From a recent installment of the Bill Moyers Journal, we finally get some serious questions into why there are no serious questions about our candidates. Here’s Bill Moyers’ intro to “Campaign Media Analysis: Brooke Gladstone and Les Payne“: Continue reading
What do McCain, Palin, and Obama have in common? They are all linked through the Arab language. Barack Hussein Obama isn’t the only one with an affinity for Arabic. Both McCain’s father and grandfather were Navy Admirals, and as we all know, the word “admiral” in English is derived from the Arabic “Amir al bahar” meaning “the prince of the sea”.
And guess what small town U-S-A town means “affinity” in Arabic? You got it, Wasilla. I wonder if Fox News will now start referring to Palin’s tiny mayoral caliphate as having an affinity with the Arab world each and every time they allude to her extensive down-home qualifications and values, just as they do with Barack Hussein.
Is it all so absurd that we need Matt Damon to say the obvious? Why have we come to this?
Two of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street have just taken fatal beatings — much of this with the help of Senator Phil Gramm’s deregulation of the banking industry, with John McCain’s full support. Yet, no one is paying attention to the obvious. Yes, you can read what the Washington Post or the New York Times says about it, but serious journalism is now considered somehow untrustworthy.
Thanks to my friend, Nadia, for sending me the video.
Is there any precedent out there, other than a Republican’s wedding night (Bristol not included) where a total lack of relevant experience is celebrated as a virtue? Why is this election turning into a made-for-TV movie? What is so wrong with this picture? Shouldn’t we all be disturbed?
Today, the New York Times wrote an editorial, “Gov. Palin’s Worldview” that very nicely echos what I have saying all along, including my specific concerns after Palin’s interview with NBC News. I think my friend, Jens, was right when he said that her interview skills wouldn’t last her three minutes in the Donald’s board room. In any event, I definitely recommend that you check out the Times editorial (which I am posting below). Remember that the New York Times endorsed both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the primaries, in part on the grounds of experience.
If you happen to disagree with the editorial, I’d love to hear why. And don’t tell me that the press is elitist or that Obama is inexperienced. Both of those may be true, but neither make Palin remotely qualified.
Finally, we get to hear Governor Palin in an interview — even though that interview is being released in bits and pieces over the next few days. Palin showed a degree of confidence and almost a lack of humility in her ability to step in as president. She also reminded me of a person trying to use vocabulary above their ability and ends up sounding simply and silly — like a guy at the gym trying to impress the girls by lifting weights that are too heavy for him. Nevertheless, I will give her credit for trying and for a rookie effort. But, I still believe that it is a very, very sad day in America when a potential acting president must be trained, like an actor learning her lines, on the eve of elections (remind anyone of Bush?).
In any event, one of my favorite answers that Sarah Palin gave — after she explained her extensive pre-2006 international travels (before she had a passport) to Mexico and Canada, was her view on why her lack of exposure to foreign experience somehow qualified her above others:
. . . Charlie, again, we’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state … these last couple of weeks … it has been overwhelming to me that confirmation of the message that Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of that closed door, good old boy network that has been the Washington elite.
Did she just diss John McCain with his decades in the Washington establishment and meetings with heads of states? Does she mean that the country is sick and tired of dealing with politicians like John McCain? Is she more qualified than John McCain?
When asked, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?” she gave a very literal answer, “They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” Yes, very true. But I don’t think that Gibson meant “sight” — as in “what can you see” — by “insight”. So yes, she can see Russia from an island in Alaska, but I wonder if she knows that Moscow is roughly the same distance from Anchorage that it is from Washington, DC (give or take a few hundred miles).
Filed under Essays
As I have already written, the McCain campaign is doing its best to keep Palin (the “barracuda”) away from the media (the “piranhas”). With just five weeks left, the only ethical and respectful thing to do is to let us hear, in her own words, Palin answer some basic questions about the record she is so proudly hailing and the issues. I don’t really care about her family life, but I would like to know about her policies, worldview, and intelligence. And if she is a hockey mom and lipsticked pit bull, I would like to know what those are and how they are relevant to the presidency.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve learned a lot of about Barack Obama. Some things that have been written about him and his family have been both baseless and offensive, but there were also plenty of other questions about his trajectory and abilities that needed to be delved into. You may believe in the “change you can believe in” or not. You may not like his politics or think that his experience is adequate for the presidency, but at least now you have something to base your opinion on. You have a footing.
