Sarah Palin ‎

15 Comments

Comment by White Lion on August 30, 2008 at 3:51pm

I think the shame with Sarah is her overall lack of experience.


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Comment by Richard Laurence Baron on August 30, 2008 at 4:10pm

Abdol, thank you for passing your post on to me. Your observations are insightful. The announcement of Governor Palin's candidacy has caused a significant stir here - and unless some bizarre/unfortunate event happens before November, it could turn the Democratic Party into the election's loser.

White Lightning: "overall lack of experience" applies to Senator Obama as well - why is that not a similar "shame?" Ta for the weekend...RLB.

Comment by AMANI SMITH on August 30, 2008 at 4:33pm

she isnt qualified...this is mcaine's staff being a little over zealous...trying to capitalize for the barrack/hillary situation<~~~that mcaine is an opertunist,,,lol...am i not one too...are you not?..still she isnt qualified

Comment by AMANI SMITH on August 30, 2008 at 4:40pm

hi Richard Laurence Baron...i dare not to act blind when obviou brilliance is infront my face...barrack obama is a brilliant man a man who can inspire and incite change ( off the record here!!! some of that change would be good for the likes of me its time to even the playin field a lil more) Palin is a politician with less experience than the regular garden variety governer or mayor..please..mcainne is definately a good man...but history and destiny is on the side of Barrack Obama i wish them both the best though

Comment by White Lion on August 30, 2008 at 5:58pm

To compare the woman from Alaska to Obama is laughable at best.

Obama has four years in the United States Senate, and subsequent to that eight years in the state senate.

Palin has a bachelors degree from the University of Idaho and served two years as governor of the 48th least populated state. Prior to that she was mayor of a town total population 6,700.

Obama has his undergraduate degree from Columbia University, his law degree from Harvard where he graduated with honours. He also served as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. In addition he taught contitutional law at the University of Chicago.

Palin's husband is a regular employee for the state of Alaska, Michelle Obama has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and her law degree from Harvard.

You can't be serious are you?

She's not even on the same planet as Obama.

Comment by Richard Laurence Baron on August 30, 2008 at 8:04pm

Dear WL: It'll all be settled in November. (Apologies for the mistaken identification.) All the best...RLB.

Comment by Mary Baum on August 30, 2008 at 8:07pm

Abdol, my guess is that McCain chose Palin because she is a sitting (i.e., currently in office) female Republican governor with hard-right political views. The only other Republican female governor at the moment, Jodi Rell, is the governor of Connecticut. And my guess is that she's too moderate for John McCain's conservative backers.

But if he had been open to women holding other offices, I can think of at least five he could have chosen who would be better qualified than Sarah Palin:

Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina has a long and distinguished history of service to the nation, including cabinet positions under two former presidents, and a stint at the head of the American Red Cross. In fact, she ran for the Republican nomination herself in 2000. And she is every bit as conservative as Governor Palin.

Another very conservative senator, Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas, has also been in office for twelve years that I know of.

Olympia Snowe, another distinguished Republican Senator, is, I'll grant, probably too moderate for McCain's right-wing base -- but she is qualified to run the country should the occasion arise.

Meg Whitman, the former head of eBay, has been running McCain's campaign. As one of the architects of the internet economy and one of the few dot-com CEOs to succeed both before and after the collapse of 2000-2004, she is certainly more qualified than Sarah Palin.

Carly Fiorina, another spokesperson for the McCain campaign, would also have been a more credible choice. Whatever we think of her decision to buy Compaq, she has to have had a distinguished career just to rise up into the top spot at Hewlett-Packard.

And I'm not even mentioning Condi Rice or Karen Hughes, whom McCain was never going to pick because he wants voters to think he might do things differently from the way the current administration is doing them. Condi Rice, had she not become a part of the Bush Adminstration, may actually have been an excellent stateswoman. And maybe in 12 or 16 years she can come back as a different kind of diplomat -- I'd like to believe that about her.

But Sarah Palin's got more problems than inexperience. (Though in an interview from a month or so ago that I read last night, there was a quote from her asking what vice-presidents do all day.)

