His local experience is much greater than hers, especially when you compare Hyde Park to Bumfuck, Alaska. He's actually traveled abroad, she's just looked out her back yard. While he wasn't a senator for long, he did a lot of stuff outside of the congressional senate.
But what bugs me the most about this whole thing is if obama is not experienced enough based on what republicans say there is absolutely no way she has enough experience. but her experience is OK, even though she could and probably will be required to take office.
He has been chosen by the people of his party, she was chosen by an individual, a bit of a difference. He is being groomed for the position, she will have it thrust upon her in a moment of emergency. With the way she responds to various situations in the media so far, I wouldn't trust her not to look like a deer in headlights. If she's not being fed good questions that fit right into her talking points, she can't answer it, from what I've seen.
I know a lot of people have made jokes about obama picking biden as a running mate, but at least biden will be able to step in if something happens. I wouldn't trust that lady to take my cookies out of the oven if I had to use the restroom and i still had 10 minutes on the timer. McCain could very well take good use of his VP, and I think that's an important issue for voters to look at. If you compare bush from a few years ago to bush today, it's clear the presidency ages, ages significantly, and McCain isn't exactly in the best of health.
His local experience is much greater than hers, especially when you compare Hyde Park to Bumfuck, Alaska. He's actually traveled abroad, she's just looked out her back yard. While he wasn't a senator for long, he did a lot of stuff outside of the congressional senate.
What does "local experience" mean exactly? Like.....chairman of a board that blew through a cool $100 million to be spent on improving education in chicago schools that had nothing to show for it? Because she didn't do that, I'll grant you that.
In any case, she was on Wasilla city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002 (where, no, she did not ban any books or attempt to have creationism taught anywhere, and did not run up huge debt for the city - it was called a bond, and they voted on it). She ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 (came in 2nd in a 4 way race - had to mention because campaigning is now apparently executive experience), served 2 years (2003-2004) as the Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she promptly resigned and turned in fellow Republicans for wrongdoing. She then unseated the Republican governor in 2006 (the one that appointed her to that Oil Commission) and has since achieved approval rates of 70-80% as governor. That seems to be a lot of local experience - really good local experience, and a lot of it taking on fellow party members, your pejorative description of Alaska not withstanding.
Barack Obama, not so much. What is his local achievement? He has won largely uncompetitive races for state senate in strongly Democratic areas. He is a machine made politician and he appears to have challenged nothing with the status quo. His US Senate race was against a carpetbagging nutter (Keyes). Obama's resume is thin, sorry, and he barely eked it out against Hillary.
Traveling abroad is nice and all, but a qualification for president? Not so much. How well traveled and internationally renowned was the governor of Arkansas when he became president?
And I have to bring up John Edwards, because I heard almost no concern about his qualifications for VP in 2004. The man had a single term in the Senate, and he was a plaintiff trial lawyer. That was it. Period. No other public office experience. And he was a philandering senator from Bumfuck, North Carolina, in case you forgot.
He has been chosen by the people of his party, she was chosen by an individual, a bit of a difference. He is being groomed for the position, she will have it thrust upon her in a moment of emergency. With the way she responds to various situations in the media so far, I wouldn't trust her not to look like a deer in headlights.
Have you seen Obama extemporizing without a teleprompter? It hurts. See also Bill O'Reilly interview. I'd rank his verbalizing skills without a script somewhere on par with GWB. With a script, he's golden (but no Bill Clinton though), but emergencies won't follow a script.
The media, frankly, took a big fat wet dump on Sarah Palin (whereas they just couldn't be bothered to investigate John Edwards, could they?), and continues to do so. This was Barack Obama's year, darn it, and Mr. McCain was supposed to pick a boring predictable white guy and instead he ruined it, so she pays. At least the army of lawyers and reporters sent up to Alaska to dig up dirt are contributing to the economy up there.
Barack Obama hasn't been through anything as openly hostile as Sarah Palin's Charlie Gibson interview. Not even close. Gibson had his daggers out for her, with the smug asshole control set comfortably at 9. I can only imagine what Katie Couric will do. I am not a fan of Sean Hannity, but at least he managed to get his questions out without staring down his nose at her like it was a scholarship interview and then chopping up her responses to kingdom come in post-production. Oh, and speaking of unscripted moments, Charlie Gibson also misquoted her to her face, and she stood her ground. The idea that she is some delicate rube that hasn't seen beyond her back yard is, well, quaint.
