Who Is Cool To Rule?

David Brooks has made a final stab at disqualifying Sarah Palin on the basis of experience in his infuriatingly patronizing N.Y. Times column today.

Brooks considers it a given that Palin’s lacks experience and prudence. Brooks makes the curious statement, “She seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness,” an assertion he fails to back up with examples.

Exactly how is Palin brash? Webster’s defines “brash” as, “heedless of the consequences, audacious, done in haste without regard for consequences, rash, full of fresh raw vitality, uninhibitedly energetic or demonstrative, lacking restraint and discernment, tactless, aggressively self-assertive, impudent.

Sarah Palin is “audacious,” having taken on Big Oil and the Republican establishment in Alaska and beaten them. Those actions may have seemed to have been made “heedlessly of consequences,” but she evidently knew what she was doing, because she squeezed a windfall tax out of Big Oil and won the governorship despite the enmity of the state GOP.

Was she rash? She would have been if she were incapable of winning the battles she took on. But she was talented enough to win. Working to the limit of your talents is not being rash.

Is she “full of fresh raw vitality?” So much so that it irritates her liberal foes to the point of derangement.

Therefore, if Sarah Palin is “brash,” as Brooks claims, it is the good kind of brash: audacious, daring, vital, fresh and energetic.

More curious is Brooks’ charge that Palin is “excessively decisive.” Decision is generally considered a positive quality in a leader. In a world where nuclear weapons are on a hair trigger and national leaders may not have the luxury of enough time to blink, the ability to come to a decision and stick to it is a positive good.

Take the recent Russia-Georgian War, for example. Barack Obama’s initial response was to call on both sides to act with restraint and to submit the dispute to the UN Security Council –where one of the belligerent countries has a veto. Where is the decision in this mealy-mouthed manifesto? All that Obama succeeds in doing is to draw a moral equivalence between the aggressor (Russia) and the victim (Georgia) and propose an inherently impotent forum for solving the crisis. McCain’s first response was an outraged demand that Russia remove her troops from Georgia –a decisive, unambiguous statement that lays the blame for the war where it belongs.

Decisiveness is absolutely essential to leadership. If Brooks wanted to criticize Palin for impulsiveness or rash decision-making, he should have done so explicitly. On the other hand, there is no evidence in the public record of Palin making rash decisions as a mayor or governor…

Brooks falls back on the experience issue to disqualify Palin. Only education and experience, he says, endows the ruler with the required prudence and wisdom for governance.

Says who?

Let’s look at experience from the perspective of presidential history. Some of our most qualified leaders, in terms of education and experience, have made our worst presidents.

Among the worst are John Adams, the Harvard-educated co-signer of the Declaration of Independence who, as President, attempted to criminalize criticism of the government and embroiled us in an undeclared naval war with France. U.S. Grant was West Point-educated, commanded the largest American army up to that time and, as president, was unable to control rampant corruption in his administration.

Franklin Pierce (Bowdoin College) allowed himself to be used as a tool by the south to expand slavery into the Territories. Woodrow Wilson (President, Princeton University –Governor of New Jersey) was unable to convince his own country to participate in the League of Nations. Herbert Hoover (Stanford) presided impotently over the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy (Harvard –service in the U.S. Senate and House) and Lyndon B. Johnson (Texas State University-San Marcos, Senate Majority Leader) embroiled us in the quagmire of Vietnam.

Richard M. Nixon (Whittier College – U.S. Senate, Vice President) subverted the Constitution. Jimmy Carter (US Naval Academy-Georgia State Senate, Governor of Georgia) presided over the hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and an economic meltdown. George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard Law--CEO, Texas Rangers, Governor of Texas) mishandled the Iraq War and relief operations after Hurricane Katrina.

What a talented, well-educated group of executives! But where are the benefits of experience and prudence? Obviously, a great education and extensive experience are no guarantee that a leader will be just, prudent or even minimally competent.

Among our worst qualified presidents we find Abraham Lincoln (nine months elementary school –Illinois legislature, US House of Representatives) who preserved the Union and freed the slaves. Harry S. Truman (Independence High School –failed haberdasher, local judge, one term U.S. Senate, one month Vice President) ended World War II with the atomic bombings of Japan, used an airlift to save besieged Berlin, founded NATO, rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan and reasserted civilian control over the military by firing MacArthur. George Washington (no formal schooling – military general) established the modern presidency, helped write the Constitution, established tradition of giving up power after two terms, declined a monarchy over America and asserted national sovereignty against local challenges to Federal authority (Whiskey Rebellion).

