According to Sebastian Smith (AFP),
Sarah Palin spent Tuesday in Republican "boot camp" cramming for this week's vice presidential debate amid mounting concern over whether she is ready for a White House post and calls for her to quit the ticket.
As any student knows, last-minute cramming doesn't work, at least not if there isn't anything "there" to start with. Reviewing is one thing, but the boot camp approach is not going to cut it here.
The article continues:
What US media dub Palin's "boot camp" will continue right through Wednesday, with senior McCain aides and former White House operatives coaching her and cramming her with facts.
That's the problem right there -- the "facts" should have been there before she accepted the nomination. More below.
As many parents tell their children, in this country anyone can become president, but that doesn't mean anyone should. Desire and ambition alone is not enough. Apparently Sarah Palin expressed her desire to become president early in her political career -- that, at the very latest, should have been the time to educate herself for the job.
She could have picked up a book or two about the Supreme Court's most famous cases. But no; the only one that counts in her myopic worldview is the one that she wants to overturn.
When it comes to her lack of exposure and experience, she is quick to pick on others, without realizing how pitiful it makes her look.
She says she has been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since she was in second grade -- if only that were true. Could she summarize any of them?
She says she hasn't been able to travel because she was too busy working for a living. Well, she did make it to "exotic" Hawaii. Her grand tour of assorted colleges (which probably didn't come cheap because not all courses transfer) could have included a semester abroad. Broadening one's horizon comes in handy for a journalism major.
Her much-emphasized "executive experience" shows her disturbing tendency to abuse the power of her office for her own personal agenda -- not exactly a recommendation for the second-highest office in the country.
Experience or lack thereof is not the issue here. Ability and intelligence is what matters. It's also not a question of what kind of degree one has and from where but whether one possesses intellectual curiosity and analytical skills.
Sarah Palin seems to have neither. In her "good guys vs. bad guys" world, she has no use for them. All she ever needed to know she learned in Sunday school.
In the past, the GOP won elections by appealing to voters of Palin's ilk. Now it looks as though actually nominating one of them will backfire.
At the end of the article mentioned above, the author quotes Kathleen Parker:
"As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem."
If this were a soap opera, I'd say all this is very entertaining. Unfortunately, this is real life.