(And to be fair, when it comes to foreign policy and such, it's the VP's duty to deliver talking points. She is VP, does not set foreign policy, and should not pretend to.)
And as far as deer-in-headlights moments go, I still don't get the Joe Biden choice, I just don't. Obama basically blinked. He had so many other choices (Bayh still strikes me as a superior choice, for example, and then of course there's Hillary). I'm sure he wouldn't have selected Biden had McCain selected Palin first. Joe Biden is the pick Rush Limbaugh actually wanted for Obama - no joke.
Your concern about health is valid, but Joe Biden isn't in perfect health either (aneurysms?) and hasn't AFAIK actually released any medical records yet, and Barack Obama's disclosure has consisted of a single letter from his doctor saying he was in good health.
I don't really care what the media is doing to her. That's not the issue here. I strictly posted a stupid poll. I'm also not arguing about other choices, this isn't about biden, hillary, or anyone else. It's about specifically the choice of Palin, and the surrounding hubbub.
I say no, because even when watching her try to speak with those talking points, she's not good at it. She can give a speech, but during town hall meetings? It didn't look pretty to me.
All the republican pundits have complained about our "choice" in our candidate based on his experience (same, as you admit above, about Edwards and his experience). If this is the case, the republicans need to show themselves to be the better candidates by having a VP candidate that actually has "experience". Military, foreign, bi-partisan, whatever. Saying for as long as they have that Obama's experience isn't enough, isn't good enough isn't an excuse to then say "well, if it's good enough for the democrats..." and then pick a VP candidate with less in various important categories.
That is not a good tactic. It's just, well, it's not. If you say one person doesn't have enough experience, that that one person isn't qualified because of said lack, you can't introduce your own then say they have enough experience. You have to get a candidate that's better and say "see? THIS is what it's about, get THIS instead of THAT".
Even though one is running for Prez and the other is the VP candidate, once again, McCain has been in and out of hospitals for various health reasons making it a very likely possibility that she will take over.. McCain is 69 years old. He's had skin cancer. He's had other minor health issues that will compound under the stress. Looking very critically at the VP candidate is necessary. It's a bit different to compare that to Obama, who is younger and in better health. Obama, if prez, will relinquish presidential control for a few hours while he gets an endoscopy, mccain might actually, realistically, get ill and relinquish it for more than a few hours. There's always the possibility for some bizarre health (or political) issue to come into play with either, but with McCain's age and his health issues in the past 2 years alone, it's more of a possibility for him. She is not presenting herself well under any critical light to be able to step up to the plate. If she can't look good in the public eye now, she's not going to look good or do well when thrust more into the light. She won't be able to make the calls that she will be forced to do.
That being said, with a high standard for foreign experience, nearly any governor would be an inappropriate choice, as they generally have little foreign policy experience. Bill Clinton was little known outside of Arkansas prior to the 1992 campaign and had little or no international experience that I'm aware of (unless you count allowing the sale of tainted prisoners blood to Canada as international experience). I don't believe Al Gore was internationally renowned either (in 1992). Arkansas doesn't even border any other countries. And yet, Bill Clinton managed - not perfectly, mind you, but he managed. I don't believe Bill Clinton was a bad president, either. Spending too much time philandering and living by the polls, perhaps, but not bad.
And re: ability to speak, I invite you to look at this Obama town hall. When he has no well-defined script, he's a pretty bad communicator. Far from just being awkward delivering talking points in that situation, his verbalization just tends to break down.
Few people see this side of Obama because it is not widely reported or publicized.
And I have reviewed the michigan mccain/palin town hall...I just don't see that sort of verbal breakdown that Obama experienced. Yes, she doesn't have much international experience and yes, her position requires her to deliver talking points on McCain's foreign policy, but I don't think john mccain is going to keel over either on April 4, 2009....unless the inauguration is extremely wet and cold and he refuses to wear his overcoat. Then be afraid.
So, once again, you're pointing out a republican point of view that a democrat is not fit for office... so apply that same reasoning to your own candidate for VP. If the dems choice isn't good enough, the repubs should choose better for themselves. They can't use that as their excuse to fight against obama, then claim it's good enough for themselves, because that belittles their entire argument. You can't say that one thing is bad for one person, but then say it's OK for yourself. You can't, it's hypocritical. And before you start bringing in other points, I'm ONLY TALKING about this one point here, nothing else.
