Not Sarah Palin

Did Governor Sarah Palin really not know the three signatories of NAFTA and that Africa is not a country but a continent? If so, I don't think she'd fare too well on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? much less as president of the leading nation on earth.

I've felt this way about her all along, from the moment I first heard her speak. Yes, I was impressed that she could wow a receptive audience with her idiosyncratic charm and pizazz while mouthing carefully crafted words or force-fed talking points. Yes, I really thought for a time that she would bring McCain the presidency. But I never believed that there was meaty substance behind the arresting style. I never believed that Sarah Palin had the right stuff to be Vice-President and literally a melanomic 72-year-old's heartbeat away from President of the United States of America.

Many others disagreed. Some were very smart and well-educated. They included Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Bill Kristol, and even Camille Paglia. I admit that this made me wonder whether I was blinded by my biases against Palin's staunch political and religious conservatism, hyper-folksiness, and overbearing self-righteousness. Was I just not seeing the presidential potential, the diamond-in-the-rough that others saw (or pretended to see) in Sarah Palin? Or was there nothing to see except by those desperate or otherwise compromised enough to see a mirage in the desert?

If the allegations I've been hearing about her lately on, of all places, Fox News, by, of all people, members of McCain's campaign staff are true, it appears as though my judgment was sound. Of course, some have argued that one doesn't need a stratospheric IQ, an Ivy League graduate degree, or even a rudimentary knowledge of geography, history, or international relations to be smart enough to learn what one needs to know when one needs to know it and to exercise enough good sense to effectively perform the duties of Vice-President or even President under even the most difficult circumstances. Moreover, maybe these disgruntled McCain staffers-- whom Palin has recently denounced as "immature," "cruel," "mean-spirited' "jerks"--now slamming Palin for her alleged ignorance and prima donnish behavior on the campaign trail are just using her as a scapegoat to cover up their own mistakes, failures, and incompetence.

I don't know for sure about any of this. All I know is that I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not and should not be "the future of the Republican Party" that some are hoping and saying she is. Actually, not long ago, I would have gladly let her become the GOP's future, because I hated the Republican Party and wanted to see it fail as miserably as possible. But I now believe that we need dialogue, struggle, and cooperation between the most capable politicians of both parties to make this country the best it can be and that the best person for president could someday well be a Republican. Just not Sarah Palin.

Angry With Hillary

I feel disappointed that Hillary won in Texas and Ohio. In fact, I feel more than disappointed. I feel angry. Not so much that she won as how she won. Or how I think she won. Or how I think she may have won.

I think she may have won by throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at Obama and hoping something would stick. It looks like a few things may have including that ridiculous 3 AM spot, the even more ridiculous assertion that she and John McCain are highly qualified to be president while Obama's only qualification is "that speech he gave in 2002." And, oh yes, Obama's only pretending to have any reservations about NAFTA.

I don't know if the last point is true, but Obama says it isn't, and I'm inclined to believe him. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe him about virtually everything than I am her. I have the feeling, justified or not, that Hillary Clinton or her people would say or do almost anything to take the office to which she seems to think she has a birthright. This reminds me of my strongest objection to many illegal immigrants. It's not so much that they're here illegally per se as that they appear to think that they're entitled to be here and to militantly thumb their noses at our immigration laws, and how dare anyone say anything against them or otherwise stand (or place a fence) in their way. Not that Hillary running for president is exactly the same. She has a legal right to run. But the fact that Bill and she seem to think that she's preordained for it turns me off.

But that's not the only thing. Aside from her attacktics, there's her voice. The more I hear that voice, with its histrionic modulations for oratorical effect, the more it grates on my nerves. I confess that I'm hard pressed to think of any female politician's voice and oratorical style that has impressed me with its gravitas. Barbara Jordan's, perhaps. But I'll use the same word that many others have to characterize Hillary's campaign voice--shrill.

What's more, I have the feeling that she's so plugged in to the political scene and so Machiavellian in her political approach that a Hillary Clinton administration would be pretty much a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." No, I'm not saying that she'd be as bad as George Bush, and, at least, she can properly pronounce "nuclear." But I suspect that if she were president, Democrats and Republicans in Congress and in the public at large would remain just as contentiously divided as they were under Bush and that this would not be good.

Of course, I'm assuming that it would be different under Obama. I'm assuming that his inviting rhetoric about uniting across party and ideological lines and working together for the common good and the charisma he radiates when using it would be effective in a way that Hillary could never be. But perhaps I'm mistaken. The only thing I know for sure is that I would much rather hear a president Obama speech or press conference than a President Clinton one.

However, if Clinton attacks and otherwise manipulates her way into the nomination, I feel quite certain that crusty John McCain will be our next president, and we'll have at least four more years of the same old same old, including more Supreme Court justices ready to overturn Roe v Wade and continuing troop "surges" in Iraq on our way to maintaining our disastrous presence there for the next 100 years.

For as much as I dislike the Republican party and its platform, it would be all I could do to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton, and if I feel that way, how many others who would have voted for Obama will end up either voting for McCain (or Nader) or just not bothering to vote at all?