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Palin unqualified to serve as vice president

By Dermot Cole

Originally published Friday, August 29, 2008 at 2:10 p.m.
Updated Friday, August 29, 2008 at 7:14 p.m.

Sarah Palin’s chief qualification for being elected governor of Alaska was that she was not Frank Murkowski.

He was at a low point when he took out ads saying “Maybe I should consider a personality transplant,” but his presence in the 2006 GOP primary helped her capture the nomination and go on to beat Tony Knowles.

She did not win because of her conservative credentials, her grasp of policy details or because of her track record as the mayor of Wasilla, an office she won in 1996 by collecting 617 votes.

National GOP spokesmen—including the VP also-rans—went on and on Friday about how Palin is to “the right” of John McCain, that she is an “economic conservative” and that she will attract supporters of Hillary Clinton to the Republican party.

She is an engaging and charming politician and I have nothing negative to say about her character, her tenacity or her service to our state.

I don't even have major concerns about her performance as governor. She is smart and excels in dealing with people one-on-one.

I like what she did on oil taxes and think her gas line plan may work in the long run, though that won’t be clear for years.

This is one of the most stunning news events in the history of Alaska.

However, in no way does her year-and-a-half as governor of Alaska qualify her to be vice president or president of the United States.

One of the strange things Friday was that so many commentators and politicians did not know how to pronounce her name and had no clue about what she has actually done in Alaska.

Some claimed that she has gotten a gas pipeline going after three decades of inaction, which is far from the truth, while others said she is the most popular governor in the nation, so she must be doing something right.

What the national pundits didn’t say was that Palin has served as governor of Alaska during a time of unprecedented oil wealth, which has helped preserve her popularity.

She has not had to make difficult budget and tax decisions of the sort that cost Murkowski at the polls.

Perhaps the strangest claim repeated endlessly on the news channels is that she has proven she can cut taxes and reduce the size of government in Alaska. She may have cut taxes as mayor of Wasilla, but that's not the same as cutting taxes as governor of Alaska, where there is no state income tax or sales tax to cut.

When he was governor, faced with a growing gap between oil income and expenses, Murkowski proposed a series of budget cuts and tax increases that—along with the selection of his daughter Lisa to replace him in the Senate—made him the most unpopular governor in Alaska history.

By contrast, record oil prices since her election have helped Palin avoid anything as sensitive as cutting off the Longevity Bonus or proposing a tire tax or wildlife viewing tax.

The comments from GOP politicians about how she championed budget cuts, reduced spending and “stood up” to Sen. Ted Stevens on the “bridge to nowhere” are a distortion. The Alaska budget is growing, not shrinking. To claim that the $1,200 payouts due to Alaskans in September have anything to do with restraining government growth, as McCain supporters are doing, is false.

It's true that she deserves credit for collecting much of the excess cash rolling into the state treasury. She championed a multi-billion-dollar oil tax increase, against great opposition from the oil industry and leading power brokers in the GOP, at a time when oil prices were rising and the previous tax law had become suspect.

The old law was at the center of the political corruption scandal that continues to ensnare politicians other than Palin.

The tax increase proposed by the governor and approved by the Legislature has temporarily taken all pressure off the state government to reduce spending.

With her selection by McCain, Palin will be subjected to intense scrutiny by the national news media for the first time. It will be unlike anything she has seen in Alaska.

I may be proven wrong, but the decision announced by McCain strikes me as reckless. She is not prepared to be the next president should something happen to McCain.

The main charge against Democrat Barack Obama is that he dose not have the track record to be president. The choice of Palin effectively removes that from the GOP arsenal.

Palin said Friday, in an exchange carried on CNN, that her 13 years as a member of the Wasilla City Council from 1992-96, mayor of Wasilla from 1996-2002 and governor for a year-and-a-half add up to “good experience” for the vice presidency.

McCain and Palin will have to prove that to the American people before November.