And I DO think that mccain will get ill. 3 months after his inauguration? Probably not. But 3 months is a small fraction of a presidency, a presidency that will inherit conflict and stress and lots of other things since it's wartime as opposed to peacetime... and it's what Bush took as a vacation right after he entered office. I don't think he'll keel over. I think he'll be sick enough where she will have to take over for more than an hour or three while a tube is shoved up his ass. If you honestly don't believe that he'll be sick, good for you. You will not get me to agree with you on this, at all.
1. I will rephrase myself. I am not arguing that Bill Clinton was unfit for office from the foreign affairs/policy perspective and thus that it makes it somehow ok for Sarah Palin to be unfit too. I am arguing that Bill Clinton was fit for the office - and so is Sarah Palin. Foreign policy has been jumped upon because obviously it's her weakest trait, not because of some vast store of foreign policy knowledge a P or VP candidate needs.
2, related to 1. American presidential elections do not occur in vacuums, with respect to comparisons between the current candidates and to a lesser extent, past candidates. People can, do, and will compare the candidates to each other and may pick the one they like most or dislike least. Indeed, that is how our voting, for better or worse, is structured.
3. For what it's worth, John McCain's mom, still alive and kicking at age 97. And if John McCain is going to melt physically or mentally under the stress of office, well, um, gee, you might think we would have seen that in the 5 1/2 years he spent as a POW, getting permanently disfigured in the process. He's not some geriatric fool waiting for a stiff breeze to blow him over.
My argument is that republicans claim Obama is NOT fit for office, therefore Palin isn't using the same criteria. Using republicans own arguments against one candidate, but not the other, is hypocritical. Whether you believe it or not, well, that's up to you. Using the same definitions to say one person is not qualified, but another is is hypocritical. You may not want to acknowledge it, but that's what I'm saying, and I'm sticking to it. It's like saying "you can't fly to the moon because you wear glasses, but I wear glasses and I can". If I were to say that to you, that'd be hypocritical. Saying Obama doesn't have enough experience after being in the Senate since 2004, then claiming Palin does with even less time in any leadership role over more than 6000 people is wrong. Being Mayor of a town that small isn't that much experience. If an 18 year old can do it in a town of just over 8000 while still being in high school, it doesn't say much for her "experience", whereas Obama has been a senator for longer than she's been a governor, has been in the spotlight since 2004, and in the state legislature from 97-04. Illinois population is close to 13 million, Alaska's population: Not even 1 million. Alaska has a lot of politics outside of population going for it, but so does Illinois, so whose experience counts the most? According to the republicans, hers does. I disagree, since they claim Obama's doesn't count for shit.
So who cares if his mom lives to over 100? His dad was 70 when he died.. looking at that anecdotal evidence, McCain is on borrowed time. Neither of them were president of the united states, a job which is more stressful than pretty much anything out there, although not as bad as being a POW. Stress shortens your lifespan, it's not one of those things that, when it's over, your life goes back to it's normal timeframe.
I'm not saying he's in bad health NOW; I'm not saying he's decrepit. I'm saying his previous health issues combined with age and stress are a bad combination. Just looking at pictures on wikipedia show him to have aged a lot within the past year and a half, even. I'm not saying he's a geriatric fool waiting for a stiff breeze. He will be the oldest president to take office (72, not 69 like I said earlier, bad math teacher!). When people get old, they start to break down. He is OLD.
Interestingly enough, the average lifespan of an average male is about 76 (75.2) years. One who hasn't battled cancer, hasn't been hidden away and tortured as a POW. Some live longer, yes... that's how averages work. hopefully, if he is elected, he won't die or have a heart attack or another cancer relapse. But if he does, she is going to be there. Using Republican criteria, she is not ready.
His local experience is much greater than hers, especially when you compare Hyde Park to Bumfuck, Alaska. He's actually traveled abroad, she's just looked out her back yard. While he wasn't a senator for long, he did a lot of stuff outside of the congressional senate.
But what bugs me the most about this whole thing is if obama is not experienced enough based on what republicans say there is absolutely no way she has enough experience. but her experience is OK, even though she could and probably will be required to take office.
He has been chosen by the people of his party, she was chosen by an individual, a bit of a difference. He is being groomed for the position, she will have it thrust upon her in a moment of emergency. With the way she responds to various situations in the media so far, I wouldn't trust her not to look like a deer in headlights. If she's not being fed good questions that fit right into her talking points, she can't answer it, from what I've seen.
