Sarah Palin: Updates

I started this blog as a way of ferreting out information about an unknown candidate for vice president whose qualifications for office were questionable at best. Now that we're only a few weeks from the election it may be good to review what we know so far.

Who is Sarah Palin?

• It's now clear that despite her perky demeanor and ability to read cue cards like a pro, Sarah Palin is, as some have labeled her, George Bush in a skirt. Her curiosity about and knowledge of world affairs is dismal.

Comedians love her. But after eight years of putting up with bad (and good!) George Bush jokes its time we moved on to something more serious. Paula Poundstone's response to the question, "What will comedians do when Bush is gone?" on an NPR, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me segment is most apropos here:

"We'll get over it!"

• As those who were familiar with her modus operatum in Alaska warned, she is mean spirited and vindictive. The red meat Republican crowd loves it. So do the racists and bigots who are now coming out in droves to her rallies. From shaking their fists and booing at the mention of Obama's name to racial epitats hurled at African American cameramen to screaming: "terrorist!" and "kill him!" she's bringing out the best in people.
  Which makes her ever-present beauty queen smile seem more sinister than sincere.
• Despite the best efforts of the McCain team to erase her past, the scandals from Palin's time as mayor and governor won't go away.

These include (among other things): 1) troopergate 2) attempts to fire a small town librarian for not agreeing to ban books 3) a mis-use of state per diem funds 4) the worst kind of cronyism in the hiring of under qualified friends for political purposes.

In all this it may be good to recall what AKMuckraker wrote about Palin back in 2006 when she was running for governor. She wasn't qualified then. She isn't qualified now.

FACTS ABOUT SARAH PALIN
from http://mudflats.wordpress.com

Palin Says She’s a Change from The Scandal-Plaued Republicans, But She’s More of

the Same.

Palin built her reputation on criticizing state Republicans for ethics questions, but Palin has
questions of her own, as she used city resources when she campaigned for Lt. Governor; Palin chaired the campaign of another candidate in a race dominated by resource issues when she was on the oil and gas commission and said that she saw no conflict of interest. For years, Palin supported Murkowski, campaigning for him across the state, and he supported her campaigns as well.

Palin Touts Fiscal Conservatism, But She Increased Spending Tremendously and supported Tax Increases

FULL DOCUMENT

Is Obama in Danger from Palin's Words?

Here's something Sarah Palin and her neo-con handlers need to consider. The incendiary language Palin has been using to insinuate links between Obama and terrorists may be creating an atmosphere in our country similar to what was found in Israel just before a crazed right wing student murdered then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

Is it perhaps time for her to cool the rhetoric? This is dangerous stuff.


From Andrew Sullivan's excellent blog, The Daily Dish, on the Atlantic website.

The Danger to Obama

An Israeli reader writes:

Your post on "The Danger of Obama" immediately brought to mind what happened here in Israel in the period leading up to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Even allowingfor the differences in political culture between the two countries, some of the sounds we're hearing in the public debate around the election have a haunting echo.

Here no one would have thought it possible that an Israeli Jew would take the life of a high official. There's little doubt that the crescendo of demonization toward Rabin – including accusations of treason, flyers picturing Rabin as an SS officer – and the difficulty, in a society guaranteeing free speech, of 'civilizing' the public debate before it creates a fertile bed for actual violence, all helped create the context in which Rabin's murderer decided to take matters into his own hands.

I'd like to see which Republicans will denounce this turn towards demonization. And if there are no takers – maybe Joe Lieberman?

The Naked Ambition of Sarah Palin

New York Times op-ed columnist, Frank Rich, raises an issue that few have dared raise about Sarah Palin - her naked ambition, what Rich calls her "hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition."

This was an underlying reason for my decision to start this blog - that display of "hubristic self-confidence" which Palin first put on display at the RNC. We saw it in the dripping disdain with which she spoke about Obama's work among the poor of south Chicago. We saw it in her saying that she didn't hesitate for a moment to accept the VP nomination. "I'm ready!" she said with the eager smile of a pre-schooler telling her dad she doesn't need the training wheels anymore.

When I held this up next to what I was reading about her "no-holds-barred" ascent to the top of the heap of Alaskan politics, I realized that this is what is most definitive about her - a "hubristic self-confidence" and "hyper ambition."

This, of course, could be said of many politicians. But few would say "I'm ready" with no hesitation when asked about running for an office for which they are not prepared nor qualified. This is the kind of pride the Bible condemns, the kind that "goeth before a fall."

Here's what Frank Rich says:


There’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.

This was first apparent when Palin extolled a “small town” vice president as a hero in her convention speech — and cited not one of the many Republican vice presidents who fit that bill but, bizarrely, Harry Truman, a Democrat who succeeded a president who died in office. A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

FULL ARTICLE