Palin Most Experienced

[nohil-billy]

October 02, 2008
Sarah Palin and the Experience Factor

Why is it that liberal misrepresentations are never fully addressed before they become established as received wisdom? Whatever the topic may be, the left is consistently allowed to set the terms on which the argument takes place. Opponents may then debate minor points, split hairs, and count angels, but nobody ever seems to get around to looking the basic premises over, even when they're transparently bogus.

In the past few years we've seen "WMDs were the sole reason for invading Iraq", "CO2 is the major driver of climatic trends", and "Karl Rove is the Devil Incarnate", to consider only three. Each case is demonstrably false, yet each case has been allowed to dominate the public debate.

In the 2008 election, one of these ruling myths is "Sarah Palin does not have the experience to be vice-president."

Well, let's stomp that one flat right away: out of all four candidates, Sarah Palin is the only one with any of the requisite executive experience required for office. She is the sole candidate who has ever run anything larger than a college debating society. If she is not qualified, none of them are, and we'd better dump ‘em all and start over.

A major peculiarity of this election is that three of the candidates are senators. Only two senators have been elected president in this century: Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. (Johnson, Bush, Sr., and Truman all served as VPs before entering the Oval Office.)

Americans like governors -- somebody with hands-on experience at running a state who can demonstrate that experience. McKinley, Wilson, Coolidge, FDR, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. were all successful governors before becoming president. (We'll overlook Carter for the moment, if you don't mind.) Eisenhower, the single great exception, can be said to have run something larger than a state. Commanding the forces that booted the Nazis out of Western Europe will get you through the interview.

The value of having been a governor is obvious, the progression from there to the presidency apparent. Not so with senators. Whatever it is they do when not traipsing around Washington in their purple-trimmed togas, walking their pet ocelots while the Vestal Virgins strew rose petals in their path, it has nothing in common with executive experience. Typically they get out of law school, work awhile as lawyers, go on to local or state office, then to the House, then to the Senate. At no point do they run anything larger than their own offices. The governor of the smallest state or territory in the union easily trumps them on that score. Often, that's all that's necessary. After his Three Stooges first term, the only edge that Bill Clinton had on Robert Dole was his gubernatorial experience. That was enough.

Only one person in this race has ever held that kind of responsibility. Only one person has ever actually run a government. Only one person has the necessary experience, and that is Sarah Palin. Yet thanks to a media as obtuse as it is vicious, this undeniable record of experience has been thrust aside in favor of the myth that at least two of the senators in the race -- Obama and Biden -- possess superior experience.

Several objections to Palin's record exist, some of them unspoken.

The first is that Wasilla is a small town, and Alaska a small state, as far as population goes. As one Clintonite notable -- I forget if it was Panetta or Begala or Magilla -- put it, "the caribou outnumber the people". (Caribou, it seems, only matter to liberals when they're being frightened by drilling equipment.)

The answer to this is straightforward. The differences between running a town, a state, and a country are matters of degree, not of essence. The same skills and abilities are required in each case. An individual who has learned to run one is not likely to be overwhelmed on taking the next step up. As for the size argument, there was once a country that consisted of about three million people, only a small multiple of Alaska today, a country which in the midst of serious crisis produced several of the greatest leaders in its history. That country is, of course, the United States of the 1780s, which produced Washington, Hamilton, Gallatin, Jefferson, Madison, and Jay. This would seem to testify that numbers, per se, have little to do with anything.

Beyond that, we have the fact that Alaska, due to remoteness, climate, and sheer size, embodies a set of challenges greater than and unlike those of any other state. It is vast, spends close to half the year in a deep freeze, and requires aircraft to reach many points across the state, including Juneau, the capital, which cannot be reached by road. (Many Alaskan families, including the Palins, own light planes for this very reason.) The governor of such a state will have met and overcome challenges quite unfamiliar to continental U.S. governors, Washington senators, and East Coast pundits. This certainly has to be taken into consideration.

