lou Piniella after the Dodgers sweep) and the vice presidential debate (in which Sarah Palin did a pitch-perfect impression of a female version of Ron Burgundy).
So with McCain's campaign in a freefall, with polls in swing states moving in Obama's direction, and with the electoral college map steadily collapsing in on McCain, and with the election less than a month away, McCain had time for one last major move, one last gesture to stop the bleeding and try and turn around the runaway train leading his campaign off of a cliff. This was a time for McCain to show his mettle, to demonstrate how he reacts in a time of crisis. And what did McCain choose to do? He opted to viciously attack Obama's character with recycled lies and distortions, all in an effort to get Obama and the media to stop talking about important issues like the economic crisis.
In other words, McCain failed the grace-under-pressure test.
In fact, he failed it in two regards. Obviously, on the surface, it is disgraceful that someone who was viciously and disgustingly smeared in 2000 by Bush, and who obviously was deeply wounded by the attacks, would then turn around eight short years later and do the exact same thing to another candidate. Aside from the hypocrisy of the whole thing, the electorate should reject the attempt of a candidate to engage in personal and false attacks on the character of his opponent, all while important issues, including an economic crisis and two wars, demand attention. This tactic, in and of itself, should provoke a negative reaction from voters.
But there is really an even bigger tactical blunder in McCain's latest desperation heave (the third or fourth since 2007, depending on what you include on the list). The effort is, in a word, lame. Bush proved in 2000 and again in 2004 that lies and smears can be effective. But the caveat to that rule is that the smut-tossing has to be done in a smart, calculated manner. McCain's attacks this week have been awkward, clumsy and ill-conceived, more likely to blow up in his campaign's face rather than in his opponent's camp.
McCain and his talking-points-reading running mate have decided to smear Obama with false charges that he was friends with Bill Ayers, who, when Obama was eight years old, was a member of the Weather Underground. They are also once again bringing up the incendiary remarks of the retired pastor of Obama's former church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
These attacks are recycled, having played out at length during the Democratic primary. So Obama not only successfully came up with solutions back then, explaining that he condemned Ayers's actions and never had any relationship with him, and eventually leaving Wright's church and condemning Wright's words, after giving an eloquent and insightful speech on the roll of race in modern society, but he now has the benefit of time and trial-and-error to craft an equally effective response to McCain's warmed-over sleazy attacks.
But an even more dramatic tactical error by McCain was his failure to realize that he and his running mate have skeletons in their closets that are far larger than the ones trumped up against Obama. And in many cases, the charges against the Republican ticket are newer and fresher to this campaign.
For McCain himself, by dredging up these old distortions of Obama's record, he has opened the door for Obama to introduce a whole new generation to McCain's involvement in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s that necessitated a bailout by the government that eventually cost more than $500 billion. McCain, as a member of the so-called Keating Five, was criticized by the Senate for his role in the fall of one of the biggest thrifts, Lincoln Savings and Loan. (In fact, the Obama campaign just released a video detailing McCain's involvement in the scandal.) At a time when voters are fleeing from McCain because of his poor handling of the current financial crisis precipitated by financial industry failures, the last thing he needed was a reminder that he played a leading role in a large, similar debacle 20 years ago.
And Paul Begala revealed on Meet the Press on Sunday that in the 1980s, McCain served on the board of the ultra-conservative U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its ties to anti-Semitic and racists organizations. Certainly, McCain's actual conduct trumps the fact that Obama occasionally found himself in situations with Ayers.
The past conduct of Palin and her husband offers a treasure trove of affiliations that far exceed in actuality any of the events of Obama's life that have been distorted by the McCain campaign. On the wacky religious front, Palin has credited a pastor who protected her from witchcraft (you can see him do it here) with helping her become governor. If that was the whole tale, it would just be one of those funny, wacky items to provide some amusement. But the story is much more dangerous than that. A longer clip of the preacher's sermon shows his belief that the church's teachings should infiltrate the country's culture, economics, politics, education, media and government, accusing the "Israelites" of doing so already. And this is the same church that on August 17 of this year welcomed Jews for Jesus leader David Brickner, who blamed terrorist attacks on Israel as being punishment from God for not believing in Christianity. Brickner said: "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it." As much as the McCain campaign thinks Ayers and Wright will scare the Jewish grandmothers and grandfathers in Florida, I'm sure the goings on at Palin's church (which she has yet to denounce) will seem even scarier.
