[Note: this is also posted as a comment in the thread on the previous post, but I wanted to bring it up here as well. Also, to Tristan, yes, it is a serious question, which is why I gave it a serious reply. Thank you so much for posting it.]
Tristan wrote:
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, this is a serious question.
I understand that you know her, but how can you think that she'd make a good president? She's been governor for 2 years and before that a mayor of 9,000 people. That just seems like a mistake by the republican party. I'm voting for Obama, but I just don't get how anyone can vote for McCain now seeing as he'll probably die before his term is up and the country would be left in the hands of a 44 year old who has no background in politics.
Just a quick reply:
You raise good points, and I am hoping for Sarah's sake she does all right in the debate with Biden.
But she ain't no Dan Quayle, I can tell you that. Just because she's been tucked up in Alaska (as many talented people are, hiding away up there, by choice), doesn't mean she won't study her playbook and be quick with decent replies.
Here's where I give her points: you gotta understand what it means to stand up to the oil companies in Alaska. Before she did it, it was inconceivable to me that ANY Alaskan politician could do it. These are companies who rule the world, who dictate terms, pay off whomever they want in whatever countries they want, and have corrupted Alaska politics long before I ever moved up there in 1976.
But like Oklahoma, they are the only game in town for Alaska. Without oil, the state has no economy to speak of.
So what do I give Sarah credit for? Her political resume IS as lite as Obama's, and while she's one year younger than I, Obama is one year older than I am. Obama's lite resume (community organizing? Fancy word for what Sarah was doing in Alaska in her school board and as mayor, if you ask me) includes Harvard Law, but any Alaskan resume includes the deep foundational credo: "We don't give a damn how they do things Outside" (meaning Lower 48). To my mind, that unorthodoxy, surgically implanted into your backbone, leads many supremely qualified people, multi-generational families, to essentially give the Eastern establishment the finger, and to make their religion the common sense logic of Huck Finn, who "lights out for the territory" to be able to start with a cleaner slate than any given establishment will allow. That same motivation also led a lot of Northern Europeans to settle in a so-called "New World," and legions of immigrant waves to follow in succeeding years.
But the main thing I give Sarah Palin credit for is integrity, and lord knows, the GOP needs a MASSIVE dose of that. And truly? What kind of a woman does the GOP pick? They got Elizabeth Dole, and they picked Sarah. Sexist GOP piggies THINK they got a pretty prop that they can trot out when they need her, then go off into smoke-filled rooms to take their orders from Karl Rove and Cheney.
I mean, look at what they did to Christine Todd Whitman. Republicans favor women politicians as quiet props who keep in their place.
I bet you Frank Murkowski is STILL wishing Sarah were that kind of a woman. And I can't stop grinning, because she isn't, and she is walking into Rove's world with her eyes open and integrity in place. They are betting they can corrupt her with politics as usual. I am betting that she could take down more ethically-challenged Republicans from the INSIDE than Woodward and Bernstein ever did!
Think of it. What would Donna Haraway's "feminist cyborg guerrilla" come from, if she were set up to subvert from inside the belly of the GOP beast?
Chris
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