Evidently, lack of schooling or experience is not a reliable predictor of performance as President either.

Neither is membership in the governing elite. Mr. Brooks’ protestations to the contrary, George W. Bush was and is a member of the elite political class –which proved to be no guarantee of great performance.

In the end, Mr. Brooks’ big objection to Sarah Palin is that she is not “one of us,” a member of the governing class. “Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared,” Brooks says.

So who are the “best prepared?” Who gets to define that? The editorial board of The New York Times? I submit the definition belongs to the people, not to academics, not to party bosses, and certainly not to opinion writers like David Brooks. Let the people choose their leaders from among themselves. No one should be entitled to rule (or disqualified) by virtue of their education, experience or membership in a cultural elite.

Democracy is the people selecting their leaders from among themselves –not from a list of “approved candidates” submitted by the press or the parties.

Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself...

Who is the scariest person in America?

According to the Sunday papers, Sharon Osbourne, Ed Koch, Matt Damon and Mary Mitchell, it’s Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the GOP candidate for Vice President.

Mrs. Palin is the target of a renewed round of invective from the media and political elites this weekend. In the past two weeks the Left has been spraying manure at the woman in hopes something will stick. All this has served to do is to improve the McCain-Palin poll numbers and to move the discussion away from Barack Obama’s programs to his qualifications for high office verses hers.

And yet, although Americans increasingly see the Left as a bunch of bullies ganging up on Sarah Palin, and even though Obama would dearly love to talk about economics, his “friends” insist on trying to drive a stake through Mrs. Palin’s heart. Thus the effort for Obama mires down in precisely the kind of slimy politics that Obama had vowed to avoid.

We are now at the point where the hatred of Sarah Palin on the left lapses into actual derangement as her enemies wish for her to be obliterated, jailed, destroyed, execrated. Let’s tiptoe through some of the verbal nosegays her enemies are offering:

“She hates women,” – Pink

“I think there's a really good chance Sarah Palin could be president, and I think that's a really scary thing, because I don't know anything about her,” –Matt Damon. What better reason for fear than ignorance?

"Palin should be [a] laughingstock to all feminists"—Mary Mitchell

“Sarah Palin named two of her children after witches.” --The New Republic

“She's friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, 'can we sleep over at the Palin’s? No! NO!'” –Randi Rhodes, who also claimed this week that McCain was “well-treated” by the North Vietnamese while a POW….

“A cocky wacko.” –Senator Lincoln Chaffee

"Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." –Wendy Doniger, Newsweek.

“After four years of sex and treachery in Desperate Housewives, I thought I was a perfect pick for vice president.” --Eva Longoria

"I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail." -- Bob Herbert, New York Times

“[Her] primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” –Carol Fowler, South Carolina Democratic Chairwoman.

“Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right.” –Cintra Wilson, Salon magazine.

"In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them ... “ –Ann Friedman, The American Prospect

“[Palin’s values] more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers…What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.” --Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan.

“Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.” –Cintra Wilson, Salon.

“…Night after night, [Palin] appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.” –David Plotz, Slate.

‘Tis said that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. The Left expects that one of these days someone is going to say something about Palin so apt that people will turn massively against her in ridicule and scorn. That’s not going to happen.

What is happening is that Barack Obama and the campaign are diminishing themselves by fighting over the qualifications of the GOP voice presidential candidate, which only serves to bring Obama’s wafer-thin resume into sharper focus. What is happening is that the people who should be talking about the economy –the GOP’s weakest issue—are talking about Palin instead. The Left is revealing its snobbery, its elitism, its scorn for ordinary Americans and their culture, its hatred of religion, and, yes, its sexism when a female dares to disagree with revealed leftist wisdom.

Obama can still win this election, but he and his side are beginning to deserve to lose.

Obama, Charlie Gibson and Mr. Kim

What I like about Barack Obama: Being a Republican, I like the fact that when he is accused of something, he tends to repeat the accusation over and over –until everyone has it memorized.

It’s very important for Barack to have the last word and to be right. That’s why he repeats things like the “lipstick” remark –to prove he was right all along.

