Moyers warns us, "Beware the terrible simplifiers."
Palin, the rustic, with her gritty media savvy, has made simplicity,unstudied remarks, and political offense/defense a dark art. Sarah's simple and simply dangerously wrong, evoking emotions, troubling angst--going too far e.g. who are the "real Americans"?, Obama is "palling with terrorists."
Given the present universe of national problems spinning out of control, Palin is especially wrong for these times!
Palin, The GOP's Pandora
Sarah Palin should never have been be put into the consideration for Vice Presidential candidate by the brittle and senile McCain.
Palin is wrong on every count that counts for America’s future well-being.
John McCain is corrupted and an abject failure based on having consented to including Palin on his ticket. His judgment is seriously flawed for having made Palin his VP choice, disqualifying McCain’s own candidacy--judged on this one crucial and flawed decision.
Continue below the fold...
Reaganite, Peggy Noonan, who reacted very negatively to the original announcement by McCain that Palin was on his ticket, in an off-mike comment, recently expanded on that sentiment http://online.wsj.com/... and wrote;
"What is it she stands for? After seven weeks, we don't know."
The situation with Palin is so bad that Noonan adds to her comments and questions on Palin’s objectives:
"But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for?"
The Noonan has made her own Palin conclusions:
"She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things." And to that Noonan adds: "She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts."
Friends we are in a terrible place. The far right is grasping at straws and making as much noise as possible over every aspect of doubt, fear, or ideology to cloud the arena of facts.
The race will come down to a very narrow gap if all the mechanisms the Republicans have so shrewdly constructed come together.
Rush Limbaugh is prepared to hold his nose and "drag McCain across the finish line" without any consideration for John’s unsuitably, sensibilities or his perceived weaknesses. It’s win at all costs. The many ways this election can be stolen are there for the crunch--should the vote count be close.
To Limbaugh and others in the echo chambers, "Palin is our gal," "our babe."
It really doesn’t matter that her election and potential to become the surprise commander-in-chief at some point is not too distant. Now it’s President Palin--with tools less developed than those of George W. Bush and a depth of experience that is totally lacking at this critical level—the most unqualified slot filler in recent history.
Look at the messy spectacle: Spending over $150,000 of contributors' money to dress up Palin and her family for her performances on stage, the stump, and on the media, the McCain campaign is exposed as being as calculating and crassly "using" of the Palin family, forget the impact and the downside to this charade and its mockery of our country’s hour of peril.
Palin’s in way-over-her head. Sure she can be glamorized and powdered, prompted and teleprompted, but none of this can plaster over her gaping ignorance and lack of international acumen, experience or training. She is not and can not be prepared for the precarious position she may hold--within days following her possible election to vice president!
Facts are, there is no redemption from the awesome responsibility and decision making which is incumbent upon Palin--that her being catapulted into the presidency will require.
So how did Palin, the aviator of Pandora beguile McCain?
Kathleen Parker, Columnist for the Washington Post expanded on the New York Times article written by Robert Draper http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
in the following manner:
Snip
One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten. By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive résumé, if a thin one. And she's a natural politician who connects with people.
But there can be no denying that McCain's selection of her over others far more qualified -- and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter -- suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by . . . what?
Science provides clues. A study in Canada, published by a British journal in 2003, found that pretty women foil men's ability to assess the future. "Discounting the future," as the condition is called, means preferring immediate, lesser rewards to greater rewards in the future.
Snip
McCain the mortal couldn't mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is "exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief." This, notes Draper, "seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful."
Snip
It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama -- under any circumstances. And though it isn't over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree (in Sedona where they met over coffee just prior to his selection of Palin). Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman's power, made the wrong call?
Snip
If McCain, rightful heir to the presidency, loses to Obama, history undoubtedly will note that he was defeated at least in part by his own besotted impulse to discount the future. If he wins, he must be credited with having correctly calculated nature's power to befuddle.
As so pointedly made clear, testing of any new American president will occur. Palin will be sorely tested and the United States and the world will be lucky to survive the results of that crisis or those crises for which she will be her own highest and best counsel. Palin, the decider. That’s terrifying in the extreme!
America cannot let Palin out of the box. The only prudent thing: Do not elect McCain/Plain and prevent the unthinkable from having any chance of occurring.