"What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull", Sarah Palin asked at the Republican National Convention. To which she provided an answer - lipstick. And to which the GOP crowd went nuts.
The knee-jerk reaction by the GOP pundits to the claim of many, including regular Joe's, that Sarah Palin is neither prepared nor qualified to be a president of the US, is that Barack Obama is likewise unprepared. And in fact they escalate the argument even further in suggesting that governor Palin has more executive experience than both Obama and Biden. Which is technically true. What is missing however, from this absurd and superficial analysis is that she is the governor of one the least populated States in the Union. But what is really omitted in this notion is something neither media nor Democratic strategists and pundits are allowed to say, so I will: difference between Obama and Palin is presence and absence of brain, respectively.
The conservative movement, for whatever it's worth now and whatever is left of it, has prided itself and subsequently voted on imagery for the last several decades, beginning with Nixon, continuing massively with Reagan and culminating in Bush jr. It is not to say that Republicans are supported exclusively by red-necks and religious fanatics, but it's without a doubt the anchor of the Republican base. The other component, of course, are the real conservatives - intellectual free market fundamentalists who believe that taxes don't belong in America and that raising them is tantamount to socialism. And these true conservatives don't mind at all having the religious fanatics under the same tent with them, because there is no conflict of interest. After all, the religious evangelicals and red-necks have successfully converted to capitalistic Christianity, substituted prophets for profits and while railing against scientific Darwinism, embrace social Darwinism and justify it on the basis of Christ's teachings. And it is these people that governor Palin is posing as the champion of.
You see, governor Palin, a former Ms. Alaska runner-up, is a regular hockey mom, who is not an elitist (allegedly), who doesn't like academics and didn't go to Harvard Law School. She instead learned "real" American values in the deep woods of Alaska and acquired foreign policy experience through binoculars from her front porch observing Russia. She also speaks plain language, doesn't engage in nuances, opposes abortion at all cost, believes in Biblical version of genesis and has no tolerance for homosexuals. On the other side is a black man, from an elitist Harvard Law School, who is "pro-abortion", anti-American and the scariest of all - a socialist! Scared enough yet...?
It is true that Barack Obama has very limited experience in government. He spent years being a community organizer after which he became a state legislator; and then beat an inviable candidate for the US Senate seat of Illinois. But what was Lincoln's experience when he became president of the US and then a prominent member of Mount Rushmore? What was Reagan's? Clinton's? The argument that one is not qualified to be the president of the US is not born out of experience, but rather out of intelligence. Barack Obama is not just an astute politician, but a highly intelligent person. He is cool-headed, thinks in nuances and doesn't engage in knee-jerk reactions to deep and complex problems. He is 100% opposite to Sarah Palin and for that matter, John McCain. Moreover, the president is surrounded by hundreds of close advisers, and if Barack Obama becomes president his chief adviser would be Joe Biden, one of the most experienced Senators and international relations expert in the US. And that IS the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.