The last point involves the question of success. Wasilla, the town of which Palin served as mayor, increased its population by 2,000 -- nearly a full third -- under her stewardship. Not bad for a hockey mom.

A second, virtually unspoken objection is that there's something wrong with Palin's actual experience, that it's not the right kind, that in some ineffable way it fails to make the grade. It's as if she first served on the city council and then ran off to fight as a mercenary, returned to serve as mayor only to decamp with the circus, then interwove her term as governor with the sale of patent medicines.

None of this being the case, we have to ask what precisely is wrong with the progression, city council-mayor-governor-VP candidate. And the answer is -- absolutely nothing. It's as perfectly natural a progression as can be found in politics, the only remarkable element of it being the swiftness with which Palin has traversed it. This implies that she is very good at what she does. Which means, according the media and the Democrats, that we're supposed to question her skill and abilities. Everybody got that?

Which brings us to the third objection -- that she wasn't governor for long enough. Only eighteen months, according to the stopwatch. Barely a flicker of the eye, the way they judge time in Washington... Though it happens that Woodrow Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910, and went on to be elected president in 1912. Are we to take it that the extra six months make all the difference?
Experience is not simply a matter of duration, but what you do with the time you have. Palin accomplished more in that year-and-a-half than most governors do over full terms, including facing down a corrupt and entrenched old-boys network and bringing the oil companies -- the state's biggest business -- to heel.

And finally, there's the fact that she has no foreign policy experience. None. Zero. Why, no less than Charles Gibson clearly demonstrated that on the tube, with plenty in the way of sighs and head shakes, too.

...except for the easily demonstrated fact that Governor Palin, on August 27th of this year, completed a pipeline agreement with Canada, which is a foreign country. The agreement had been stymied for over two decades by various interests in Alaskan state government. Palin got it wrapped up in that busy eighteen months.

Now, anyone present who has ever successfully concluded an agreement with a foreign country please raise their hands. Uhh... not you, Sen. Obama? Or you either, Sen. Biden? Hmm... I see.

I can't think of any other objections, but if they exist they'd drop as swiftly and completely as these. But that's not what we've been told and are still being told. Gibson is supposed to have demonstrated the case through asking questions about matters that he himself does not understand. Most irritating are the conservative writers wailing counterpoint to this melody.
They may be right. But as we've seen, it's not likely. Palin has gained her experience where it counts. Not in the Ivy League, not at the think tanks, not in the Senate. But down in the trenches, where life is for real, and the work gets done because it must be done. There is no more common figure in American history than the "unprepared" backwoods politician who steps forward in the midst of crisis. From Lincoln through Truman, there is no end of them, at all levels of the political sphere. Palin may be the next in that long and impressive line. Or she may serve a quiet term or two as a ceremonial vice-president before returning home to hunt moose and raise grandchildren. She will unquestionably be tempted, and who can blame her?

But she may turn out to be very different. To be exactly what the GOP rank and file believe her to be: a woman who will go on to make fools out of all the doubters and questioners and agonizers. One thing for certain: she has no end of experience in that.

HEY HERB !!!

[nohil-billy]

October 03, 2008
Palin Has Everything that Counts

By [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.

I must admit to being quite taken aback, last week, by Kathleen Parker's [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. that Sarah Palin do the Country and her Party the favor of withdrawing from this race. One is left to only imagine whether Ms. Parker is of the same mind today, or whether she will now be sending this advice to Joe Biden instead.


As for me and my vote, Sarah Palin has everything that counts. She has had my admiration since day one, and I've seen nothing of significance to change my mind. I read Kaylene Johnson's biography, [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , this week. It's the portrait of the hockey mom, "who turned Alaska's political establishment upside down," a woman who has produced some rather extraordinary accomplishments for her family, her town and her state, in that order, taking one thing at a time. According to those who know Sarah best, she has done it not so much with extraordinary talent as with personal drive and hard work.


The kind of effort most Americans value most.


