Is Palin Ready to be President?
Some conservative columnists and bloggers have been taking shots at Palin and while I'm not Palin's biggest fan by any means but calling a spade a spade, the Palin question is a media manufactured smear along the same lines as claiming that McCain hates Spain.
Let's get it straight, nothing Palin has said is in a league with any of Biden's whoppers. Pointing out that your state borders the second largest world power resulting in trade relations and border issues is perfectly reasonable, except when the media turns it into an unfriendly soundbite to ridicule in order to fit the narrative that she is unqualified, a narrative that they coined hours after McCain picked her.
The same media that found this so absurd have never questioned Obama's claims of foreign policy qualifications based on
A. Having traveled as a child to Indonesia
B. Making a highly publicized tour of Europe and the Middle East complete with a pointless speech to a German crowd drawn by free beer
C. Picking a Vice President who knows foreign policy so Obama doesn't have to.
Is Palin ready to be President tomorrow? The real question is by comparison to whom? She's not as ready as McCain is, but as ready as G.W. Bush or Clinton were who went from State governors to the White House. But more to the point Obama isn't ready to be President today and since when have we actually taken the qualifications of VP candidates seriously? About the only Vice President in a while who was ready to be President is Dick Cheney and in return he's gotten nothing but obsessive accusations of being Bush's puppet master.
The liberal media after all are the masters of playing Catch 22 with conservative candidates and Cheney\Palin are a perfect example of the game. Nominate an old pro and he's an evil puppet master. Nominate a fresh face and he's a moron. The media is playing the Dan Quayle game with Palin and some conservatives are falling for it. But lest conservatives forget the media have played the same game with Bush himself for nearly a decade and they've gotten nowhere because Bush clearly showed how to beat the media at their game, show confidence, laugh off any mistakes you make and keep a down home attitude about everything because it's a manufactured campaign that will pass.
Just to put things into perspective, the last VP candidate the Democrats nominated was an inexperienced but very wealthy and charming lawyer who turned out to be a sleazeball and using campaign money for his affair and he will be lucky to keep his Senate seat.
The VP candidate the Democrats nominated before that is currently an honorary Republican and persona non grata in Democratic circles.
The sitting Democratic VP before that lost his mind after losing a narrowly disputed election, grew a beard and returned as a doomsday prophet to urge the forced shutdown of coal plants.
Finally there's Joe Biden, a one man gaffe machine that the media either refuses to report on or simply laughs off his endless stupidities. Is a man who comes blind stinking drunk to a campaign rally really qualified to be President? What about a man who contradicts himself from day to day.
Or better yet is a man under the impression that his term will be 8 to 10 years and that America has 57 states even qualified to be a White House intern, let alone the President of the United States.
The media would have you believe that Obama is qualified and Palin isn't. And that assessment is beyond indefensible.
If we were living in some sort of ideal world, political offices would be filled by honest, ethical, intelligent and qualified people. Also vending machines would dispense free sodas, all wars could be settled with a computer game of chess and bread would never fall on the buttered side. We don't live in that world though, we live in this one. And in this world the McCain-Palin ticket is the best qualified and the least destructive when compared to Obama-Biden. There can be no serious argument in that regard.
Yes I'm sure it would be swell if the candidates we support could deliver orations that rivaled those of Cicero, organize a nation like Churchill and looked like George Washington. On the other hand we arguably get the candidates we deserve, reflections of ourselves and our shortcomings, and maybe that's what really bugs some of the conservative pundits and bloggers-- because while Obama-Biden are an all too accurate reflection of the progressive left, McCain-Palin are a reflection of the Republican party as it is today, rather than as it should be.
Palin has suffered from hysterical overreactions on both sides. Hysterical hatred from liberals and hysterical adoration from conservatives and now a hysterical backlash from some conservatives. She has an interesting story, but she isn't superhuman, she can't fly or change the nation in 5 minutes. Like every Governor who wends his or her way to the White House, she'll need time to learn and adjust, but she has proven that she's capable of taking on big jobs, which frankly is more than Obama has proven. She's facing an unprecedentedly hostile and biased media climate which means there isn't going to be smooth sailing. But she is the VP pick which makes the potshots from people who supposedly don't want to see Barack Hussein Obama in the Oval Office counterproductive at best and a betrayal at worst.
The bottom line is that the VP candidate has never mattered a whole lot. Few people paid attention to Bush Sr or Quayle or Gore or for that matter Cheney except in a deragatory or negative way. The job of Vice President is a thankless task that doesn't win you plaudits. Palin's ability to weather the hostility now is the best sign of whether she has what it takes for that job, the one she's actually running for.