I know a lot of people have made jokes about obama picking biden as a running mate, but at least biden will be able to step in if something happens. I wouldn't trust that lady to take my cookies out of the oven if I had to use the restroom and i still had 10 minutes on the timer. McCain could very well take good use of his VP, and I think that's an important issue for voters to look at. If you compare bush from a few years ago to bush today, it's clear the presidency ages, ages significantly, and McCain isn't exactly in the best of health.
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What does "local experience" mean exactly? Like.....chairman of a board that blew through a cool $100 million to be spent on improving education in chicago schools that had nothing to show for it? Because she didn't do that, I'll grant you that.
In any case, she was on Wasilla city council from 1992 to 1996 and mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002 (where, no, she did not ban any books or attempt to have creationism taught anywhere, and did not run up huge debt for the city - it was called a bond, and they voted on it). She ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 (came in 2nd in a 4 way race - had to mention because campaigning is now apparently executive experience), served 2 years (2003-2004) as the Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she promptly resigned and turned in fellow Republicans for wrongdoing. She then unseated the Republican governor in 2006 (the one that appointed her to that Oil Commission) and has since achieved approval rates of 70-80% as governor. That seems to be a lot of local experience - really good local experience, and a lot of it taking on fellow party members, your pejorative description of Alaska not withstanding.
Barack Obama, not so much. What is his local achievement? He has won largely uncompetitive races for state senate in strongly Democratic areas. He is a machine made politician and he appears to have challenged nothing with the status quo. His US Senate race was against a carpetbagging nutter (Keyes). Obama's resume is thin, sorry, and he barely eked it out against Hillary.
Traveling abroad is nice and all, but a qualification for president? Not so much. How well traveled and internationally renowned was the governor of Arkansas when he became president?
And I have to bring up John Edwards, because I heard almost no concern about his qualifications for VP in 2004. The man had a single term in the Senate, and he was a plaintiff trial lawyer. That was it. Period. No other public office experience. And he was a philandering senator from Bumfuck, North Carolina, in case you forgot.
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He has been chosen by the people of his party, she was chosen by an individual, a bit of a difference. He is being groomed for the position, she will have it thrust upon her in a moment of emergency. With the way she responds to various situations in the media so far, I wouldn't trust her not to look like a deer in headlights.
Have you seen Obama extemporizing without a teleprompter? It hurts. See also Bill O'Reilly interview. I'd rank his verbalizing skills without a script somewhere on par with GWB. With a script, he's golden (but no Bill Clinton though), but emergencies won't follow a script.
The media, frankly, took a big fat wet dump on Sarah Palin (whereas they just couldn't be bothered to investigate John Edwards, could they?), and continues to do so. This was Barack Obama's year, darn it, and Mr. McCain was supposed to pick a boring predictable white guy and instead he ruined it, so she pays. At least the army of lawyers and reporters sent up to Alaska to dig up dirt are contributing to the economy up there.
Barack Obama hasn't been through anything as openly hostile as Sarah Palin's Charlie Gibson interview. Not even close. Gibson had his daggers out for her, with the smug asshole control set comfortably at 9. I can only imagine what Katie Couric will do. I am not a fan of Sean Hannity, but at least he managed to get his questions out without staring down his nose at her like it was a scholarship interview and then chopping up her responses to kingdom come in post-production. Oh, and speaking of unscripted moments, Charlie Gibson also misquoted her to her face, and she stood her ground. The idea that she is some delicate rube that hasn't seen beyond her back yard is, well, quaint.
(And to be fair, when it comes to foreign policy and such, it's the VP's duty to deliver talking points. She is VP, does not set foreign policy, and should not pretend to.)
And as far as deer-in-headlights moments go, I still don't get the Joe Biden choice, I just don't. Obama basically blinked. He had so many other choices (Bayh still strikes me as a superior choice, for example, and then of course there's Hillary). I'm sure he wouldn't have selected Biden had McCain selected Palin first. Joe Biden is the pick Rush Limbaugh actually wanted for Obama - no joke.
Your concern about health is valid, but Joe Biden isn't in perfect health either (aneurysms?) and hasn't AFAIK actually released any medical records yet, and Barack Obama's disclosure has consisted of a single letter from his doctor saying he was in good health.
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I say no, because even when watching her try to speak with those talking points, she's not good at it. She can give a speech, but during town hall meetings? It didn't look pretty to me.