And the membership of Palin's husband in the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for the secession of Alaska from the union, and Palin's recording, as governor, of a welcoming address for the party's convention, in which she praises its work, is far more damning than anything Obama has done, either in actuality or according to the McCain campaign's smears. Again, Obama barely knows Ayers, but the Republican candidate for the vice presidency has expressed support for a party, one in which her husband was a member for seven years, that no longer wants to be a part of the United States, and whose leader, Joe Vogler, has espoused anti-American sentiments that are every bit as incendiary as what Rev. Wright said. (A sample Vogler quote: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.")
In the end, when McCain faced the biggest crisis of his general election campaign, he was, in effect, being given a test of how he would respond under pressure to an adverse situation. And what did he do? He chose a morally indefensible strategy based on lies and distortions, and the strategy was poorly conceived and sure to be ineffective.
In other words, McCain failed the test miserably. No voter, not Democrats, independents or Republicans, should want McCain to apply these kind of knee-jerk, dishonorable, ineffective tactics to the problems facing the country.
If Americans want any hope of changing the culture of failed leadership that the United States has endured for the last eight years, they have to reject a candidate who has allowed himself to fall into the gutter, and who has displayed an acute lack of understanding of what is needed in a challenging time. McCain's decision to personally smear Obama with lies and distortions should go down in history as the final nail in his political coffin. Let's hope it does.
John McCain has failed yet another leadership test. This time, it was on how he responds under the pressure of a crisis.
A little more than two weeks ago, Barack Obama took a commanding lead in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll, an advantage he has steadily built on ever since. (Obama's 52 percent to 44 percent lead as of today is larger than any advantage held by George W. Bush or John Kerry at any point in the 2004 general election campaign.) This turn of events came after months of the race being steadily tight, with neither candidate taking a lead of more than a handful of percentage points. McCain's campaign was staggered by a two-punch combination of the candidate's unsteady handling of the financial crisis (There is no problem! There is a problem! I'm suspending my campaign! I'm going to Washington! I scuttled the deal! I'm not debating! Okay, I'll debate!) and the public perception of his ticket's defeat in both the first presidential debate (in which McCain looked angrier than Lou Piniella after the Dodgers sweep) and the vice presidential debate (in which Sarah Palin did a pitch-perfect impression of a female version of Ron Burgundy).
So with McCain's campaign in a freefall, with polls in swing states moving in Obama's direction, and with the electoral college map steadily collapsing in on McCain, and with the election less than a month away, McCain had time for one last major move, one last gesture to stop the bleeding and try and turn around the runaway train leading his campaign off of a cliff. This was a time for McCain to show his mettle, to demonstrate how he reacts in a time of crisis. And what did McCain choose to do? He opted to viciously attack Obama's character with recycled lies and distortions, all in an effort to get Obama and the media to stop talking about important issues like the economic crisis.
In other words, McCain failed the grace-under-pressure test.
In fact, he failed it in two regards. Obviously, on the surface, it is disgraceful that someone who was viciously and disgustingly smeared in 2000 by Bush, and who obviously was deeply wounded by the attacks, would then turn around eight short years later and do the exact same thing to another candidate. Aside from the hypocrisy of the whole thing, the electorate should reject the attempt of a candidate to engage in personal and false attacks on the character of his opponent, all while important issues, including an economic crisis and two wars, demand attention. This tactic, in and of itself, should provoke a negative reaction from voters.
But there is really an even bigger tactical blunder in McCain's latest desperation heave (the third or fourth since 2007, depending on what you include on the list). The effort is, in a word, lame. Bush proved in 2000 and again in 2004 that lies and smears can be effective. But the caveat to that rule is that the smut-tossing has to be done in a smart, calculated manner. McCain's attacks this week have been awkward, clumsy and ill-conceived, more likely to blow up in his campaign's face rather than in his opponent's camp.