The same goes for John McCain who has been in the Congress in Washington, DC since the early 1980s, or Joe Biden who also has a long Congressional record. They have debated, appeared dozens of times in front of the “piranhas” in the media, and have shown themselves to the electorate. I think we deserve equal access to Sarah Palin. (Not even letting the press chat with Palin in flight contrasts heavily with this year’s nonstop images of the various other candidates and journalists freely mingling in air or McCain’s 2000 “Straight Talk Express”). I want to have an opinion of her that is based on more than just how she delivers one pre-fab speech or rumors about her Christian sharia-ism. The McCain camp can cry about the media frenzy around Palin, but didn’t they fully expect the frenzy after nominating the country’s most unknown governor for the vice-presidency?
I am not alone in begging for this election to be more than an Oscar performance about who can best memorize their lines or play a role. Today there were various articles questioning Palin’s seclusion and demanding transparency. The Chicago Tribune published an editorial, “Take the Wraps of Palin” asking for precisely that, while the Washington Post wrote “When Lies Become Truths“. The Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. has written two back to back articles “Does the Truth Matter Anymore” and”Unready to Lead” and Tim Rutton in the Los Angeles Times came out with “The McCain Campaign is insisting on deference in the questioning of the vice presidential candidate“.
But my personal favorite was Maureen Dowd’s “My Fair Veep” where she compares Palin’s sequestered training to Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady:
For the first time in American history, we have a “My Fair Lady” moment, as teams of experts bustle around the most famous woman in politics, intensely coaching her for her big moment at the ball — her first unscripted interview here this week with ABC News’s Charlie Gibson.
If you were Charles Gibson, what questions would you have for Governor Palin? For the sake of the country, I hope Gibson asks better questions than the ones he asked Obama in the Democratic primary debate with Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia earlier this year. I don’t want to hear about American flag pins or the sex lives of anybody’s children. I just want to know that Palin is capable of stepping in as acting president and that the country where I was born and raised and the world in which I live will not be run by cynics and Carl Rovian spin doctors, even if my candidate does not win. Is that too much to ask?
At the GOP Convention, we heard plenty about the hero John McCain, especially about his courage. Everytime someone praised his courage, I wondered what courage had to do with a modern presidency. I mean, is the presidency like a Hollywood movie — say Air Force One — where John McCain may be in mid air when his presidential 747 is taken over by terrorists and he, in true Harrison Ford style, subdues the bad guys and saves the day? Or maybe they want a Jack Bauer president, or a president, bar knuckled, on the front line and muddied in the trenches.
Maybe the heroism they are talking about is John McCain’s special breed of maverick heroism. The type where you don’t choose the running mate you really want (ie, Senator Lieberman), but rather the one who Carl Rove and Rush Limbaugh want. Or the courage to change all of your positions and cave into the extreme wing of your party’s demands, or to vote 90% of the time with your team’s president.
It’s Sunday and we’re in election season, that means it’s the day where the most important candidates and their surrogates appear on the political talk shows and answer tough questions about their policies and positions. John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have spent the past year appearing on these programs so that the American people can develop an informed basis from which to judge them. For example, today Joe Biden is appearing on Meet the Press (his 42nd ever appearance on the show), Barack Obama on This Week, and John McCain on Face the Nation. Sarah Palin is not appearing on any of these shows. With just under two months until the general elections, Palin has yet to give an important interview to the press or participate in a serious debate. Looks like today everybody is ready for questions except for Palin.
After more than a year of this exhaustive get-to-know the candidates election season (where, for example, Obama has already participated in 20 televised debates), the American people should be treated with respect and be allowed to meet Sarah Palin, a person who could foreseeably become the acting President of the United States. You’d think that John McCain would have the courage to let his vice presidential choice meet the press and the voting public.
Hiding isn’t very brave.
UPDATE: McCain/Palin is not scared, but Palin will not do interviews until the press makes the pitbull hockey mom feel more comfortable: Continue reading
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more cynical (say than Palin), McCain gives an even more shockingly cynical speech. His plea for bipartianship is marked by portraying Democrats as elitists (what Paul Krugman calls McCain’s “Resentment Strategy“). Next he vows to fight the elitists in Washington who are running the show, but here he forgets to mention that it is McCain himself and his Republican clan who are and have been running the show for the last eigh years in the presidency and the last twelve in Congress.
Then McCain defines himself as a maverick who believes in country before party, but this comes after he has just negotiated the official GOP platform where he has yielded on almost every position dear to him, thus giving in to his party’s most vested interests.
After telling us how much of a hero he was, still is, and how he, and no other person in the country, will fight for the country that saved him, he does not believe himself to be “blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.” Then what was the entire speech about, John?
Finally, our hero cries out, “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.” Did he hear Rudy’s or Palin’s speeches? As the New York Times properly asks today in its editorial,
Americans have a right to ask which John McCain would be president. We hope Mr. McCain starts to answer that by halting the attacks on Mr. Obama’s patriotism and beginning a serious, civil debate.
Don’t count on it.
Grave Error 