Palin unqualified

September 19, 2008

Sarah Palin may be a fresh face for Washington but should never have been picked to be the "back up" for a 72-year-old president. Delegates at the Republican National Convention said, "She's a regular housewife" and "She is someone I could have a beer with." They also sported buttons saying the VP pick was a "hot chick." Cindy McCain said Palin had been in the PTA. An RNC rep said about Palin's foreign relations experience that "Alaska is the closest state to Russia."

These certainly are not the qualifications most would look for in a vice president. It makes me question John McCain's judgment.

The motto "Country first" should perhaps be changed to "I just want to win."

Jeannette Potter

Say Goodnight, Gracie. (With Apologies to Gracie Allen.)

Ian Gurvitz | Bio

Bye, Sarah. After the latest Katie Couric interview/non-sequitur festival, Ms. Squawking Points has officially outed herself as way too much of an imbecile to keep on the ticket. Even with those furtive glances down at her cheat sheets, she still couldn't cobble together a coherent response to any question, let alone the one asked by Ms. Couric about the bailout. "It's the economics...and the job creation...and the trade...which we can't look at as scary..." Holy damned crap. Unless McCain's handlers are equally as imbecilic, which is possible but not likely, they must realize the spin cycle on this one is broken and there's no time to call tech support or send her back to the factory. She's gone before the Veep debate.

There's no way in hell they're not behind closed doors crafting her exit strategy. Among the choices: family emergency, sick kid, husband has heart attack, most likely at the same Alaska hospital where she gave birth. But, I don't think they'll go this way. It's too thin. I think the only way here is to destroy her. The evidence is already floating on the periphery: Troopergate, the bridges and roads to Nowhere, her friend the witch doctor, I see Russia from my house, the alleged affair with the husband's co-worker, the Miss Alaska swimsuit footage. Instead of pushing it away as unsubstantiated allegations, tawdry rumor and cheap shots, they just have to take the opposite approach and subtly allow it to get to the forefront while offering the illusion of a defense. Just get out the evidence and let the media poke holes in the boat. Then, once she's good and debased, debunked, and humiliated, other than from opening her mouth and attempting to speak sentences that attach to one another to form coherent thoughts, she will withdraw from the ticket for the good of the party and the country. There's no way they put her in the room with Biden. It's suicide. Which would be fine with me. Kill the monsters any way you can. But these people are not suicidal. Evil. Just not suicidal.

The question is: who's the replacement and what's the new story? Giuliani? The two tough guys hit the road? Keeping America safe? No, he scares people. Lieberman? No. Even though they've been holding hands all week in D.C., he's still a Jew and other than as bit players in The End Times Theatre production of Apocalypse Soon, the base don't like Jews. Huckabee? Possible. Though I think it's Romney. Former governor, so he's got the experience thing. Mormon, which sort of covers the base. But most of all, the business thing. With the economy going to crap, and Johnny Mac's economic credibility as thin as Freddie Mac's, he'll bring on the business guy, who can talk economics. Plus, he's got relative youth, hair, the big Osmond-looking family. The picture will work. And he's already been on the big stage. No learning curve. He's ready to lie on Day 1.

So...Goodnight, Sarah. Have a nice trip back to Alaska. The wolves will be nervous. But the rest of us may rest a bit easier. Though, I would've given anything to see that debate.

Editorial: Palin renews McCain's maverick image, but is clearly unqualified
Article Launched: 08/30/2008 09:04:50 PM PDT

Twelve hours after Democrats ended their national convention in Denver with fireworks and a stirring ovation for presidential nominee Barack Obama, Republican John McCain stole back the spotlight and some of their thunder. But his wild-card choice of the unknown and untested Sarah Palin as his vice president will backfire if voters see through it.

Picking an obscure first-term small-state governor was bold, and it may prove to be shrewd. But for the sake of the country should McCain win, it was unwise.