McCain and his talking-points-reading running mate have decided to smear Obama with false charges that he was friends with Bill Ayers, who, when Obama was eight years old, was a member of the Weather Underground. They are also once again bringing up the incendiary remarks of the retired pastor of Obama's former church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
These attacks are recycled, having played out at length during the Democratic primary. So Obama not only successfully came up with solutions back then, explaining that he condemned Ayers's actions and never had any relationship with him, and eventually leaving Wright's church and condemning Wright's words, after giving an eloquent and insightful speech on the roll of race in modern society, but he now has the benefit of time and trial-and-error to craft an equally effective response to McCain's warmed-over sleazy attacks.
But an even more dramatic tactical error by McCain was his failure to realize that he and his running mate have skeletons in their closets that are far larger than the ones trumped up against Obama. And in many cases, the charges against the Republican ticket are newer and fresher to this campaign.
For McCain himself, by dredging up these old distortions of Obama's record, he has opened the door for Obama to introduce a whole new generation to McCain's involvement in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s that necessitated a bailout by the government that eventually cost more than $500 billion. McCain, as a member of the so-called Keating Five, was criticized by the Senate for his role in the fall of one of the biggest thrifts, Lincoln Savings and Loan. (In fact, the Obama campaign just released a video detailing McCain's involvement in the scandal.) At a time when voters are fleeing from McCain because of his poor handling of the current financial crisis precipitated by financial industry failures, the last thing he needed was a reminder that he played a leading role in a large, similar debacle 20 years ago.
And Paul Begala revealed on Meet the Press on Sunday that in the 1980s, McCain served on the board of the ultra-conservative U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its ties to anti-Semitic and racists organizations. Certainly, McCain's actual conduct trumps the fact that Obama occasionally found himself in situations with Ayers.
The past conduct of Palin and her husband offers a treasure trove of affiliations that far exceed in actuality any of the events of Obama's life that have been distorted by the McCain campaign. On the wacky religious front, Palin has credited a pastor who protected her from witchcraft (you can see him do it here) with helping her become governor. If that was the whole tale, it would just be one of those funny, wacky items to provide some amusement. But the story is much more dangerous than that. A longer clip of the preacher's sermon shows his belief that the church's teachings should infiltrate the country's culture, economics, politics, education, media and government, accusing the "Israelites" of doing so already. And this is the same church that on August 17 of this year welcomed Jews for Jesus leader David Brickner, who blamed terrorist attacks on Israel as being punishment from God for not believing in Christianity. Brickner said: "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it." As much as the McCain campaign thinks Ayers and Wright will scare the Jewish grandmothers and grandfathers in Florida, I'm sure the goings on at Palin's church (which she has yet to denounce) will seem even scarier.
And the membership of Palin's husband in the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for the secession of Alaska from the union, and Palin's recording, as governor, of a welcoming address for the party's convention, in which she praises its work, is far more damning than anything Obama has done, either in actuality or according to the McCain campaign's smears. Again, Obama barely knows Ayers, but the Republican candidate for the vice presidency has expressed support for a party, one in which her husband was a member for seven years, that no longer wants to be a part of the United States, and whose leader, Joe Vogler, has espoused anti-American sentiments that are every bit as incendiary as what Rev. Wright said. (A sample Vogler quote: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.")
In the end, when McCain faced the biggest crisis of his general election campaign, he was, in effect, being given a test of how he would respond under pressure to an adverse situation. And what did he do? He chose a morally indefensible strategy based on lies and distortions, and the strategy was poorly conceived and sure to be ineffective.
In other words, McCain failed the test miserably. No voter, not Democrats, independents or Republicans, should want McCain to apply these kind of knee-jerk, dishonorable, ineffective tactics to the problems facing the country.
If Americans want any hope of changing the culture of failed leadership that the United States has endured for the last eight years, they have to reject a candidate who has allowed himself to fall into the gutter, and who has displayed an acute lack of understanding of what is needed in a challenging time. McCain's decision to personally smear Obama with lies and distortions should go down in history as the final nail in his political coffin. Let's hope it does.