For all the talk about the smallness of the governments Mrs. Palin has run successfully, one might get the idea that it's harder to sit among a large group of Senators on the Hill in Washington, D.C. than being on the hot seat all alone in a mayor or governor's office.


Well, that's pure poppycock.


We don't need any more proof than the recent revelations of hidden-in-plain-sight shenanigans of Congress -- up to their eyeballs in Freddie/Fannie corruption! - to know which job is hardest. It's a whole lot more difficult to be constantly exposed to watchful constituents in one's own hometown and state, than it is to be ensconced on the Hill hundreds or thousands of miles from the taxpayers.


To listen to Governor Palin's critics lately, though, one might imagine that none of her real accomplishments, nor the honesty and integrity evidenced by Mrs. Palin in office, actually count any more. Sarah Palin has proven her qualifications by actually making decisions that have borne real fruit -- results. And proven results certainly matter to me.


When I saw Sarah Palin make her national debut at the RNC convention, and again in her first major debate last night, I found her to be quite the American version of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher, too, faced scathing derision from her country's press and from her opposition, much of it focused on the issues of small town vs. big city and commoner vs. elite.


And, like Palin, Thatcher rose above it all with grace and made her case to the actual voters, who elected her again and again, until the Iron Lady became the longest sitting Prime Minister in more than a Century. What did Margaret Thatcher credit with her amazing success?


Thatcher said simply, in much the way I expect Sarah Palin will:

"I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election."

And as the first female Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher, also said, "Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country." Then, she set about proving her own words true.


Despite her harping critics, Maggie Thatcher proved to be a most able leader upon the world stage, even at a time of rather perilous threats on many fronts. When besieged by naysayers, she once remarked, "If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim." And after watching Sarah Palin last night, I would say that she agrees with Maggie.


Don't let the naysayers ever get you down.


Peggy Noonan was actually one of the first journalists to [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. that McCain's pick of Sarah Palin signaled the end of his presidential quest. Oddly enough, however, Peggy Noonan sang quite a different tune some years ago, when she [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. "character" alone as the essential requirement in a President.

"In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can't buy courage and decency, you can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him... He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a "vision" of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character-- the courage and heart-- to see it through."

Well said, Ms. Noonan. When did you lose your way?


My favorite part of the debate last night was when Governor Palin reminded us all of Joe Biden's characterization of paying more taxes as "patriotic." Sarah Palin's authenticity is the most powerful gift she has, in my opinion, and she smiled right into the camera, looked with a mischievous grin, and said that plans for the redistribution of wealth were not how we real Americans in the middle-class see "patriotism."


Can you say moose-in-the-headlights Biden?


Why does everything with liberals always come down to throwing money at problems?


It wasn't hard to see why Joe Biden has been a Senator and never really in charge of anything on his own. He came across as someone, who did little more than rehearse a role for public performance. Governor Palin, on the other hand, is the professional politician's worst nightmare.


Just as Margaret Thatcher pulled the rug out from under a lot of old hands in England, here comes Sarah Palin going right over the heads of media elites, who think they are charged with the responsibility of telling the rest of us what things to consider when casting our votes.


No one thought Maggie Thatcher, raised over a grocery store in a small town, could be the first female Prime Minister of England, either. But the Iron Lady did quite a splendid job. And I predict that Sarah Palin will as well.


Sarah Palin is the perfect balance to McCain's experience and wisdom. She is fresh, genuine and as American as apple pie. Smart as a whip to boot. She evidences the spark of true humility, a willingness to learn from others, and the character so necessary for sound judgment.


In everything that counts, Sarah Palin has what it takes to make a great Vice President. And someday, she'll make a terrific first female President too.


I hope I live to see it.

[Herb Schaffler]

The list of conservatives who don't believe Palin is qualified to be president is growing. It now includes: George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum , Ross Douthat, conservative commentator Kathleen Parker, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jay Nordlinger, Ben Stein ,moderate-conservative David Brooks, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy

[nohil-billy]

PEGGY NOONAN SAYS SARAH KILLED! JOE BIDEN WRONG 16 TIMES IN VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE W PALIN EVEN THE SWING VOTERS SWUNG TOWARDS SARAH!