The decision was quintessential McCain. Hemmed in by Washington wags who warned him not to choose the vice president he liked — Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — and urged him to choose one he didn't — primary nemesis Mitt Romney — McCain defied them with an anti-establishment conservative from outside their orbit.

The solidly anti-abortion mother of five may please the social conservatives who had doubts about McCain. And Palin made it clear that she will go right after women voters still loyal to Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton, even though she lacks Clinton's depth and knowledge, and disagrees with her on nearly everything. As an activist who took on her state's corrupt Republican old guard, she reinvigorates McCain's maverick image, which he has largely repressed over the past year.

But her selection mocks a primary argument for McCain's candidacy, that foreign threats demand a seasoned, serious
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commander in chief. In potentially putting her in a position to become president at a moment's notice, it brings attention to his health and his age. It calls his judgment into question. Palin may have small-town spunk and kitchen-table common sense, but she's patently unqualified for the office.

Republicans will argue that Palin is no less experienced than Obama. That's ridiculous. In the Senate, in organizing a stunningly successful national campaign and through 18 months of hard campaigning for the nomination, Obama proved to be as capable, articulate and knowledgeable as anyone in Congress — and certainly the equal of McCain.

This week, Republicans will make the case that McCain has re-emerged as the candidate of change. That, of course, depends on the definition. McCain may talk about bipartisanship, but he has made most of President Bush's policies his own, and he has an old warrior's Cold War view of the world. Many of Palin's positions, such as favoring oil drilling in sensitive wilderness areas and teaching creationism in schools, are even more regressive.

On Thursday, Obama laid out a contrasting vision that appeals to Americans' optimism and desire for approaches to health care, energy and the economy that differ sharply from the current course. Speaking to a captivated audience and a united party in his acceptance speech, Obama forcefully answered those who have dismissed him as all eloquence and no substance.

The Republican convention is set to open on Monday, with a new supporting cast and a twist in the plot. But Denver will be a tough act to follow.

Ken Burns on Palin: Unqualified

Everybody from our entertainers to our chiropractors are talking politics these days. Who can resist?

Not Ken Burns, whose opinion carries far more weight than your everyday (even well-informed) movie star. Here's what he thinks about Sarah Palin:

"He (McCain) selected someone who is so supremely unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and he has turned the selection process into a high school popularity contest and an 'American Idol' competition...In the whole history of the Republic there has been no one with as thin a credential."

Burns, a multiple Emmy winner/Oscar nominee whose latest project, "The War" on PBS, recently picked up three Emmys, was speaking at a panel today at Fordham University's law school ahead of tonight's News and Documentary Emmy Awards where he'll take home a lifetime achievement award.

Read more about his candor here, and feel free to pass it along to everyone you know.

Filmmaker says Sarah Palin is 'supremely unqualified'

By Paul J. Gough

Sept 22, 2008, 02:52 PM ET
NEW YORK -- Count filmmaker Ken Burns as someone who isn't enamored of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

The maker of "The Civil War" and "The War" didn't flinch from criticizing GOP presidential candidate John McCain and Palin when asked at a panel discussion Monday at Fordham University's law school.

"He (McCain) selected someone who is so supremely unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and he has turned the selection process into a high school popularity contest and an 'American Idol' competition," Burns said. He said that McCain made a "cynical" pick in what he said was the most important decision of his presidential candidacy.

Burns, whose lifelong work is in American history, said that "in the whole history of the Republic there has been no one with as thin a credential" as Palin. He said it was, for McCain, a "Hail Mary pass" that will be decided in November.

Burns was being honored, along with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer and the late newsman Tim Russert, with lifetime achievement awards at Monday night's News and Documentary Emmy Awards. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, along with Fordham, sponsors a panel with the winners the morning before the ceremony.

Schieffer didn't take a stand like Burns did, but he did defend the mainstream media's coverage of Palin after she was named McCain's running mate.

