I've been trying to read up on Sarah Palin in the last 16 hours or so, and there is absolutely nothing I've found out about her online that makes me believe she's qualified to be Vice President of the PTA, let alone the USA.
Nevermind the whole "I don't believe in science" thing - which is John's big hang-up at this stage. Let's take the rest of the list of what we know so far about this woman.
1. She eloped with her high school boyfriend in August 1988. She's got a son who is somewhere around 19/20. There is a very real possibility she was pregnant when she got married. Until I see a Track Palin's birth certificate, I'm keeping this door open a crack. You see, if she's a family values, abstinence-only conservative, then we've got ourselves a little hypocrisy to the nth degree.
UPDATE: Alan Colmes has got the details and also thinks this is suspicious.
2. She has 5 kids. 5. And one is only 4-months-old. With Down syndrome. Now, I'm not a parent so I don't know firsthand the difficulties in raising children, but I have a lot of friends who are parents of one or two children - many under the age of 3, and I can tell you they assure me it's no easy task. I would love to know how this woman plans to raise a 4-month-old with a condition that requires special attention and nurturing and will cause cognitive delays while running for - and then potentially serving as - Vice President of the United States.
3. We're at war. I'd like to know how often she's traveled abroad, met with foreign leaders, or studied world affairs. She was a journalism major at The University of Idaho. As a former professional reporter who got her Master's in Journalism, I can assure you it's not the most intellectually challenging of course curricula. I got a great hands-on education in everything I needed to know to get on-air at a small market TV station, but unless UI has some stellar communications program that I've never heard of before, I'm guessing Palin wasn't vying for valedictorian. In fact, here's the current UI four-year journalism plan. Second semester freshman year, you get to take PE.
4. She's not Hillary Clinton. If the McCain camp thinks tossing a woman on the ticket - any woman - is the key to grabbing frustrated Clinton supporters, they're delusional. While I had my own serious issues with Clinton and her campaign, I never would have suggested she was unqualified to be President. Had she won, I would have been confident in her ability to lead this nation. Hillary Clinton has proven over the years - with the exception of some of the rotten campaign decisions that ultimately led to her defeat - to be the kind of woman that other women could be proud of and admire. She's earned her spot at the top. Palin - on the other hand - is a former beauty pageant contestant who one might suspect has skirted by on the naughty librarian look. She's the kind of woman other women despise. She's the kind of woman that sets the women's movement back decades. She doesn't further shatter the glass ceiling. She covers the cracks in Hello Kitty band-aids and giggles at the pretty patterns.
Frankly, I'm shocked my more conservative friends online aren't downright mortified by McCain's choice for VP. Partisan politics aside, she's got nothing to offer on the national security front. She's a social conservative, but of frightening - almost lunatic - proportions. She's unqualified, unprepared, and an unbelievably inappropriate choice. She's the Harriet Miers of VP picks. Smart conservatives should be outraged their candidate is willing to gamble with the safety our nation for the sake of possibly pulling in a particular demo. It's dangerous and irresponsible, and McCain - and his supporters - should be ashamed.
I think Sarah Palin is going to tank. Hard. I think come debate time, Biden's going to make her look Miss Teen South Carolina on a good day. And for the record, there is nothing sexist about not supporting a female candidate who is all wrong for the job. In fact, backing the woman just because she's a woman is about as narrow-minded as it gets.
If Sarah Palin proves me wrong, I'll be the first to admit my mistake. But right now, I feel perfectly confident saying Candidate McCain could not have done worse.
UPDATE: Chez used the same headline. His post is here.
5 comments:
I'm kinda surprised you left out any mention of her troopergate scandal, which the McCain campaign apparently didn't even vet her for (yet - doing it now?) that has been brewing for some time but now is going to be getting a lot more attention with the final report due before the end of the prosecutor investigating the case's term which expires on October 31, just days before the election.
