Ok, maybe not. But I am beginning to actually feel for Governor Palin. Something in the way Garrison Keillor just ripped the bandaid off – courageously, I might add – in his searing commentary earlier this week has affected me. Keillor admonished Senator McCain for “exploiting a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn’t funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a fool of her.”
It’s a sort of moral dilemma. If Palin is in over her head, do you just set down the gloves and let this thing play out? Do I really need to say anything when these are the snippets we have to work with?
“I am honored to meet you,” Ms. Palin said [upon meeting the new Pakistani President, Ali Asif Zardari.]
“You are even more gorgeous than you are on the (inaudible),” Mr. Zardari said.
“You are so nice,” Ms. Palin replied. “Thank you.”
“Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Mr. Zardari continued. At which point an aide told the two to shake hands.
“I’m supposed to pose again,” Ms. Palin said.
“If he’s insisting,” Mr. Zardari said, “I might hug.”
Earlier Wednesday, Ms. Palin had met with Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, and other Iraqi officials.
As the meeting began, Ms. Palin made small talk with Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, the first lady of Iraq. “Plenty to do here, isn’t there?” Ms. Palin remarked, presumably about New York. “Plenty to see.”
With a bit of nationalist pride, or perhaps the irritation of a spouse not thrilled about being dragged along on a business trip, the first lady replied, “I have plenty to do at home, also.”
Or this one:
COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.
PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick, though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about — the need to reform government.
COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?
PALIN: I’ll try to find you some, and I’ll bring them to you.
This one, which you have surely heard over and over again:
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view.
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.
The Bush administration made countless false and exaggerated claims to go into Iraq, but they never claimed there was an imminent attack. And, Saddam Hussein was many ugly things, but he was not an ally to Islamic extremists.
And now this from Laura Bush, who is a pretty straight shooter, to her credit:
In an interview on Wednesday with CNN, the first lady, Laura Bush, was asked whether Ms. Palin had enough foreign policy experience. “Of course she doesn’t have that,” Mrs. Bush said.
“You know, that’s not been her role,” she said. “But I think she is a very quick study, and fortunately John McCain does have that sort of experience.”
If Sarah Palin, self-described hockey mom with real-life family crises just like the rest of us, had the national and international experience of Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice (neither of whom I am wild about), well, she’d be a force to be reckoned with. But Garrison Keillor is right: it is painfully obvious that Palin is out of her league. And while she deserves a certain amount of our respect as would any other working mother (or father) in this world, I was put off that she “didn’t blink” at the VP offer from John McCain. If she isn’t informed enough to know she isn’t informed enough to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it either takes some hubris, or else a lack of intelligence and critical thinking. Being a quick study does not bestow sound judgment.
I appreciate the fact that many Americans, especially women, like being able to relate to this candidate. She seems like many of us. But ask yourself, do you have what it takes to be president? Does your neighbor?
Inform Your Consent 
etcet said
I finally figured out how this all makes sense. In a world designed (and to an extent directed) by Disney, where we declare war on the rest of the world in order to protect and preserve “our American way of life” and pave the way for democracy/capitalism, where we know that we have achieved victory in Iraq because we’re building an amusement park in the Green Zone of Baghdad – the choice of a beauty contest winner to be a 72-year old, melanoma-ridden step away from being president must have a certain storyboard logic. Imagine Sarah Palin moving to Under the Sea as she “finds her son’s sneakers” at the White House before climbing into bed with all the innocence of Sleeping Beauty awaiting the kiss of her hero – only to be awakened by the 3 am phonecall we all dread.
It is painful to witness how easily Ms. Palin is flustered by the difficulties of her new position. And it is hard to imagine how she will be trained to speak intelligibly in public when the pressure is on. But we do have her to thank for 4 weeks of distraction from the troublesome realities of life, for bringing lipstick into national politics.