Edification
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The only possible way the critics could be in the right is if the writer really believes Palin is unfit to serve. I have a hard time believing that a bad interview demonstrates that. ~Hunter Baker
How about a mediocre debate performance and a substance-free convention speech? These are the other main things that have led her fans to deem her worthy of high executive office, and in the end they demonstrate very little. Perhaps an unremarkable, thin governing record might tip the scales in favor of the skeptics. Hard as it may be for him to believe, the critics who have declared her to be unfit really do believe it. I certainly do. I assume that others who have said so aren’t just saying something provocative just to say it. If the tables were turned and we were talking about Kathleen Sebelius (who might be more qualified in certain respects), not only would there be no controversy about this but I suspect most conservatives would be trying to outdo one another in their efforts to prove just how unfit for such an office she was. The people who would have regarded Tim Kaine as an absurd choice will now lecture us on the value of Palin’s qualifications. For my part, I have made no secret that I welcome McCain’s defeat, so you might say that I am so biased against the ticket that you should ignore what I say, but it seems clear to me that the ever-declining standards that conservatives have set for what makes a candidate acceptable to them and the declining quality of the political leadership they have received are very closely related.
Baker appeals to edification, as if the endless treacle about her family and spunkiness routinely offered up in Palin’s defense could edify anyone. Have any of the paeans and gushing, embarrassing panegyrics to the virtue of Gov. Palin contributed anything worthwhile? If you think so, I suppose that’s nice for you. Could we all acknowledge that the dispute between her critics and her loyalists is an honest disagreement about the appropriate criteria for judging the merits of candidates? Probably not, since most pro-Palin arguments have largely appealed to being a team player and seem to follow the lousy instincts of mass politics that demand conformity and silence.
I happen to find her biography, stock “populist” appeals, cultural cues and irrepressible cheer to be poor reasons to become enraptured by her, while others seem to place great store by these things. Some people go further and claim that she has a record of accomplishment that bears scrutiny, but I think it is fair to say that there isn’t much there. That her defenders largely avoid talking about her thin record says something about the weakness of their case. It seems a fairly reasonable objection that supporting candidates based on these things has turned out quite poorly during the Bush years, and a little more emphasis on expertise and preparedness might be in order. She manifestly has less of both than any major party VP nominee in memory, perhaps ever, and her defenders need to account for why this is not a problem. That, however, is apparently unedifying and adds nothing to public discourse. So, three cheers for moose hunting, not blinking and winking! I feel more edified already.
Are there conservatives who are going to argue her record is less than admirable? I don’t think it can be done.
Think about it a bit more. Last I checked, raising taxes and increasing spending were not considered admirable on the right. Leaving her hometown servicing a large amount of debt to build a little-used facility doesn’t seem admirable to me, but it is a fine, old Republican tradition.
Filed under: politics
“the ever-declining standards that conservatives have set for what makes a candidate acceptable to them and the declining quality of the political leadership they have received are very closely related”
LASER BEAM
Also, this is what happens when you use fake anti-elitism as a central tenet of your politics for long enough that you and your base actually start to believe in its implications: you get politicians who are utterly unexceptional and severely underqualified.
[...] Daniel Larison has been chronicling her nonsense on this on an almost daily basis, so I will just leave you with a quote from him about the Palin choice: [...]
It appears that conservative talking heads are *really* attracted to Palin, gushing about her winking and of course, her smile…
Rich Lowry talks about the “starbursts” that flew around his living room when Palin winked.
Brit Hume says that she is “physically attractive.”
And this is the same group that has cried SEXISM coming from the media…don’t suppose the campaign will call these guys out, will they? What hypocrites.
I have a hard time believing that a bad interview demonstrates that. ~Hunter Baker
How about a mediocre debate performance and a substance-free convention speech?
I think that’s putting it backwards. None of that demonstrates that she’s unfit to serve, but neither does it demonstrate that she is fit: there’s no presumption of fitness which bad performances rebut. Rather, there should be a requirement that candidates clearly possess experience and articulate positions in such a way as to demonstrate competence and capacity adequate to the task. Palin’s experience is weak and her demonstrations in the campaign have not given any confidence that she can move up to new levels of complexity and responsibility.
Yes, that’s right. The burden is on her to show that she is ready.
How is it that the Palinites find that it is the skeptics who bear the burden of proof in questioning her fitness to serve? As they, and she, make the extraordinary claim that she is qualified then they should provide the evidence that bears this out. Instead, to a depressing decree they seem to claim that her qualifications are founded largely on her “non-elitisim” as though mediocrity were a suspect class that deserved it’s turn at the table.
It’s rather irrelevant, of course, since from a political point of view her elevation to the national stage has demonstrated that, by comparison, Senator Obama sounds like Marcus Aurelius and has thereby innoculated him against the inexperience argument
The Palin rapture is the inevitable endpoint of distilling the desirability of a presidential nominee down to whether or not they’re the kind of guy(gal) you could have a beer with. I have many good friends with whom I love to share a pint or two, but most of those lunkheads can barely manage to remember to chip-in the weekly ante for our football pool. Why in the world should our chief executive also be required to be our chief chum? Hofstadter nailed it on the pervasive anti-intelectualism in America – certainly one of the only countries in the world where the capability of one of the 2004 presidential candidates to converse in a language other than English was held against him.
This beatification of bumpkiness is one of the reasons I so fervently desire McCain and Palin to suffer an ignoble defeat – although there is a very good chance that an Obama presidency will be bad for the country, a Palin-credited McCain win would (amongst other awful things) further ensconce this dangerous Fargo Knows Best paen to rubedom that has helped lead us to where we are today.
Sir:
History has set the bar for serving as President or Vice-President so low that a any argument that any particular candidacy is beyond the pale almost certainly indicates some sort of personal animus by the accuser.
Idiot after idiot has paraded through the Office, and another idiot will do so after the fall election. Were Palin to follow suit, the matter would be wholly unremarkable save for her sex — succeeding Mrs. Wilson and Clinton (both idiots) as only the third female President.
Sincerely,
Lord Peter
Off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen women executives who would be more capable of ascending to such an office, and I imagine that I would have more problems with their policy views than I do with Palin. Then again, they have policy views that go beyond “feeding hungry markets.” If I have any animus against Palin, it is that she works for McCain and adopts his terrible views. Even by the low standards of the latter half of the twentieth century, this is a low point. I’m not sure why this is so hard for some people to accept.
“History has set the bar for serving as President or Vice-President so low that a any argument that any particular candidacy is beyond the pale almost certainly indicates some sort of personal animus by the accuser.”
I’m sure Sarah Palin would be overjoyed to know that she’s being defended on the grounds that our public life is so degraded, and the executive branch is such a joke, that even Sarah Palin doesn’t represent a decline in standards.
I might agree with that if we’re just discussing the moral caliber of our presidents and vice presidents, or the policies they’ve espoused. But we’re not–we’re discussing whether she’s demonstrated competence and the mental capacity to tackle difficult problems. By that standard, even if we acknowledge that these men may not have been good vice presidents or good people, she falls well short of the standard set by Vice Presidents Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey, Ford, Mondale, Bush, Gore and Cheney (to name the post-war examples that come immediately to mind).
I guess the retort could be, “Look where those guys got us!” Fair enough. But I’d rather strive to do better, instead of engaging in cheap nihilism and assuming that we might as well select our leaders at random since they’ll inevitably just screw us over regardless.
I think that Hunter Baker misses the point. It is not that Palin has demonstrated her unfitness to serve, but that she has not yet demonstrated her fitness. If you want to be VP, the burden of proof ought to be on you.