Why not Sarah Palin

March 7, 2010

Since it’s never too early to start a presidential race, let’s get
busy on the 2012 campaign before the 2010 mid-term elections overcome
us.
Sarah Palin is everywhere. She speaks at conservative gatherings, she
speaks to Tea Party gatherings. She’s on “Oprah” and Jay Leno. She’s
about to race to Arizona to campaign for John McCain’s senatorial
re-election campaign, an irony since McCain is suddenly anathema to
Palin’s natural base. She has her own commentary spot on
Fox television. Her book, “Going Rogue”, was a best seller before
hitting the discount bins. She shows up on everybody’s list of likely
2012 candidates though she doesn’t win the straw polls at conservative
conventions. She’s omnipresent.
She is charismatic, attractive, bold and aggressive. At 47 she is
still very young by national political standards.
So, why not Sarah Palin?
Because until the 2008 presidential campaign she didn’t know why there
was a North and a South Korea. Nor did she know why we fought a war
there. Because she has never disavowed her husband’s seven-year
membership in an organization that advocated Alaska seceding from the
United States. Because she believed Saddam Hussein was in league with
al Qaida. Because she gives aid and comfort to both the “birthers”
(those, who despite concrete evidence to the contrary, believe
President Obama is not a citizen of this country) and the “truthers”
(those who still believe 9/11 was a plot hatched and carried out by
the United States government).
Because she once famously claimed she read “all the papers” but
couldn’t name even one, including her hometown Wasilla, Alaska, paper.
Because she appears to believe the federal government is a giant cabal
engaged in an endless conspiracy against “real
Americans”. Because she learns by rote but is completely absent of
any depth of understanding.
Because she is either unwilling or unable to tell us how she would
reduce the annual deficits and national debt. Because she has no
workable position on illegal immigration. Because she has not told us
how she would reform the medical/industrial complex or start to bring
healthcare costs under control. Because she has no position on ending
the wars in the Middle East nor has she shared her vision of how to
defeat global terrorism. Because she has no position on the future of
Israel nor do we know how she intends to interact with the rest of the
world. In fact, she’s not yet articulated an actual position on any
issue other than disliking and demeaning anything any Democrat has
ever proposed.
Because when a delusional anti-IRS
maniac flew his airplane into a federal building in Austin, Texas,
murdering a 68-year-old man working his last year before retirement, a
man who had honorably served two tours in Vietnam, she said nothing to
her loathsome supporters who sympathized with the murderer.
Because she does not understand that stem cell research is not
connected to abortions or that the embryonic collection of cells she
so wants to protect from research will simply be thrown away, anyway.
Because she wants to teach children creationism in our schools instead
of in our churches. Because she quit as governor of Alaska before the
job and her commitment to the people she represented were fulfilled.
Because she keeps talking about “returning to Constitutional
government” without ever telling us what that means or even if she has
any understanding or knowledge of the Founders or the Constitution.
Because telling us she would reduce the size of government and cut
taxes is meaningless until she tells us how she’s going to accomplish
either or both.
Sarah Palin is quite likely an honorable, decent human being. She was,
by all accounts, a pretty good mayor of a city of 8,000 people. It’s a
safe bet it would be great fun to sit down and enjoy a nice moose
steak, which I’m reliably told is quite delicious, and a cold beer
with her. It would be interesting to find out what she now thinks
about her 2008 campaign efforts and to get some sense of who she is
and what she believes once the cameras are turned off and the
microphones put away.
Unfortunately, Sarah Palin has become an odd sort of amalgam, a
celebritician who is more celebrity than politician. There’s nothing
wrong with that as long as you’re peddling books or concentrating on
the talk show circuit. But it doesn’t help develop policy or expand a
depth of knowledge or foster understanding of underlying issues that
must be solved.
It can be legitimately argued that we need fresh faces with fresh
ideas, that Washington is filled with musty, self-serving twits of
both political parties slowly driving us off a cliff. Sarah Palin was
a very fresh face in 2008 but there’s no evidence yet she has fresh
ideas. Or any workable ideas at all. That’s why not Sarah Palin.