With Palin’s folksy “There-you-go-again-Joe-looking-backward” line, McCain/Palin handlers launched their pitch to disengage the campaign from the Bush years. Don’t look back to the domestic and international wreckage Bush leaves. Don’t seek future solutions for the problems of financial collapse and global warming by examining how they occurred in the past and who is accountable. Ignore the past …and Bush. Just clean house, cut taxes, drill baby drill, and seek the city on the hill. Above all, forget the logic of cause and effect and the relationship between problem and solution.
This pitch is insulting to American voters including Joe Six-Pack. It is especially insulting to the intelligence of women. In an election year in which a woman, Hillary Clinton, was finally recognized for her equivalent or greater governing expertise, Palin’s debate presentation was a demeaning portrait.
A pitch that requires voters to dismiss intelligence, rationality, and above all, information and knowledge, is a disgrace. In these critical times we need leaders who are our best and our brightest.
I agree. I personally felt nauseated watching the nonsense on display every time Sarah Palin took her turn at the podium. It’s not just a matter of disagreeing on policies being set forth between equals; instead, it truly seemed that the Governor from Alaska had committed five or six lines to memory and was surviving the debate by spouting those few talking points every chance she got.
I cannot see any way that her performance would appeal to a female voter~ certainly not the caliber of woman that would have been staking their vote with Hillary a few months ago. As I watched the only debate between the two candidates for vice president in perhaps the most critical election of our lifetime, it seemed that only one candidate grasped the gravity of the situation. Ms. Palin was not only out of her league, but out of her mind.
Lacking any poltical savy or finess, she was agressive and abrasive but without any knowledge to back up her statements and accusations. Not just a Washington outsider, she seems to have almost no basic knowledge about the issues of our day or the mechanics of our political system, even at the level one would expect of an eight grade civics student.
But then, that explains the dichotomy between the two candidates. While Biden made his case for his party as an elder statesman, Palin appeared to be running for junior high Student Council. If the future of the nation (and perhaps the world, since our elections tend to affect the entire planet), it would be hysterical. Instead, it’s simply frightening.
Here’s a good bit of commentary on Palin’s appalling performance from Michelle Goldberg in The Guardian. Wish I could copy paste it in its entirety here. Definitely worth the read. Click here.
High points include:
“At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked.”
She also transcribed Palin’s bizarre response to Biden’s comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush’s policies:
I also appreciate her critique of the media for not commenting on Palin’s actual performance: “The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don’t even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of “average Americans” who they both venerate and despise.”
For most of my life, I was afraid that I wasn’t smart enough to comment about politics. Then along came Bush, and — suddenly — there was a good chance that I was in fact smarter than the President of the United States. The one positive aspect for me about Bush is that it got me interested in politics. I realized that if I stayed tune for a specific issue, that — in the course of about a week — I could identify who was lying and who had the wrong idea.
So I’m delighted to have come into my own in time for Palin. I’m shocked to think that McCain has such little regard for females that he’d toss us this bone. And that’s where the delight ends. She frightens me. Frightens me to death. Her mean, violent mentality… the mentality of her perhaps soon-to-be son-inlaw. Frankly, it’s a segment of our society that I’ve been protected from until now.
And it plays into what I fear will be a wave of crime across the country. Yes, crime. When you tell people that they’re way in debt… that they’re lost all of their savings… tell college students that there will be no jobs for them if and when they graduate… people get evil. I’ve caught a couple of instances of random violent outbursts. People getting violent for no apparent reason, other than they’re bored and have no hope. There was an incident at Chico State the other day. I’m afraid it’s starting. That’s why it’s imperative that we have a calm, peaceful, peace-making person as our leader.
This country needs fire-side chats again. Someone to smoothe our brow. And if it’s going to get as rough as it seems like it will, I personally need to tough it out for someone I can look up to like Obama.