The Independent View

“Obvi­ously, she’s– a fine – mother and – a up-​and-​coming pub­lic ser­vant.”—Barack Obama on Palin in 60 Min­utes inter­view.

Wow, Obama, is that sar­casm or an under­stated com­pli­ment?! It fits with his “you’re like­able enough” com­ment to Clin­ton back in Jan­u­ary. And now Palin, let’s see:

• A fine mother. Yes, she is active and involved mother of five. She self-​describes her­self as a “hockey mom”. Her old­est son is enlisted in the Army as an infantry­man and is slated for duty in Iraq while her youngest is a down syndrome-​challenge infant.
• Up-​and-​coming pub­lic ser­vant. Oh, yes. Soon to be next vice-​president of the United States. But, wait, not so “up-​and-​coming” after all as she is already cur­rently the sit­ting gov­er­nor of the largest state in the U.S. and has more exec­u­tive and man­age­ment expe­ri­ence than Obama (18 months of cam­paign­ing) with six years as mayor and two years as gov­er­nor (See AP time­line). She even has a solid record as a long-​time pub­lic ser­vant and cor­rup­tion crusader.

Obama is his­tory. He had his 15-​minutes — his celebrity world tour, his wannabe pres­i­den­tial seal, his ador­ing cult fol­low­ing, and his col­i­seum coro­na­tion. Even as McCain has ham­mered him in recent weeks with sim­ple, direct ads high­light­ing Obama’s char­ac­ter and expe­ri­ence defi­cien­cies, this did noth­ing to pre­pare Obama for what was next. On Thurs­day Obama com­pleted his coup upon the hap­less Demo­c­ra­tic Party and held court at Invesco Field for his pre­ten­tious coro­na­tion among the glee­ful cheers of his cult and media fol­low­ing. McCain gra­ciously con­grat­u­lated him, then, the next day, picked Palin who is a sit­ting gov­er­nor with years of real expe­ri­ence. Inex­pe­ri­enced wannabe Obama now instantly runs in the shadow of McCain and Palin — off the front page in a heart­beat, left to nit­pick about his remem­bered, but ques­tion­able, com­mu­nity ser­vice being com­pa­ra­ble to the increas­ingly respon­si­ble expe­ri­ences that Palin, even as VP can­di­date, brings to the table. Sorry, no new­bie Sen­a­tor with no real man­age­ment expe­ri­ence beyond man­ag­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign (Obama’s own words) can com­pare with a sit­ting gov­er­nor, for­mer corruption-​fighting board mem­ber, for­mer mayor, and more.

Obama is out­classed in so many ways, even evi­dent in his campaign’s ini­tial and very ungra­cious response to Palin which can only remind all of us Hillary Clin­ton sup­port­ers of just how dis­mis­sive and rude he was to Clin­ton and other women dur­ing the campaign.

“Today, John McCain put the for­mer mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence a heart­beat away from the pres­i­dency. Gov­er­nor Palin shares John McCain’s com­mit­ment to over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and con­tin­u­ing George Bush’s failed eco­nomic poli­cies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.” — Bill Bur­ton speak­ing for Obama.

Media fol­lowed suit. Ron Fournier at AP dis­mis­sively described her as “a sub­ur­ban mother and PTA mem­ber”, “younger than Obama”, and “less expe­ri­enced.” And Obama sup­port­ing blogs were no dif­fer­ent. With ridicu­lous, but pre­dictable, prose, Greg Sar­gent at Talk­ing­PointsMemo, for exam­ple, jumped for­ward par­rot­ing the ungra­cious and bla­tantly false Obama cam­paign crit­i­cism of Palin. Sar­gent con­tin­ued, on Fri­day, TalkingPointsMemo’s trend to throw truth and integrity aside to pro­mote lies and wish­ful think­ing to please its rabid Obama cult fol­low­ing by repeat­ing Obama’s ini­tial state­ment, then adding his own:

“By any rea­son­able mea­sure, the choice of some­one as back-​up commander-​in-​chief who has two years of expe­ri­ence run­ning a small– pop­u­la­tion state should ren­der McCain’s pri­mary cam­paign argu­ment — that Obama’s alleged lack of commander-​in-​chief readi­ness is too risky in a dan­ger­ous world — not just moot, but a run­ning joke among polit­i­cal reporters and pun­dits alike.” — Greg Sar­gent for TalkingPointsMemo.

Politico fol­lows a sim­i­lar theme in their rush to dis­miss Palin as a cred­i­ble choice. For exam­ple, Jim Van­der­hei and John Har­ris write in 6 things the Palin pick says about McCain, that “McCain has made a mock­ery out of his campaign’s long­time con­tention that Barack Obama is too dan­ger­ously inex­pe­ri­enced to be com­man­der in chief.”

Too dan­ger­ously inex­pe­ri­enced to be commander-​in-​chief?! If Palin, as can­di­date for prospec­tive vice-​president can­di­date, and not can­di­date for pres­i­dent, is too inex­pe­ri­enced, then what of Obama who has even less expe­ri­ence?! Consider:

• Obama crit­i­cizes Palin as “…for­mer mayor of a town of 9,000…” Oops, he for­got to men­tion Palin’s cur­rent posi­tion as gov­er­nor of the largest state in the United States. That’s okay, Alaska prob­a­bly isn’t on Obama’s list of more than 57 states. Also, chose to ignore Palin’s cor­rup­tion fight­ing expe­ri­ence that might be con­trasted with Obama’s ties to cor­rup­tion, her role as head of the Alaska National Guard with over 1,000 sol­diers in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan (more than most of Bush’s inter­na­tional allies) while Obama instead cavorted for 20-​years with home-​grown ter­ror­ist William Ayers, and yes, her role as mayor while Obama instead claims com­mu­nity ser­vice. Okay, Obama did serve in the Illi­nois Sen­ate as a lackey and bill run­ner for Emil Jones for sev­eral years longer than Palin’s four untar­nished years on city coun­cil. But Obama, when not doing Jones bid­ding, cast 130 present votes where he refused to make a deci­sion and 6 votes he sub­se­quently claimed were in error. Plus, in a brief tan­gent into ‘act­ing on your beliefs’, Obama voted against the sur­viv­ing life of an aborted child while Palin in a clear act of per­sonal char­ac­ter and courage chose to respect respect life, how­ever chal­lenged it might be.
• Obama dis­misses Palin for …zero for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence… Try that again! First, she is a sit­ting gov­er­nor and has inter­na­tional role and respon­si­bil­ity for her state (which she is ful­fill­ing unlike Obama’s fail­ure in Sen­ate as sub­com­mit­tee chair). Sec­ond, as gov­er­nor, and already noted, she is head of the Alaska National Guard. While Palin may not have a praised 2004 con­ven­tion speech or a recent celebrity world tour, she has vis­ited U.S. sol­diers in war zones at least as many times as Obama. She also did not shy away from vis­it­ing injured sol­diers in Ger­many to instead to go work out at a gym.

“..heart­beat away from the pres­i­dency…” Yes, Palin is to be vice-​president as backup for McCain. Obama, though, is pre­sented as pres­i­dent. Obama can only be com­pared to McCain. That is, unless he’d pre­fer the VP slot. But, even set­ting aside this obvi­ous flaw, McCain, Palin, and Biden each have more for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence than Obama.

Patri­o­tism. Depends on how you define it. But con­sider a few items:

• McCain. Cer­ti­fied war hero. He has two kids either now in the mil­i­tary or head­ing into ser­vice shortly. Oth­ers may have already served.
• Obama. No mil­i­tary ser­vice. Besides, his lengthy drug use would likely have dis­qual­i­fied him from enlistment.
• Biden. No mil­i­tary ser­vice. received defer­ment for asthma. Has son in mil­i­tary as lawyer.
• Palin. Lim­ited. As sit­ting gov­er­nor she leads her state’s national guard. She has solid track record sup­port­ing national guard and vis­it­ing troops on deploy­ment in the Mid­dle East and in hos­pi­tals recov­er­ing from injuries. She also has a son serv­ing in the Army as enlisted infantry pend­ing deploy­ment to Iraq.

Fur­ther, con­sider — in stark com­par­i­son to McCain, Biden, and Palin — Obama has a 20 year per­sonal, pro­fes­sional, and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship with domes­tic ter­ror­ist William Ayers of the Weather Underground.

His­tory. Each of the four can­di­dates got to where they are today be some­what dif­fer­ent means:

• McCain got his slot at the Naval Acad­emy based on his family’s past atten­dees, he’s made his career based on his own hero­ism and direct action.
• Obama built his career on the shoul­ders of Rezko, Jones, Ayers, and oth­ers. He never did any­thing for him­self, nor has any coura­geous his­tory to share or accom­plish­ments to fac­tu­ally claim.
• Biden built his own career as a life­long leg­is­la­tor and is well-​known for his daily com­mute home to Delaware to be with his family.
• Palin is self-​made. She started in local pol­i­tics, pro­gressed to state pol­i­tics as a cru­sader against cor­rup­tion, and then, in 2006, to become the gov­er­nor of Alaska. She did not get there based on fam­ily or marriage.

Two other top­ics of imme­di­ate issue: Roe v. Wade and “Big Oil”.

Roe v. Wade. The issue of when life begins, of when and if abor­tions are or should be a choice is a per­sonal fam­ily mat­ter. It is polit­i­cal inso­far as the state and fed­eral gov­ern­ment has a role in decid­ing who, when, how, and, pos­si­bly, why they should be allowed. Each of the four can­di­dates have made clear state­ments and
actions:

• McCain: Life begins at conception.
• Obama: Voted against against pro­tect­ing the sur­viv­ing life of an aborted child and when asked about when life begins demurred that this was above his pay grade.
• Biden: Sup­ports a women’s choice of abor­tion but he has opposed fed­eral fund­ing for them and has voted against late-​term abortions.
• Palin: She has made her per­sonal choice, not by words, but by actions. She and her hus­band chose to respect life, how­ever chal­lenged it might be.

Thus, regard­ing life and abor­tion, McCain and Palin are clear in actions and words, Biden draws a clear line to limit his sup­port, and Obama says no to life, even once born. One-​issue vot­ers may be pleased with the choice between McCain and Obama but this misses the big­ger pic­ture between the two.

Big Oil. McCain sup­ports an all-​of-​the-​above approach to meet­ing our nation’s energy needs. He is not a mem­ber of Bush and Cheney’s cir­cle of oil friends and has his own approach. He is also an advo­cate of con­ser­va­tion and calls for action against global warm­ing. Obama asks peo­ple to increase their car’s tire pres­sure and is against mean­ing­ful action to help address our energy needs. His call for energy inde­pen­dence in 10 years is mean­ing­less pos­tur­ing. Palin has sur­pris­ing ties to Big Oil as a cru­sader against cor­rup­tion by oil com­pa­nies even while her hus­band is an employee in the indus­try. She sup­port energy resource development.

Bot­tom line is that Obama and his cult and media fol­low­ing are des­per­ate to dis­credit and dis­miss Palin much as they did Clin­ton. They are espe­cially galled at any com­par­i­son that might put Obama at the bot­tom among the four can­di­dates, much less add reminder to his short­com­ings vis-​à-​vis Clin­ton and his atti­tudes and actions against her.

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