"Sarah Palin is a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. The presidency is the most powerful office in the world," Schieffer said. "It seems to me that some would suggest we should just accept on faith that Sarah Palin is qualified."

Schieffer paid tribute to Palin and her remarkable and compelling life story but said that the mainstream media -- not the blogs that spread rumors that the mainstream media ignored -- didn't mistreat her. Schieffer called Palin's selection a "true game changer" that allowed the GOP to seize the momentum coming out of the conventions earlier this month.

"But the game changer that Wall Street presented last week has trumped that, and now this campaign is no longer about Sarah Palin," Schieffer said. "It is about which of these candidates is going to come up with the right answers on what has happened on Wall Street."

Half of U.S. voters said first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, doesn't have the experience needed to be an effective president, according to an ABC News poll.
The survey found that 50 percent of adults polled on Sept. 4, the last day of the Republican National Convention, said Palin lacks the right experience to be president if she succeeded to the office. Forty-two percent of the voters said she has the necessary experience, the poll said.
The poll found that 66 percent of voters said Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, has the right experience to be an effective president. Twenty-one percent believed Biden, presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate, lacks the right experience to be president.

Chuck Hagel Declares Sarah Palin Unqualified
September 19th, 2008 18:34 EST

Robert Paul Reyes

When John McCain passed over Republican heavyweights Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge and Tim Pawlenty, and selected neophyte Sarah Palin as his running mate, the rejected suitors bit their lips and praised McCain for his "excellent pick."

It was a sorry and disgusting spectacle to see these old pols heap praise on a woman who is totally unprepared and unqualified for such a high office.

These same clowns then turn around and criticize Obama for his alleged lack of experience -- it makes you laugh and cringe at the same time.

Is there on Republican with the honesty and integrity to declare that the emperor isn`t wearing any clothes, or that the Pitt Bull doesn`t have on any lipstick?

Thank goodness the answer is yes:

"Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said his party`s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, lacks foreign policy experience and called it a `stretch` to say she`s qualified to be president.

`She doesn`t have any foreign policy credentials,` Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. `You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don`t know what you can say. You can`t say anything.`

Could Palin lead the country if GOP presidential nominee John McCain could not?

`I think it`s a stretch to, in any way, to say that she`s got the experience to be president of the United States,` Hagel said."

Associated Press

Unqualified for Duty
by Dan Froomkin

Posted September 3, 2008 | 12:49 PM (EST)

One of the problems with modern political journalism is that when something manifestly absurd takes place, as long as there are people willing to argue both sides, our top reporters feel obliged to treat it as deserving of serious debate.

Case in point: John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Palin would be spectacularly unqualified for the job of vice president even if McCain were immortal. But the prospect of her suddenly being thrust into the leadership of the free world has got to leave everyone but the most loyal, talking-point-equipped partisans deeply chilled.

This is not a question of her politics. And it has absolutely nothing to do with her gender. It's not even strictly speaking a question of experience. Conceivably, somebody with even less experience than Palin could meet what everyone should be able to agree is a basic requirement for the office: That she or he has given serious thought to the national and international issues of our time.

Is there any evidence that Palin is anything other than an utter neophyte when it comes to issues such as Iraq, the economy, health care, and domestic and foreign policy generally?

Palin's lack of the most basic prerequisite for the job should be the dominant message of the news coverage. Instead, her selection was hailed as a "bold move," with her lack of qualifications relegated to the status of a Democratic complaint. Instead, the media establishment has let itself get drawn into a number of alternate story lines, some of them certainly quite fascinating, but none of them as essential.

What possible reason is there to nominate someone so lacking in gravitas for the vice presidency? In this case, of course, it couldn't be more obvious that Palin's selection has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with governance. Palin's gender and her hard-right credentials were clearly seen by McCain's top advisers as just what the campaign needed.

Whether that was a clever or suicidal political calculation remains to be seen. It's certainly looking more and more like it was a reckless one. But it doesn't just strain credulity -- it pulverizes it -- to suggest that she is the best and most qualified person McCain could find for the job.