Friday, October 3, 2008
VP Debate: Apparently, Not Imploding Is Enough If You're "Just Like Us"
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
Sarah Palin didn't trip and fall on her way to or from the podium. She didn't go on a nonsensical, grammar-defying journey through the English language while talking about her state's proximity to Russia or the Wall Street bailout. And she didn't demonstrate a moment of shocking ignorance, like failing to know what the Bush Doctrine was or being unable to name a single Supreme Court decision.
And because Sarah Palin didn't implode on the stage last night in St. Louis, her performance was hailed as a success. The New York Daily News trumpeted, "Sarah Holds Her Own," and the New York Post announced, "Sarah Show: Pit Bull Hangs Tough in Clash With Biden," and even the New York Times and Washington Post portrayed her performance as generally positive.
Really? Because she didn't self-destruct on stage, she is a success?
If that was all there was to the reaction to Palin's performance, if it was only that the bar was set so low that she is being lauded simply for not majorly screwing up onstage, that would speak volumes about how we, as a country, have fallen so far in our expectations of who our leaders should be. But the reality of the reaction was far worse.
In fact, Palin's folksy, "gee whiz, I'm just a small town hockey mom and all of you Washington folk sure are full of it" approach reflected a clear strategy, the idea that people would be drawn to support her because she's "just like us."
Let me go on the record with something: I went to a pretty good undergraduate university, graduated in the top ten percent of my law school class (and was the editor of the school's entertainment and sports law review), and am a decent enough writer that the good folks at Huffingtonpost.com allow me to blog, and yet I don't want someone "just like me" to be president. I want someone better than me. And 99.9999 percent of us should, too.
Palin is not running to be the vice president of the PTA or the local country club (or even to be the governor of the 47th biggest state with a population roughly equal to that of Columbus, Ohio). She is running to be the vice president of the United States, and if statistics hold, that would mean that there is a decent chance she would one day be the president. That means she would, among many other things, hold in her hand the power to launch nuclear attacks, send our troops into combat, meet and negotiate with world leaders, set the strategy for fighting terrorism, direct the government's participation in the economy (and how to handle the current credit market shutdown that is threatening to send the country into a tailspin), determine how we will address the crises we are experiencing with energy and global warming, and provide leadership during good times and bad.
The power and responsibility of the president of the United States is awesome. It requires a leader with intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to process huge amounts of data in a variety of areas and then make sophisticated and complicated determinations, as well as a need to see things with a depth and clarity that most average people lack. We've seen over the last eight years what happens when someone obviously out of his depth was thrown into the position. Virtually every aspect of American life -- the economy, our foreign policy, our military, our energy policy, etc. -- is in crisis, in no small part due to the ineptitude of George W. Bush.
It is ludicrous to believe that Sarah Palin has anything even approaching the intelligence and knowledge necessary to do the job. And that was demonstrated in St. Louis last night.
At the debate, people were apparently charmed by her folksiness. They loved how she told moderator Gwen Ifill and her opponent Joe Biden that she wasn't going to answer their questions. But what she was really saying was that if she didn't know the answer to a question, rather than make a fool of herself like she did with Charles Gibson or Katie Couric, she would instead say something about which she could provide an answer. Shouldn't we be worried that a candidate for vice president is so limited in knowledge and expertise that there are whole areas she can't properly talk about? That she would, as Tina Fey so brilliantly said it on Saturday Night Live, need a lifeline?
Palin spent the debate spewing talking points. She sounded like a newscaster, reading copy provided by someone else. She didn't demonstrate any depth of insight, knowledge or understanding about the problems the U.S. faces. When confronted with arguments, she couldn't do any thinking on her own. She simply reverted back to a talking point, and sometimes not even the right one. Often, it seemed not like she was choosing to answer a different question, but as if she didn't understand the question she was supposed to answer. She hammered home outright lies and distortions, as if saying them again and again with conviction would make them true. I started to wonder if she even really knew that what she was saying wasn't true. I started to feel like she was Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, signing off with "Go f--- yourself, San Diego," just because it was on the teleprompter.
But really, in the end, all this isn't even about Palin. It's about us, as a country. Any society with its priorities straight would have watched Palin last night and, regardless of ideological beliefs, ruled her out as a candidate for the vice presidency. It's not about her lack of experience (although you could certainly make that argument), nor is it about her extreme right wing beliefs (which were nicely hidden last night), but it is all about her lack of ability. The fact that she is ordinary when the job calls for extraordinary.
