Palin v. Thing One
I just watched CBS News' side-by-side pairing of Katie Couric's discussions of Roe v. Wade with Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.
The former's comfort discussing the legalities of the decision is unsurprising; the guy's a lawyer and a thirty-year veteran of the Senate. The latter's touching on only the most general aspects of the case is not surprising in the least, and I don't really hold it against her; she's not a lawyer, she's not a legislator--her experience is in enforcing the laws other people create.
But her inability to name any Supreme Court case OTHER than Roe v. Wade is a wee bit more than off-putting. It's astonishing. Any reasonably intelligent and educated American ought to be able to knock off a list of famous cases without much more effort than it takes to recall a few bits of American history from 11th grade--Brown v. Board of Education, say, or Loving v. Virginia.
Now I'll grant you, the question was more specific than just "Can you name a Supreme Court case?" Couric asked Palin for a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed, and the two I just named I agree with wholeheartedly--though I do wonder whether Palin would be as enthusiastic as I am about allowing interracial marriage, as Loving v. Virginia did.
But come on! Surely she doesn't approve of the Dred Scott decision--the one where the court ruled Scott was a white man's property, even though he was now in a state where slavery was illegal. Or how about Plessy v. Ferguson's upholding of the "separate but equal" doctrine? Maybe Kelo v. New London, in which the court angered conservatives across the nation by ruling that private property could be seized by the government in order to give it to another private owner for development purposes? Or how about Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade in '92? (OK, I had to look that one up to remember the name.) Marbury v. Madison? The Miranda case?
Hell, how about Bush v. Gore?
Palin couldn't name a one. Total blank.
But I'm happy to report that all is not lost: there is an American, not a legal scholar or legislator, who can cite two Supreme Court cases from memory without referring to any of the above.
That'd be Thing One. And in 18 years, he'll be eligible to run for the office to which Palin is currently nominated.