It's a tremendous failure of political reporting that such patent spin from McCain supporters is being treated like a supportable position. By contrast, it seems to me that anyone suggesting that Palin was selected for anything other than political reasons should be considered presumptively a liar from this point on.

This is not a radical view. Here, for instance, is Richard Cohen on the Washington Post op-ed page yesterday:

"Probably the most depressing thing about Palin is not her selection but the defense of it. It has produced a parade of GOP spokesmen intent on spiking the needle on a polygraph. Looking right into the camera, they offer statement after statement that they hope the voters will swallow but that history will forget. The sum effect on the diligent news consumer is a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people -- a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November."

Even though the cable networks can find matched pairs of pundits to take opposite sides on just about anything, I can't help but think that the vast majority of political journalists recognize that there is something seriously out of whack with the Palin selection.

So it's time for our elite political reporters to look into their own heads and decide: Do you value what's in there? Or are you willing to report whatever people tell you?

Republicans Rush In
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; Page A15

One of the great sights of American political life -- a YouTube moment if ever there was one -- was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: "She's the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television," Gingrich said on the "Today" show. "So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard."

It's a pity Gingrich was not around when the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula, reputedly named Incitatus as a consul and a priest. Incitatus was his horse.

John McCain's selection of Palin, which I first viewed with horror, could now be seen in a different light. Based on various television interviews over the Labor Day weekend -- and a careful reading of the transcripts -- it is possible that this is McCain's attempt to make fools of his fellow Republicans. He has succeeded beyond all expectations.

Gingrich's point about Palin being commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard has been echoed throughout the GOP. In fact, even Cindy McCain pointed out -- rightly enough -- that Alaska is across the Bering Strait from Russia and so Palin, by deduction, has been on the front lines of the Cold War . . . had it not ended in 1989.

Still, you have to admit that in all that time, especially since Palin became governor about two years ago, no Russian invasion force has come across the strait, maybe because she was in charge of the Guard, maybe because she herself is a hunter and an athlete. The record is unclear because no high-ranking Russian appeared on any of the weekend talk shows to say how they had considered an invasion of Alaska and then backed off when Sarah Palin became commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. Who could blame them?

Just to show that he would not ask of others what he would not do himself, McCain came before Chris Wallace to sing Palin's praises. He said that he had "watched her record . . . for many, many years" which is, a prudent man might say, more years than she's had a record. McCain, as a fellow military man, did not mention Palin's tenure as the supreme commander of the entire Alaska National Guard, maybe because he thought it speaks for itself. If that's the case, he's right.

Probably the most depressing thing about Palin is not her selection but the defense of it. It has produced a parade of GOP spokesmen intent on spiking the needle on a polygraph. Looking right into the camera, they offer statement after statement that they hope the voters will swallow but that history will forget. The sum effect on the diligent news consumer is a feeling of consummate contempt for the intelligence of the American people -- a contempt that will be justified should Palin be the factor that makes McCain a winner in November.

One of the more heroic efforts at Palin worship came from the commentator-columnist William Kristol, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle. He had to use the code word "traditional" three times in a single sentence to make his point: "It's a pretty amazing story of personal success, being at once a traditional woman who broke all of these traditional barriers, kind of the best of both worlds, if you believe in traditional values."

About the only Republican who seemed totally sincere about Palin was Grover G. Norquist, an anti-tax obsessive who once likened the argument that the estate tax affected only a very few people to the argument -- made by no one I can think of -- that the Holocaust also affected a relatively few people. "I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust," he said only five years ago. Norquist called the selection of the anti-tax Palin a "wise" choice.

In 1959, the novelist Terry Southern published "The Magic Christian," a darkly comic tale based on the premise that people will do anything for money. The choice of Palin proves that people will also do anything for political power -- including rising early on a holiday weekend to make fools of themselves.