All the republican pundits have complained about our "choice" in our candidate based on his experience (same, as you admit above, about Edwards and his experience). If this is the case, the republicans need to show themselves to be the better candidates by having a VP candidate that actually has "experience". Military, foreign, bi-partisan, whatever. Saying for as long as they have that Obama's experience isn't enough, isn't good enough isn't an excuse to then say "well, if it's good enough for the democrats..." and then pick a VP candidate with less in various important categories.
That is not a good tactic. It's just, well, it's not. If you say one person doesn't have enough experience, that that one person isn't qualified because of said lack, you can't introduce your own then say they have enough experience. You have to get a candidate that's better and say "see? THIS is what it's about, get THIS instead of THAT".
Even though one is running for Prez and the other is the VP candidate, once again, McCain has been in and out of hospitals for various health reasons making it a very likely possibility that she will take over.. McCain is 69 years old. He's had skin cancer. He's had other minor health issues that will compound under the stress. Looking very critically at the VP candidate is necessary. It's a bit different to compare that to Obama, who is younger and in better health. Obama, if prez, will relinquish presidential control for a few hours while he gets an endoscopy, mccain might actually, realistically, get ill and relinquish it for more than a few hours. There's always the possibility for some bizarre health (or political) issue to come into play with either, but with McCain's age and his health issues in the past 2 years alone, it's more of a possibility for him. She is not presenting herself well under any critical light to be able to step up to the plate. If she can't look good in the public eye now, she's not going to look good or do well when thrust more into the light. She won't be able to make the calls that she will be forced to do.
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And re: ability to speak, I invite you to look at this Obama town hall. When he has no well-defined script, he's a pretty bad communicator. Far from just being awkward delivering talking points in that situation, his verbalization just tends to break down.
Obama town hall
Few people see this side of Obama because it is not widely reported or publicized.
And I have reviewed the michigan mccain/palin town hall...I just don't see that sort of verbal breakdown that Obama experienced. Yes, she doesn't have much international experience and yes, her position requires her to deliver talking points on McCain's foreign policy, but I don't think john mccain is going to keel over either on April 4, 2009....unless the inauguration is extremely wet and cold and he refuses to wear his overcoat. Then be afraid.
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And I DO think that mccain will get ill. 3 months after his inauguration? Probably not. But 3 months is a small fraction of a presidency, a presidency that will inherit conflict and stress and lots of other things since it's wartime as opposed to peacetime... and it's what Bush took as a vacation right after he entered office. I don't think he'll keel over. I think he'll be sick enough where she will have to take over for more than an hour or three while a tube is shoved up his ass. If you honestly don't believe that he'll be sick, good for you. You will not get me to agree with you on this, at all.
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2, related to 1. American presidential elections do not occur in vacuums, with respect to comparisons between the current candidates and to a lesser extent, past candidates. People can, do, and will compare the candidates to each other and may pick the one they like most or dislike least. Indeed, that is how our voting, for better or worse, is structured.
3. For what it's worth, John McCain's mom, still alive and kicking at age 97. And if John McCain is going to melt physically or mentally under the stress of office, well, um, gee, you might think we would have seen that in the 5 1/2 years he spent as a POW, getting permanently disfigured in the process. He's not some geriatric fool waiting for a stiff breeze to blow him over.
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So who cares if his mom lives to over 100? His dad was 70 when he died.. looking at that anecdotal evidence, McCain is on borrowed time. Neither of them were president of the united states, a job which is more stressful than pretty much anything out there, although not as bad as being a POW. Stress shortens your lifespan, it's not one of those things that, when it's over, your life goes back to it's normal timeframe.
I'm not saying he's in bad health NOW; I'm not saying he's decrepit. I'm saying his previous health issues combined with age and stress are a bad combination. Just looking at pictures on wikipedia show him to have aged a lot within the past year and a half, even. I'm not saying he's a geriatric fool waiting for a stiff breeze. He will be the oldest president to take office (72, not 69 like I said earlier, bad math teacher!). When people get old, they start to break down. He is OLD.
Interestingly enough, the average lifespan of an average male is about 76 (75.2) years. One who hasn't battled cancer, hasn't been hidden away and tortured as a POW. Some live longer, yes... that's how averages work. hopefully, if he is elected, he won't die or have a heart attack or another cancer relapse. But if he does, she is going to be there. Using Republican criteria, she is not ready.
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