The fact that the lead story this morning is that Palin "held her own" with Biden rather than that she was obviously completely out of her depth says a lot more about us than it does about her. It says that we haven't learned our lesson after choosing an intellectually inferior president for the last eight years, after rejecting Al Gore in 2000 for being "wooden" or a "policy wonk." I'm sorry, but when did being president require the office holder to be the life of the party? Shouldn't we want a smart person in the job? Wouldn't that be a good thing?
It should be, but what the response to last night's debate tells us is that it's not. At least not in the minds of too many Americans. Rather than reward knowledge and intellect in this country, we reject it, saying that it makes the candidate "arrogant" or "boring" or "elitist" (or, as two Southern Republicans referred to Barack Obama, "uppity," but that is a whole other discussion). No, the U.S. has become an anti-intellectual society that scorns intelligence and ability and wants leaders that are "just like them."
Well, as I often say, democracy works, just not always how you want it to. If you want someone "like us," you'll get someone "like us." And most of "us" would be way out of our depth if thrown into the White House. Again, we had someone "like us" the last eight years. How did that work out?
I thought that maybe, just maybe, the cavalcade of severe problems facing this country would refocus voters a bit and make them realize that we need someone better than us to find solutions. But the reaction to last night's debate shows that we really haven't changed at all.
The fact that Palin's performance last night was not roundly dismissed as that of an unexceptional, unqualified, unknowledgable, unintelligent joke is an embarrassment for this country. Now, apparently, not being a total train wreck is enough to garner accolades for a debate performance. Knowledge, insight and the ability to reason are, apparently, irrelevant. The key is just spitting out prewritten talking points and showing that, aw shucks, you're just another hockey mom from the heartland of America who is "just like us." I think that's great the next time we're looking for someone to lead the local hockey team supporter's club. But to be vice president and confront the crises facing the United States, I'd prefer someone not like me at all, but, rather, a lot better than me. And certainly a lot better than Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin didn't trip and fall on her way to or from the podium. She didn't go on a nonsensical, grammar-defying journey through the English language while talking about her state's proximity to Russia or the Wall Street bailout. And she didn't demonstrate a moment of shocking ignorance, like failing to know what the Bush Doctrine was or being unable to name a single Supreme Court decision.
And because Sarah Palin didn't implode on the stage last night in St. Louis, her performance was hailed as a success. The New York Daily News trumpeted, "Sarah Holds Her Own," and the New York Post announced, "Sarah Show: Pit Bull Hangs Tough in Clash With Biden," and even the New York Times and Washington Post portrayed her performance as generally positive.
Really? Because she didn't self-destruct on stage, she is a success?
If that was all there was to the reaction to Palin's performance, if it was only that the bar was set so low that she is being lauded simply for not majorly screwing up onstage, that would speak volumes about how we, as a country, have fallen so far in our expectations of who our leaders should be. But the reality of the reaction was far worse.
In fact, Palin's folksy, "gee whiz, I'm just a small town hockey mom and all of you Washington folk sure are full of it" approach reflected a clear strategy, the idea that people would be drawn to support her because she's "just like us."
Let me go on the record with something: I went to a pretty good undergraduate university, graduated in the top ten percent of my law school class (and was the editor of the school's entertainment and sports law review), and am a decent enough writer that the good folks at Huffingtonpost.com allow me to blog, and yet I don't want someone "just like me" to be president. I want someone better than me. And 99.9999 percent of us should, too.
Palin is not running to be the vice president of the PTA or the local country club (or even to be the governor of the 47th biggest state with a population roughly equal to that of Columbus, Ohio). She is running to be the vice president of the United States, and if statistics hold, that would mean that there is a decent chance she would one day be the president. That means she would, among many other things, hold in her hand the power to launch nuclear attacks, send our troops into combat, meet and negotiate with world leaders, set the strategy for fighting terrorism, direct the government's participation in the economy (and how to handle the current credit market shutdown that is threatening to send the country into a tailspin), determine how we will address the crises we are experiencing with energy and global warming, and provide leadership during good times and bad.
