I know you are probably getting sick of my election-related snippets, but I can’t help myself. I am still seething over the fact that the Republican Party believes that upset Hillary voters will vote for the McCain-Palin ticket simply because Palin has a vagina. When will they learn that women are not all the same? The Republicans are also very good at picking women who are not qualified — I’m sure all of my educated readers will remember the Harriet Miers fiasco?*
Quite honestly, this is the first time that I have felt more qualified than most of the people running for the Presidency. As I pointed out previously (see here and here), the idea of American Exceptionalism is problematic. Our country is supposed to be exceptional, but it turns out that we are only exceptional when it comes to our willingness to select average — or even (to quote Paul Begala) “a high-functioning moron” — to run our government. Yes, we hate smart people.
If only I could live in the Utopian world of The West Wing.
Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks that Sarah Palin’s woeful lack of experience and intelligence is a danger to our government. Last week, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote that:
History has shown again and again that a vice president must be ready to assume command of the ship of state on a moment’s notice. But Ms. Palin has given no indication yet that she is capable of handling the monumental responsibilities of the presidency if she were called upon to do so.
In fact, the opposite is the case. We know that there are some parts of Alaska from which, if the day is clear and your eyesight is good, you can actually see Russia. But the infantile repetition of this bit of trivia as some kind of foreign policy bona fide for a vice presidential candidate should give us pause.
I agree, Bob. So do the ~154,000 members of the Facebook group named “I Have More Foreign Policy Experience Than Sarah Palin.” Granted, I am not a world traveler like TQE. I haven’t been to South Africa like CQ. I have, however, been to Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. I will be jetting off to Peru in March and I have my sights on a trip to Iceland and Ireland in the near future (if only I can find the time). I have been to Alaska, although you can’t see Russia from my aunt’s front yard. I’ve even been to Key West, where a landmark informed me that I was only 90 miles away from Cuba.
But it’s really not my travels that make me more qualified than Sarah Palin.
No, it’s the fact that I actually have a sense of intellectual curiousity about the world around me. Even though I haven’t travelled to the middle east, I *have* actually read about the problems facing women in these areas. Even though I haven’t been to China, I *have* done a great deal of research about that country’s environmental problems and its human rights issues.
And I was intellectually curious before I ever earned my Ph.D.
What scares me most is the number of people who don’t see that Palin is unqualified to be more than a small town mayor (No, I really can’t say she’s qualified to run Alaska, even though she knows how to kill a moose). I’ve had people tell me that they *love* Palin because of her stance on social issues. They *love* Palin because she’s cute and young, a maverick who fights government corruption (uh, Trooper-gate anyone?). They *love* Palin even though she talked to her local liberal about banning books, has cut funds for special needs individuals and pregnant teenagers, and has flip-flopped on the Bridge to Nowhere.
How can they be so delusional? Herbert writes:
The alarm bells should be clanging and warning lights flashing. You wouldn’t put an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner. The potential for catastrophe is far, far greater with an unqualified president.
And yet, for many people, there are no alarm bells! Seriously? I can envision a scenario straight out of Waking Ned Devine. If you’ve never seen this movie, you should. You see, poor ol’ Ned wins the lottery … and promptly dies of a heart attack. Now think about McCain.
I’ll let you make the connection …
* I hate to say it, but Reagan was not prone to this problem. Sandra Day O’Connor was an excellent member of the Supremes. To try to replace her with an unqualified woman was just a slap in the face to her legacy.
