Yesterday's recd diary on the Wall Street Journal's blatant lying re:Phil Gramm banking legislation struck a nerve. My wife got a free WSJ subscription via airline miles and we have gotten the paper every day for about a year. We;ve never paid them a dime which will give you an idea of how desperate they are for subscribers. The op-ed page of the Journal has gotten so dishonest and misleading that it makes one feel like a citizen of the former Soviet Union reading Pravda. Blatant lying about energy issues, politics, global warming, foreign policy that any twelve year could debunk in a manner of minutes. Yesterday, Bret Stephens supplied a perfect example of jaw dropping historical revisionism in his op-ed column entitled "Palin and the 'Experience' Canard". Basically, Stephens took three Presidents and compared them with Sarah Palin.
The gist of Mr. Stephens' column was a comparison with three Vice Presidents (Coolidge, T.R. and Truman) and their lack of foreign policy exposure in a historical contortion that somehow then concludes that Sarah Palin is perfectly qualified to be Vice President or even ultimately President should the unthinkable occur. For copyright reason I'll merely repeat a few paragraphs that sum up the major thesis:
"Mr. Dallek is also a presidential historian, so he must have some acquaintance with the career of Calvin Coolidge. When Coolidge was named to Warren Harding's ticket in 1920, he had been governor of Massachusetts for less than two years. Aside from a largely powerless stint as lieutenant governor and other smaller legislative posts, his chief previous government experience was as mayor of Northampton, to which he was first elected in 1910 by a Wasilla-like margin of 1,597 to 1,409.
Another year-and-a-half governor to be nominated for the vice presidency: Teddy Roosevelt. It's true that TR, as a former assistant secretary of the Navy, had more foreign policy experience than Mrs. Palin, though one wonders what today we would make of a candidate whose proud boast was that he had killed an enemy soldier "like a jackrabbit."
Then there is Harry Truman, to whom Mrs. Palin compared herself at the Republican convention. "He had only to open his mouth and his origins were plain," wrote David McCullough in his biography of the 33rd president, in lines that might also have been written about Mrs. Palin. "It wasn't just that he came from a particular part of the country, geographically, but from a specific part of the American experience, an authentic pioneer background, and a specific place in the American imagination."
The Truman comparison seems especially to rankle Mrs. Palin's critics, perhaps because in many respects it rings true. Take vetting. John McCain may have met Mrs. Palin only once before he offered her the job, but Franklin Roosevelt admitted "I hardly know Truman" in July 1944, the same month the "Senator from Pendergast" was put on the Democratic ticket.
Or take foreign policy experience. It's fair to say that Mrs. Palin has none, and the McCain campaign should drop the transparent pretense that Alaska's proximity to Russia, or her nominal responsibility for the state's National Guard, gives her some.
Then again, what did Truman know? "Truman had no experience in relations with Britain or Russia, no firsthand knowledge of Churchill or Stalin," writes Mr. McCullough. "He didn't know his own Secretary of State, more than to say hello. . . . Roosevelt, Truman would tell [daughter] Margaret privately, 'never did talk to me confidentially about the war, or about foreign affairs or what he had in mind for peace after the war.' He was unprepared, bewildered."
The column also includes some other tortured illogic that only the most partisan could concoct. If you must you can read it here:
http://online.wsj.com/...
The Journal has published this kind of disingenuity about Sarah Palin since day one of her designation. I know from experience that they won't print letters that dispute the factual accuracy of their columns as I have sent dozens of reasonably polite letters to the editor and none have been published. I sent them another yesterday:
"Bret Stephens' 9/16 column comparing Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience to Presidents Truman, Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt is a remarkable piece of historical disingenuity. He selects factoids and quotations concerning these three individuals to attempt to make the case that their supposed lack of specific foreign policy experience somehow justifies Governor Palin's candidacy. He conveniently leaves out some basic biographical information that would render his premise absurd.
Teddy Roosevelt had been involved in New York City politics for two decades before being elected governor of one of the largest states in the union. He was a nationally known war hero whose role in the Spanish-American War made him one of the most celebrated politicians of his era. Harry Truman was a two term US Senator whose work as chairman of the Truman Commitee investigations of wartime appropriation corruption landed him on the cover of Time Magazine BEFORE his Vice-Presidential designation. Even Calvin Coolidge, one of American history's most obscure and ineffectual Presidents, enjoyed a national prominence for his role in the 1919 Boston police strike. Mr. Stephens' comment concerning President Coolidge's tenure as mayor of Northhampton, MA actually places Sarah Palin in proper historical perspective. Tiny Northhampton's current population of 30,000 inhabitants is roughly four times the size of Wasilla, Alaska.
There is another component of the "experience" discussion that our current American political landscape precludes: intelligence. Although such discussions would be derided as elitist, especially by anti-intellectual, doctrinaire right wing Republicans, Governor's Palin's meandering attendance at some of this country's most obscure academic institutions contrast starkly to the aforementioned Presidents. Teddy Roosevelt was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College, a scholar and writer of prominent material discussing the environment and history. Calvin Coolidge was a graduate of Amherst and an attorney who operated his own law practice before entering politics. Although economic challenge prevented Harry Truman from a college degree, only his eyesight kept him from serious consideration for an appointment to the US Military Academy. His subsequent political career would indicate that he possessed the suitable intellect to serve as President of the United States.
I don't know what is more frightening, the utterly partisan journalism of Bret Stephens or the prospect of Sarah Palin potentially a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Hopefully, we will never have to actually confront the reality of the latter."
A couple of other points. The five colleges that Sarah Palin attended were University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, Matanuska-Susitna college and the University of Idaho. She received a degree from U. of I. Barack Obama got a BA from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard. He was the first African American to head the Law Review in the school's history. That type of academic gravitas alone should be compelling for those who would say that Obama hasn't done "anything" That is if any of this had to do with facts.
Maybe you want to tell the Journal and Bret Stephens what you think of their Soviet style propaganda:
bstephens@wsj.com
wsj.ltrs@wsj.com