The power and responsibility of the president of the United States is awesome. It requires a leader with intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to process huge amounts of data in a variety of areas and then make sophisticated and complicated determinations, as well as a need to see things with a depth and clarity that most average people lack. We've seen over the last eight years what happens when someone obviously out of his depth was thrown into the position. Virtually every aspect of American life -- the economy, our foreign policy, our military, our energy policy, etc. -- is in crisis, in no small part due to the ineptitude of George W. Bush.
It is ludicrous to believe that Sarah Palin has anything even approaching the intelligence and knowledge necessary to do the job. And that was demonstrated in St. Louis last night.
At the debate, people were apparently charmed by her folksiness. They loved how she told moderator Gwen Ifill and her opponent Joe Biden that she wasn't going to answer their questions. But what she was really saying was that if she didn't know the answer to a question, rather than make a fool of herself like she did with Charles Gibson or Katie Couric, she would instead say something about which she could provide an answer. Shouldn't we be worried that a candidate for vice president is so limited in knowledge and expertise that there are whole areas she can't properly talk about? That she would, as Tina Fey so brilliantly said it on Saturday Night Live, need a lifeline?
Palin spent the debate spewing talking points. She sounded like a newscaster, reading copy provided by someone else. She didn't demonstrate any depth of insight, knowledge or understanding about the problems the U.S. faces. When confronted with arguments, she couldn't do any thinking on her own. She simply reverted back to a talking point, and sometimes not even the right one. Often, it seemed not like she was choosing to answer a different question, but as if she didn't understand the question she was supposed to answer. She hammered home outright lies and distortions, as if saying them again and again with conviction would make them true. I started to wonder if she even really knew that what she was saying wasn't true. I started to feel like she was Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, signing off with "Go f--- yourself, San Diego," just because it was on the teleprompter.
But really, in the end, all this isn't even about Palin. It's about us, as a country. Any society with its priorities straight would have watched Palin last night and, regardless of ideological beliefs, ruled her out as a candidate for the vice presidency. It's not about her lack of experience (although you could certainly make that argument), nor is it about her extreme right wing beliefs (which were nicely hidden last night), but it is all about her lack of ability. The fact that she is ordinary when the job calls for extraordinary.
The fact that the lead story this morning is that Palin "held her own" with Biden rather than that she was obviously completely out of her depth says a lot more about us than it does about her. It says that we haven't learned our lesson after choosing an intellectually inferior president for the last eight years, after rejecting Al Gore in 2000 for being "wooden" or a "policy wonk." I'm sorry, but when did being president require the office holder to be the life of the party? Shouldn't we want a smart person in the job? Wouldn't that be a good thing?
It should be, but what the response to last night's debate tells us is that it's not. At least not in the minds of too many Americans. Rather than reward knowledge and intellect in this country, we reject it, saying that it makes the candidate "arrogant" or "boring" or "elitist" (or, as two Southern Republicans referred to Barack Obama, "uppity," but that is a whole other discussion). No, the U.S. has become an anti-intellectual society that scorns intelligence and ability and wants leaders that are "just like them."
Well, as I often say, democracy works, just not always how you want it to. If you want someone "like us," you'll get someone "like us." And most of "us" would be way out of our depth if thrown into the White House. Again, we had someone "like us" the last eight years. How did that work out?
I thought that maybe, just maybe, the cavalcade of severe problems facing this country would refocus voters a bit and make them realize that we need someone better than us to find solutions. But the reaction to last night's debate shows that we really haven't changed at all.
The fact that Palin's performance last night was not roundly dismissed as that of an unexceptional, unqualified, unknowledgable, unintelligent joke is an embarrassment for this country. Now, apparently, not being a total train wreck is enough to garner accolades for a debate performance. Knowledge, insight and the ability to reason are, apparently, irrelevant. The key is just spitting out prewritten talking points and showing that, aw shucks, you're just another hockey mom from the heartland of America who is "just like us." I think that's great the next time we're looking for someone to lead the local hockey team supporter's club. But to be vice president and confront the crises facing the United States, I'd prefer someone not like me at all, but, rather, a lot better than me. And certainly a lot better than Sarah Palin.
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