Also, there's been a lot of focus on babymommagate, as to whether the child with Downs is really hers or actually her 16/17 yr old daughters. I really don't know what to make of that (I wouldn't touch it at this point), BUT what did stand out related to that (assuming she really was pregnant and the child is hers) is this:
She gave birth when she was 36/37 weeks pregnant on April 18 (she announced she was 7 months (~30/31 weeks) on Mar 5). She had just flown to TX to be a keynote speaker (which in itself is reckless as it goes against the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) guidelines and most airlines apparently wouldn't allow - except she apparently wasn't showing enough to be questioned about it).
Here it gets weird, and it appears she has given differing stories to different journalists.
In this version she says her water broke in TX around 4 am, and that she called her doctor at that time who actually let her go ahead and give her speech later that day (!!!) and then fly 8 hrs back to AK to give birth (WTF?!?!!).
In another version she says she called her doctor after giving the speech.
I call BS.
No doctor is going to say to go ahead and give the speech after breaking water at 4 am then leave a metropolitan area with top-notch prenatal facilities to fly 8 hrs for a premature birth already diagnosed with Downs to Alaska.
Once your water breaks time is an issue or infection can set in. That's why docs go a max 24 hrs before giving a c-section (usually much sooner) if a woman isn't dialated enough to give birth naturally. For a doc to let her go all day and fly home is just crazy talk.
Plus, with it being her 5th kid, the avg time between the water breaking and birth gets shorter and shorter each time. Her story is not believable, and even if it is to be believed it shows she exercises very poor judgment, unless she was purposefully being reckless with a pregnancy she wasn't comfortable with terminating in a more conventional way. Even then...
I hear ya. We're totally there tonight.
I came here via Chez' blog because I am interested in different takes on the whole Palin as VP-issue. Although I join in with the overall incredulity on her being nominated, I do have to say that your point on how she intends to raise five children while at the same time holding a very powerful and demanding office is completely anachronistic and hurting your argument significantly.
You yourself say that "she's the kind of woman that sets the women's movement back decades" while at the same time you imply that a woman with children should not and cannot have a demanding job. Had somebody said something like this about a female democratic candidate, the outrage would have been deafening. I think rendering her unfit for the office of VP through this line of reasoning is not only setting the women's movement back decades, it is also hypocritical.
(By the way: There is that second parent, also able to take care of the kids, see: Obama, Michelle. And another thing: The beauty of having five kids is that they can help each other a lot, that there is always somebody who you can go to.)
This point notwithstanding, I wholeheartedly agree that her nomination is a rather obvious attempt at ingratiation and that she is simply not qualified politically.
Sophia -
I'm glad you came by and weighed in. I always appreciate feedback- especially when someone disagrees. However, I suspect you missed the larger picture here.
See, I would never imply that a woman cannot have both children and a demanding job. I think there are plenty of women - many of them my close friends - who work very hard to do both exceptionally well.
But I challenge you to find a woman with a 4-MONTH-OLD child with special needs who is going to require extra attention and care (not the "extra helping hand" of a fellow child) from his parents willing to rush off to jet around the country. It's not like Alaska is on the campaign trail. She's not going to be able to pop home from time to time over the next few months. And then g-d forbid she wins the VP spot.
There are demanding jobs, and then there is the Vice President of the United States of America.
As for your second parent argument...you can tell that Michelle and Barack are exceptionally attentive and protective of those girls - girls who are old enough to know what's going on. You cannot compare that to an infant. It's not the same. And there are only two of them. Not 5.
And it's not just a female parent thing. Mark Warner decided to pass on running for President for now because of his family. I know through personal sources that Tim Kaine's primary concern when considering a VP spot was whether it was best for his three children.
I didn't say having a 4-month-old and 4 other kids is why she's not qualified (that's a whole other list). But it is a very good reason to question her judgment as a human being and McCain's judgment in choosing her.
I'm sorry, but common sense and an expectation of human decency trump your counter on this one.
Oh...and you know what is setting the women's movement back? The 72-year-old man even appearing to leer at the ass of the much younger, unqualified former beauty queen he picked to be his VP.
Hmm. I was going to protest your #2, but I see you've addressed some of my points in your comment.
Still, I think there are more than enough arguments against her selection, without needing to reach for these.
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