Very long-time reader - we have corresponded a couple times - a while back.
I have to say - this "unready" beatup on Palin is getting more irksome by the minute.
Not
scrutiny per se. You want this job, you get under the microscope. That's just the way it is.
Palin has a short resume in high office. Really: less than two years as governor, and a stint running the Oil and Gas Commission, if you want to stretch a point. Only a Kool-Aid drinker would argue the point that you'd really like to see her with another term or two under her belt, or perhaps a federal office as well.
So here we got Peter Scoblic at
The New Republic digging his knife in on this point:
Quote:
Could Sarah Palin conceivably manage this task? Her tenure as a small-town mayor and Alaska governor has given her no foreign policy experience whatsoever. True, Obama has little foreign policy experience either, as McCain and others have pointed out again and again. But during his time in national office he has demonstrated a clear commitment to the most pressing issues in American foreign policy. Take nuclear proliferation. Early in his tenure on the Foreign Relations Committee, Obama joined Richard Lugar's efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. Obama's first trip abroad as senator was to Russia and Ukraine to learn more about those efforts firsthand. In 2007, he cosponsored legislation with Senator Chuck Hagel calling for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty. And he was the first major presidential candidate to embrace the steps laid out in 2007 by Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger through which the United States would fight nuclear terrorism, reinvigorate the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.
Yeah, but: I think this only underlines just how scanty Obama's own experience is. "Cosponsored legislation." Really: knock me over with a feather. People can knock righties all they want for tallying up "present votes" but it's awfully hard to paint the little time Obama has been in the Senate as a whirlwind of tangible activity. Certainly relative to any other Class of 2004 Senator.
So what does Obama have that Palin doesn't? Keep up with Scoblic:
Quote:
Perhaps more important than the experience they embodied, these efforts demonstrate that Obama has a worldview.
Now we're getting somewhere: Obama has spent appreciable time having to
think about a lot of these issues in a way which she has not. He's spent over a year running for president, which she has not. That's not nothin'. But maybe it only goes to build his experience in running
for office, not actually
running it.
But a lot of people (naturally on the Left) are willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, because he has demonstrated what he does have, which is remarkable intelligence and not inconsiderable thoughtfulness. He bodes well to be a quick study. And he'll need all that given how little experience he does have. Palin is unknown to us. She might well be incredibly intelligent and thoughtful, and maybe she reads
Foreigh Affairs for edification every night while she's feeding Trig. But she'll have to show it.
But I do wonder how much of a double standard is in play here. You look at Obama and he looks presidential. Or maybe it's that "law professor" sounds just more respectable, or more pertinent, than "mayor" or "TV journalist." As a lawyer in training, of course, I try not to hold the former against Obama, since he seems like a nice guy.
But really, I'm tired of the mounting "unprepared" narrative building on Palin. Maybe she
is out of her depth. But if we were prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt almost right out of the gate despite his scanty resume (which I was and am), we ought to be prepared to do the same for Palin - if she can show up and do well in class.
Keep up the good work.