I also like his arrogant treatment of the truth. It betrays, I think, an assumption that either the press is going to shield him or that the average voter isn’t very bright. He claims he never voted against a bill to preserve the lives of babies surviving abortions. But as a State Senator in Illinois he did just that, including a bill modeled after federal legislation written by Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Obama cites as proof of his superior judgment his opposition to the War in Iraq (while he was still a state senator). He notes, with disapproval, John McCain’s inferior judgment for voting for the war. Then what does Obama do? He names Joe Biden –another vote for the war—to be his running mate!

If nothing else, the Obama candidacy has settled the question of which is more dangerous –drug use or Christianity. Obama’s admitted cocaine use as a young man, we are told, is nothing to be concerned with. The same people who dismiss his past with drugs, however, seem to be getting quite upset with Sarah Palin’s onetime affiliation with a speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal church.

* * *

Did you catch part one of Charles Gibson’s interview with Gov. Palin last night? This is a subjective call on my part, but I got the feeling he could not stand her. He was all closed in on himself and he spoke to her in an unnaturally quiet tone of voice, as if he were forcing himself to talk.

One could make the case that he was marginally rude to Gov. Palin. He asked her if, when McCain offered her the nomination, she had had a moment of doubt as to her qualifications. She said she did not, prompting the frankly disbelieving Gibson to put the same question to her again! When she repeated that she felt no hesitancy, he accused her of “hubris.”

* * *

Kim Jong Il is apparently in worse shape than anyone thought. He missed a major military parade but, we are told, his absence was hidden by “production values.” The speculation is that he may be physically and intellectually impaired by the cerebral accident.

None of his three sons are suitable to take over the country and his generals all look under fed. …which brings us to the reason Mr. Kim had a stroke. For one thing he was a chain smoker most of his life, though he quit a few years ago.

Secondly --and this is an important distinction-- he was arguably the only fat man in North Korea. The destruction of agriculture in North Korea has been pretty thorough, even by Stalinist standards. There have been years under the late Kim Il Sung (“The Glorious Leader”) and Kim Jong Il (“The Beloved Leader”) when as many as a million North Koreans have died of starvation. Only Kim Jong Il has been able to stay pleasingly plump.

Kim Jong Il, by the way, loves shark caviar and dishes made of shark fin and fresh conch. If he is partially paralyzed he probably won’t be dining so royally in the future, though, and the Joy Brigades may have to be disbanded.

The Joy Brigades, for those unaware, are groups of junior high-aged maidens conscripted into State service by Mr. Kim, to provide highly specialized entertainment for his elderly generals and, of course, to satisfy his own pedophilic inclinations.

If Mr. Kim has been sidelined, it is very likely that the Chinese, with the full approval of the United States, will try to set up some kind of satellite government in North Korea. Perhaps the Koreans can be persuaded to let a couple million Chinese “volunteers” come in to run the country –and very gently disarm it of their atom bombs and million-man army. It would make for a surprise happy ending for that country’s sorry saga, and it would mean that pretty 13-year-old Korean girls would have a chance of making it to 14 as virgins.

John McCain, Sarah Palin and Good and Evil

A reader responds: The jury is out on Johnny Mac's brilliance but [the Palin announcement] did upstage a great speech.

Out here [California], everyone thinks the Palin choice was not one of McCain's finest moments.

He seems to make snap decisions and views this complicated gray world in black and white moments of impulse.

If he picked her because "the base" would revolt on the convention floor if Ridge or Lieberman were chosen, then where is the “maverick” in him.

Why do you think he did not pick Huckabee (who can play a little bass as well as have somewhat of a grasp on things Republican?)

And I replied: I have to admit that Mike Huckabee's bass playing endeared him to me early on...and that he was my second pick for the nomination...after Fred Thompson.
I think Huckabee comes across as too much of a hick for McCain's tastes. Also, he does not really think out everything he says.
As for Lieberman and Ridge, they are pro-choice, which means that they would be spat out as readily by the GOP convention as a pro-life candidate would have been rejected by the Dems…had Obama selected one. Corollary: The Democrats will never nominate a pro-life candidate and the GOP will never nominate a pro-choice candidate.
Sarah Palin is a woman of surprising capacity. I have been reading and watching old interviews of her and she grasps the number one issue--energy--firmly and authoritatively. I also admire the way she has knocked down the GOP Corrupt Bastards Club's hold on the Alaska Government...and beat a windfall tax out of Big Oil that she turned over to individual Alaskans...and got the natural gas pipeline project started after 30 years of failed negotiations...
When McCain says he vetted her as thoroughly as the other candidates I believe him as he is an honorable man.

