I've been riveted by the political drama surrounding the Palin pick. And one thing I've noticed is all the red herrings. Take her speech tonight. How does reciting a speech written by McCain's campaign before they even knew who the candidate would be, change anything about the appropriateness of the candidate?
I know they all have speech writers, but that only works if the speech reflects the person giving it, not if the person is supposed to become a reflection of the speech given her. And that is the point. The red herring here is us thinking about whether her performance (and it is a performance she's been holed up and training for for 3 days, so she ought to be able to read the speech pretty well by now. Hell, I could.) The real issue about her speech is that if it covers any national or international policy issues, these have to be coming from the McCain agenda, as she has never expressed any interest in these things before. She's a puppet.
The red herring about that is....
that we should be focusing on why Mr. Maverick, "i don't want a yes man" McCain has hired a puppet, instead of a person who has substantial national and international experience at something. Anything.
And while we're all talking about her pregnant daughter (which I did think was off limits until they decided to talk about her and then bring the teen father into the limelight. What was it that that pundit said about the Clintons when they heard that Chelsea was campaigning?....) But rather than focus on the "hypocrisy" of it, we can simply state that this is the result of abstinence only pregnancy prevention. And then ask, "Is this what America wants? Are we voting for the celebration of teenage pregnancy?"
By all means, look at any corruption problems this woman might have. But the real conversation needs to be about the serious issues we're all facing. Can she talk more intelligently than McCain about the complex factions in Iraq and how we're going to garner international support for stabilizing the region? How will she handle relations with China and North Korea? Does she really believe that drilling will solve our energy problems? Does she recognize that CO2 emissions are killing the planet? What would she do to strengthen the value of the dollar in foreign markets? How would she handle trade treaties to protect American job opportunities? What does she think about financial markets regulation? Bankruptcy laws? What about executive powers? Would she overturn the Bush signing statements? Would she pursue investigations into torture of detainees? Would she investigate whether the Bush administration purposefully misled us into invading Iraq? Does she believe in pre-emptive invasions?
These, and so many more serious matters, are the questions we should be asking McCain and Palin. Instead we're all mesmerized by the titillating details of a Down's Syndrome child* and a teenage pregnancy that we're taking our eye of the real ball:
We still need a team that can best address the national and international crises at hand. I don't see Palin adding to that team and, therefore, McCain judgment must be questioned. So, let's stop feeding on the red herring and start dishing out the red meat.
(*yes, I want to know who's nurturing that baby, but frankly if these parents are choosing their careers, then the baby may be better off with another caretaker. And, hey, by the way, I'm a liberal and I would definitely keep a baby if I knew it would have Down's. I find it appallingly hateful to suggest that this a partisan type of decision. Schafly, could you get any uglier of heart?)