The car's on fire. And there's no driver at the wheel.
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides. And a dark wind blows.
The government is corrupt. And we're all on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn.
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine. And the machine is bleeding to death.
- "Dead Flag Blues", Godspeed You! Black Emperor
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Finally, I can live like a human being.
- Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, after moving into the Domus Aurea, a villa constructed in the burnt out areas after the Great Fire of Rome
There is something to be said for simplicity. The concept of electing a person President based upon one's desire to have a beer with that person does, though misguided, make some sense. This person should, in theory, be closest to the general populace and thus have a greater understanding of the citizens' experience. This would then influence his decisions. Perhaps there is some validity to the idea of a President close to the people, but to say that the President should be of the people seems misguided. Particularly in this era, the position of President of the United States is a remarkable position requiring exemplary intelligence, levelheadedness, and forethought. We are looking for the extraordinary sprouting from our citizenry.
I've been thinking about this since Sarah Palin was named McCain's choice for VP. She served as the mayor of a small town in Alaska and is a self-described "hockey mom". She was clearly a ploy to attract people to the McCain campaign. She was used in an attempt to change the narrative. She appeared with no warning and thrown onto the national stage. In a way, I initially felt some sense of pity for her. I thought that she was ill-prepared for the weeks to come, let alone the proposition of the Presidency. I no longer feel this pity.
From the moment she delivered her bombastic speech at the RNC convention, she has committed fully to her position. She was never meant to be a genuine prospect for an emergency President. Her role was to connect to the average voter. Her quotes have been littered with references to the common citizen. "Joe Six-Pack" during the debate. Her continual reference to being a "small town mayor" over the greater position of Governor of Alaska. The audacity to tell a joke during a primetime speech to the American people. She's supposed to get on the air and remind people that McCain is connected to you, the citizen. They want you to feel that she is common. Let's get this clear now:
Sarah Palin is not an average citizen. We cannot let ourselves be deluded with the incessant discussion of her five children or her pregnant daughter. We should not let the idea, albeit disproven, of her firing of a cook gain traction. Selling a private jet on eBay cannot stand.
Sarah Palin, by accepting the nomination of a major party for Vice President, is declaring that she is not an average citizen but an extraordinary one. She is to be held to a higher standard and no amount of faux-folksy will alter that.
Her inability to answer standard questions expected of a Vice Presidential candidate is disturbing at best. Her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric should have solidified that she cannot fulfill even the basic requirements. She genuinely feels that living in Alaska gives her some intuitive understanding for foreign relations when she has barely traveled outside of the country. She is unable to claim an opinion on the Bush Doctrine, let alone define what it is. She claims that she reads all newspapers put before her, yet she struggles to name one. These responses should immediately offend our senses and discount her for this election. However, even with these egregious offenses, it merely emphasizes her inexperience. Experience can be gained, so it does not remove her from the position entirely. Two recent remarks have.
During the Vice Presidential debate, Governor Palin has made it apparent we must never let her into a position of national power even resembling the Vice President:
IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the Vice President more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?
PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the Office of the Vice President.
- [link]
This seems more like a twisting of the question to emphasize her own flexibility, but nevertheless, the answer is offensive. The Vice President has two roles: the deciding vote in the Senate and acting President in case the President is unable to serve. These are the only roles specified by the Constitution. It seems ironic to me that although the Republicans are supposedly strict constitutionalists, they ignore this glaring hypocrisy. The Vice President is not meant to run a shadow office in lieu of the President. That is not just the correct answer, it is the only answer. Any other words are either political trickery or blatant disregard for the position of President.
We should give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is not intending the latter. That is, we should have assumed so until she gave her response concerning the Troopergate report.
"If you read the report, you will see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member," Palin said as boarded her campaign bus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "You got to read the report."
Palin violated state ethics law by trying to get her former brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report for the bipartisan Legislative Council concluded Friday.
"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.
- [link]
Governor Palin is lying. We've quickly become familiar with her ability to lie, but this time the lie itself is not what bothers me. It's how it is presented.
There is no turn of words, no spin, no sleight of tongue. This is a genuine, bald-faced lie. Even Dubya let lies sit. For September 11th, it took some time before we were aware he was given a paper "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". For Iraq, the extent of the lies took years to fully determine. We were misled and we gradually worked our way back to the truth. In this case, Governor Palin is holding a snake out to us and calling it an apple. She does not have the courtesy to mislead us; she is lying to us.
So, here we are left with two options. Either she is unfathomably incompetent, stricken without the ability to understand what the court ruled, or she is deliberately demeaning the position she hopes to hold. We already know that she cannot be Vice President now. That much is clear. The much larger concern is whether her strategy moving forward is to directly fight the idea of a competent President.
We are fully aware of the stakes of this election. Perhaps our car is not on fire, but with the problems of the economy, the war in Iraq, healthcare, and global warming, it cannot be said we are in the best of states. We need the extraordinary among us to even come close to fixing the problems at hand.
So if it is the former and she is merely incompetent, as President, she would be totally dependent on her staff.
If it is the latter, she would let the car burn and build a villa in the ashes.