If McCain wasn't able to see nuances, he would not have been able to write campaign finance reform law with Russ Feingold or forge a deal on appointments of federal judges with Ted Kennedy, or write a bill on immigration reform both parties (but not the president) could heartily endorse... and play a major part in every bipartisan piece of senate legislation over the past 18 years or so...
McCain has a very keen sense of what is good and evil...a sense that was sharpened under five years of torture as a POW. That's why he can buck his president on the waterboarding issue.

It's fashionable now for people to say that there are no such things as "good" or "evil." Morality tends to be nuanced out of existence. Pat Moynahan called the process, "Dumbing deviancy down."
And yet, in this world there are some things that are decidedly good and decidedly evil. Evil exists in this world...metaphysically, spiritually, physically. The genocides in Darfur and Rwanda are and were evil. Racism is evil. Torture is evil --and we have no business doing it, because we are supposed to be the Good Guys... Nazism is evil. Crime for profit is evil ...even if the profit is only revenge or a sexual thrill. Starvation is evil. Sickness is evil (believe me I know). All forms of cruelty are evil.
Fortunately, the undisputedly good things are in much greater supply. Work is good, because it confers dignity. Familial love is good, because it banishes loneliness and selfishness. Erotic love is good...as long as the "love" part is not forgotten, and as long as it is loving and not using...Knowledge is good...Peace is good....unless it is a peace of fear that allows others to do evil things (see the rise of Nazi Germany as an example)...Charity is good...as long as it does not stand in the way of capable individuals finding work. Hope is good...if it makes us persevere and is grounded in at least a small but reasonable expectation of success…and what we hope for is itself neither selfish nor evil.
I don't dislike Obama. I think he is a good man. I just don't think his ideas will work. McCain comes closer to my way of thinking.

Shame Enough to Go Around

There is still plenty of shame to go around as the leftist press and blogosphere reach deep down into the mud bucket to smear Sarah Palin through her daughter and even her daughter’s fiancé.

Shame on the New York Post and the New York Daily News and all the other papers that quoted from high school junior’s Levi Johnston’s My Space page in which he uses a vulgarity to describe himself. Is it the prurience of this little detail or the desperation of some media types to smear Sarah Palin –however indirectly through her daughter’s boyfriend—that drives this sort of “coverage?”

Shame on Representative Robert Wexler (D-Florida) for taking the rumor that Palin had supported the Pat Buchanan campaign (back in 2000 –she actually supported Steve Forbes), and elaborating on the lie by saying:

“John McCain’s decision to select a vice presidential running mate that endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000 is a direct affront to all Jewish Americans. Pat Buchanan is a Nazi sympathizer *with a uniquely atrocious record on Israel …John McCain has failed his first test of leadership and judgment by selecting a running mate who has aligned herself with a leading anti-Israel voice in American politics. It is frightening that John McCain would select someone one heartbeat away from the presidency who supported a man who embodies vitriolic anti-Israel sentiments.”

It takes your breath away, doesn’t it? But there is more, so…

…Shame, doubled, on Mark Bubriski, an Obama campaign operative, who emailed the Miami Herald, among others, saying, “Palin was a supporter of [MSNBC analyst] Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer,”

Bubriski deserves double the shame because he not only smears Sarah Palin, but Barack Obama as well. I believe Obama when he says lay off the kids. I believe him when he reminds people his mother was only 18 when he was born. I believe him when he says he wants a new kind of politics. But loose cannon like the left bloggers and campaign “aides” like Bubriski smear Obama by belying his principles. For shame.

Shame on The New York Times, and specifically reporter Elizabeth Bumiller who claims, incorrectly, that Palin was a member for two years of the Alaska Independence Party, “which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede.” ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, Jake Tapper, repeated the stories. –but at least he added this: “Gail Fenumiai, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, tells ABC News that …’Gov. Sarah Palin first registered to vote in the state in May 1982 as a Republican, and she has not changed her party affiliate with the Division of Elections since that time.’”

The reason for the story, besides administering a good old fashioned sliming of the candidate, is to call into question the process by which McCain selected Palin…a major Democratic talking point.