DICK MORRIS: SARAH BRILLIANT! One of the very best debate performances I've ever seen by anyone. Only the liberal media (and Herb) could deny her this victory. This was a clear victory. I would consider this a knock-out!!--

Rudy Giuliani Unbelievable win for Sarah Palin! In fact,...

[nohil-billy]

Kathleen Parker whole heartedly admits Sarah Palin won. But Grudgingly!!!

The VP Debate: She Won Fersure, Also



Well, darnit all, if that dadgum girl (wink, wink) didn't beat the tarnation out of Joe Biden. Maverick Sarah Palin fersure surpassed expectations and said everything under the sun, also. And Biden smiled and smiled.

Palin is a populist pro. She hit all the notes that resonate with non-elite Americans: family (Hi Mom and Dad!), "Can I call ya Joe?" personal responsibility, Wall Street greed, children with special needs. Her most effective technique was speaking directly to the American people and letting Joe know that's what she was gonna do, doggonit.

Stylistically, she used the language of the people to great effect. And, you know what? If you want to know what the American people care about, you can go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday and ask parents how they feel, and "I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear."

I'll have to go to the transcript to figure out what Palin actually said and try to figure out whose facts were right. But there's no question: She won the debate on popularity. She did her homework, studied hard, and delivered with spunk. Still, I had the uneasy feeling throughout that I was witnessing a data dump from a very appealing droid. Even the winks and jaw juts seemed slightly programmed. And the question remains: Is she ready to be president should the need arise?

[Herb Schaffler]

Peggy Noonan, Dick Morris, Rudi Giuliani, Kathleen Parker: all McCain supporters. Can you say subjective? The polls showed the majority of viewers believed Biden to have won.

[nohil-billy]

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.

As many of y'all know, National Review Online is down right now. Well, my good friend Ramesh Ponnuru and I have been emailing one another throughout the debate, and I asked him if I could post his thoughts on Governor Palin's performance. He graciously agreed, so here they are:

Any conservative who was white-knuckled going into this is relaxing by now. There were some points where she was a bit more platitudinous than one would ideally want, but overall--she's cleaning up. Biden is sighing more as the night goes on, and I can see why.

I could not agree more. Well done, Governor Palin! You did us proud.
Update: Heh. Ramesh just sent me this gem: "Biden thinks Cheney is the most dangerous vice president we've ever had? What about Burr?"

[Herb Schaffler]

Remember, Cheney also shot somebody.

[nohil-billy]

You listed Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, and Ramesh Ponnura amongst others Herb.

Most polls I've seen have said the opposite. One Fox News text poll shows Palin winning 88% to 12%.

Can you say subjective Herb? Most of the people you listed are the ultimate conservatives that have no love for McCain whatsoever. What I'm pointing out is the Sarah Palin won the debate and even people that were doubtful of her (according to your list) think so too.

You have been unfairly bashing this woman unmercifully since John McCain named her as his running mate. You're as bad as the MSM or worse!!! Now go to a corner facing east and say a prayer for guidance.

[Herb Schaffler]

"One Fox News text poll shows Palin winning 88% to 12%"

Most scientific polls show most people believe Biden won. The Fox News text poll isn't scientific. It's a call in poll and as we know Fox's audience is mostly Republican, so who else would they vote for?

"Now go to a corner facing east and say a prayer for guidance."

Still accusing me of being a Muslim. How many Muslims have a last name like Schaffler?

Palin scored high because of the cutesy way she came across with all her home spun language and winking. But this isn't a contest for Miss Congeniality. This is a contest for VP. It's obvious to me that she's out of her league. She had notes prepared for her which she kept looking down at. Even at that, she still made lots of mistakes. When you get her in a news interview where she doesn't have notes to refer to, she does very poorly because she has an utter lack of knowledge.