She's under investigation for "improperly firing the state's public safety commissioner because he refused to remove Palin's ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper after his bitter divorce from Palin's sister. In addition to the legislature's investigation, the Alaska attorney general is also looking into the matter," according to tpm.com.

Then she replaced the guy they improperly fired with a police chief who had a letter of reprimand on his record for sexual harassment, and, yeah, Palin knew about it. But she said she thought the charge had been unverified. They fired this new guy two weeks later and gave him a $10,000 severance package, which is extremely generous for a job like that.

So our reactions to Sarah Palin getting this job are actually good news about the state of opportunity for women in this country, because there are so many other women he could have chosen. But instead he picked someone who fit an ideological and demographic profile without regard for who the person actually was.

In fact, the Bush administration has done something like this before. In 2005-6, and maybe before that, Justice Department put all of its hiring and firing in the hands of a young woman very much like Sarah Palin. Her name was Monica Goodling, and she's still in her 30s, and her job was to hire only far-right conservatives who were loyal to the Bush White House. Except, that's not how the Justice Department is supposed to work; its attorneys are supposed to be loyal to the Constitution and the law, not the president, and what she did is a felony.

Under any other administration, she wouldn't have been hired into such a powerful post at such an early age. If she somehow had found herself in that position anyway, her mandate would have been to hire the most qualified lawyers, not to throw their resumes out in favor of the most ideological ones. And if she had still somehow been caught discarding the resumes from Harvard and Yale and privileging the graduates of Liberty University, she would be going to prison.

But this administration isn't any of those, and her boss, Attorney General Mukasey, has already said that not every illegality is a crime. So Monica Goodling has lost her job, but she'll probably keep her freedom and even her law license.

And Sarah Palin will campaign as a vice-presidential candidate instead of getting deposed as part of her state's troopergate scandal.

But let's not be confused about what's really going on here.

Let's just make sure it stops as soon as it possibly can.

Comment by Jack Goldenberg on August 30, 2008 at 9:14pm

Abdol,

The harsh reaction to (I have to look up her name) Sarah Palin has less to do with her gender and more to do with not wanting her to be a heartbeat from the President.

Comment by Christina Daly on August 30, 2008 at 10:58pm

While it's grand to see a woman in the position of the 2nd VP selection in the USA, it's equally as worrisome to see Annie Oakley in this role! How can any woman worth her salt compare Ms. Palin with Hillary Rodman Clinton! It's a joke. The pathetic irony is that the unthinking moral majority in the heartland of the USA, just may vote her in (it certainly won't be a vote for McCain). If that happens, the World had best brace itself! We will see 100 year wars ad infinitim! It's an atrocious alternative to Barack Obama. Please vote for sanity! This pick is INSANE! Please, USA, WAKE UP -- As Dennis Kocinich warned us!

Comment by Abdol Rahim Mirza on August 31, 2008 at 9:22am

Please let us take it easy. A female reader in a website I not want to promote here had said, ‎Sarah has by now a baby of only two months, how can she take care about in the white ‎house? Meanwhile, all US media had fought Hilary from the first day of her announcement ‎to join the race, until they obliged her to withdraw. Is there in USA some people think that ‎the only job for women is cooking/ baby making. ‎

Before we ask about Sarah's experiences in foreign affair, we should compare the average ‎rate of men and women working in politics. Are women in USA missing opportunity, interest ‎or ability to indulge in such activities? ‎

In Germany and Europe, nobody asked a question about the previous experiences in foreign ‎affairs of Angela Merkel. Later on, she surprised the world with her good performances. Isn't ‎would be the case with Sarah? Please note that she is in the age that helps here to gain new ‎experiences and run it smoothly. Otherwise, is 80/90 is the proper age for a female to ‎candidate? ‎

Nancy Pelosi was a single voice, but now there are also Hilary & Sarah to remind US women ‎about missing mission. Just hope it may not go astray. ‎

Please read here what others talking about. ‎
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/uselections2008 ‎

Jack, is Suzanne Goldenberg 'some thing' related to you? ‎
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/aug/27/suzanne.goldenberg.hillary.clinton ‎

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