At the rate that the militant left is slinging mud at Sarah Palin, her kids and even her kid’s boyfriend, I expect to have ample material for two to three blogs a day, as will the rest of the right-of-center blogosphere… At least until the left realizes how it is hurting, not helping, Barack Obama’s cause.

They may get a clue tonight when Fred Thompson gives his speech to the GOP convention. The topic is the sliming of Sarah Palin. I’m not going to miss it…

* Emphasis added. Buchanan denies this vehemently.

Obama is Right About Palin’s Family

I am willing to believe that Barack Obama has more class than many of his supporters. The Internet has been jumping for the past 60 hours with the nasty rumor that Trig Palin, the five month old baby of Sarah Palin is actually her granddaughter and that she was covering up for her daughter Bristol who, the Obamist bloggers say, was the real (and unwed) mother.

Today Governor Palin set matters straight. Bristol, 17, is pregnant –five months pregnant. The timing is such that if the initial rumors were true, she would have conceived her present baby while she was still expecting the other. Given how these bloggers think nature works, I would not be surprised if they thought that was possible, but believe me, it isn’t.

Obama, in the meantime, has spoken up about the rumors and Palin’s announcement making a statement for which he should be commended: “We don't go after people's families. We don't get them involved in the politics. It's not appropriate and it's not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they'd be fired.”

To make his point even clearer, Obama added, “This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”

In their treatment of Sarah Palin and her family, the left blogosphere and the mainstream media are tying a big fat anchor rope around Barack Obama’s neck. If the Obama campaign can call ordinary criticism of their candidate “smear tactics,” then what do we call the slime being hurled at Sarah Palin and her family?

A lot of people have a lot to be ashamed of.

Shame on Alan Colmes for insinuating that Palin endangered the life of her unborn child (“Did Palin Take proper Pre-Natal Care?” The story is here. ) by finishing her day’s work in Texas when she had only leaked a trivial amount of amniotic fluid. She was not in contractions when she boarded an Alaska Air flight to go home, and made the trip after consulting with her doctor.

Shame on Andrew Sullivan and the Obamist blogosphere for passing around the Sarah Palin is a grandmother rumor. What a smarmy little piece of trash that was. People like Sullivan ought to know better.

Shame on the Daily Kos and blogger ArcXIX for pushing the above rumor. They do know better but apparently don’t care. And shame on the Kos bloggers nauseatingly rejoicing at the Palin family’s crisis.

Shame on Andrea Mitchell of NBC for stating, on “Meet the Press,” that college-educated persons will not want to vote for Mrs. Palin. Because why, Andrea? Because she is not part of the privileged political class to whom you relate so well? Your condescending tone, your arrogance is breathtaking.

Shame on Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift for denigrating and dismissing Palin on "The McLaughlin" group. I don’t know how many newsrooms she was in when McCain announced Palin on Friday. I doubt that, like a Catholic saint, Clift can bilocate and physically be in more than one place at a time. But Clift reported that, “This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in many places…in very, very many newsrooms.” Hear the audio of this segment by clicking here (13 seconds, 80Kb).

Shame on Politico for disguising four Democratic Party stalwarts as uninterested “presidential historians.” They are David Kennedy (who has donated the maximum allowable amount of money to the Obama campaign), Joel Goldstein (also a cash donor),

Doris Kearns Goodwin (who has donated to the Party) and Matthew Dalleck (Dick Gephardt’s former speech writer). This is a nice way to disguise a rehash of Obamist talking points.

Shame on ABC’s Rick Klein and Jennifer Parker for calling the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy “A damaging revelation,” and then failing to prove that notion when interviewing Republicans and family-values sources at the convention --all of whom praised the decision of Miss Palin to keep her baby and praised the family values of Governor Palin.

Shame on CNN for using Bristol’s story as the basis of a hitpiece on her mother.

Shame on Morton Kondracke –who knows nothing more about the circumstances of Bristol’s pregnancy than we do-- for chiming in with the same criticism as the CNN hitpiece (see him here.)

There is a lot more shame to go around. Barack Obama says he is against the hyper-partisan “say anything to win” kind of politics seen in the last several elections. He says he is against making political hay with the children of candidates. I believe him. But the radical left doesn’t.

That’s not “change;” that’s more of the same.