How will quitting as governor affect Palin's chances.

Politics & Elections
141

Certainly I can. For one thing, it was a debate and the subject was known beforehand, thus allowing Carter and his advisors to formulate his position.

Secondly, Carter wasn’t asked about his foreign policy expertise on national television virtually (or perhaps literally, I don’t recall) days after announcing his candidacy.

Third, as I said above, as candidate for president, Carter was in a position to define his administration’s approach to foreign policy - a position not available to a vice-presidential candidate.

And forth (and as I also said above), the newspaper question, as Palin rightly recognized, was a loaded question designed to make her look bad no matter her answer. If she’d said something like “The Anchorage Gazette” (don’t know if such a paper exists, but you get the idea), she’s have been lampooned for its lack of sophistication and expertise in reporting important issues, and if she’d said the NYT, the LA Times, the Washington Post, etc., she’d have been accused of thinking she could formulate something as serious and important as foreign policy based on nothing more substantial than reading newspapers - something any moron could do and which in no way qualified her for office.

Palin was being set up and she recognized it. She knew better than to take Couric’s questions at face value. The problem for her was that she wasn’t polished enough to fend them off with what we have come to know as customary skill.

ETA: With regard to my lust or lack thereof for Palin - said in jest or otherwise - I think she is strikingly good-looking, but not in a way that appeals to me. Plus her voice drives me nuts. Plus I haven’t been defending her - what I’ve been doing is pointing out liberal inaccuracies regarding her, and/or why liberal views of her experiences in the media are inaccurate.

142

At this point Starving Artist is generating more electricity than the Hoover Dam, he’s spinning so furiously.

143

Yes, it was a terrible trick question–“Which newspapers do you read?”–so she would have been blasted by that dynamo attack-dog Cutie Couric if she had, you know, NAMED a few newspapers.

Don’t you agree that it would have been a great chance for her to complain about “gotcha” questions if she would have, you know, tried answering it and THEN gotten grief about the inadequacy of naming some newspapers in response to be asked to name a few?

BTW, 42fish, you’re falling into **SA’s **trap here–he’s already announced that if you name specific foreign policy questions that Carter or Clinton received as candidates, he will refuse to apologize for his false claims and will decline to take any responsibility for making you do the work of finding cites that he will weasel out of.

144

Oh, I realize that. But “Sarah Palin answering questions about foreign policy by citing Alaska’s proximity in Russia in no way means that she was claiming that Alaska’s location gave her foreign policy experience” has gotten played out. And SA’s “It depends on the what the meaning of ‘we’ is” feint turned out to be a non-starter.

145

Is this the part where, mistakenly thinking you have won the battle to make it appear a political figure you hate/fear said something he/she didn’t, you gather together to backslap and claim victory over the truth?

146

Oh, sorry, Starving, you’re right, Palin didn’t say what she said.

147

How do you expect him to defend her if you keep quoting her?

-Joe

148

Well, you see, that’s just the problem: no one can quote her saying what they’re claiming she said.

149

In 1976 I was a Republican well past voting age, and I voted for Ford. I don’t recall any backlash from my side about Carter being given a free ride. In 1976 TV News was basically the 3 networks, so there was not that much opportunity to see candidate interviews. Also, if you remember, when Carter announced he was not exactly a frontrunner; he was the person who figured out that campaigning in Iowa, before New Hampshire, would give him a boost. So I doubt he was high on anyone’s interview list before Iowa.

I’m fairly certain that the point that a Georgian peanut farmer did not have foreign policy expertise was mentioned by his opponents. This was one of the first outsider versus insider campaigns, so it might not have hurt him that much.
It would probably be hard to find cites about these questions online, but if no one asked them, they should have. In any case, Carter would not have broken down and cry about how unfair it was, unlike the bimbo you seem to support.

150

Palin is an idiot, a clown. She would not be trusted by sane people to ever hold any office ever again. She has no smarts, no skills, no qualifications. She is a village idiot and an attention whore, so wrapped up in her own vision of “stardom” that she can’t see anything else.

151

Gee, it’s like post #104 never happened.

152

Do you really want us to start posting quotes from Palin?

153

That doesn’t work. SA is perfectly capable of insisting the sun sets in the East if it supports one of his causes.

154

Yes, I’d like you to post a quote where Sarah Palin says something that could resonably equate to “Yes, I have foreign policy experience sufficient to qualify me to hold the office of Vice-President of the United States because I can see Alaska from my house.”

I don’t recall foreign policy expertise being considered a qualification even for the presidency until the nomination of Sarah Palin as vice-president. Nixon and Bush 1 had foreign policy experience, but I don’t recall anyone ever acting like that was a key element in the elections that resulting in their voted into office. No other president, going all the way back to Kennedy, had any foreign policy experience going into office. Kennnedy didn’t have it, Ford didn’t have it, Carter didn’t have it, Reagan didn’t have it, Clinton didn’t have it, GWB didn’t have it, and Barack Obama didn’t have it.

But let Palin get nominated for the vice-presidency, and all of a sudden foreign policy knowledge becomes the most important factor in her qualifications for office!

Well, bullshit, I say. Foreign policy is something that one only develops expertise in by doing. You have to be involved in it. And the most important factors in dealing effectively with matters of foreign policy are knowledgable and effective aides, and ability as a negotiator. What you may or may not know going into office generally means nothing because the only knowledge you have came from news reports, and the news media simply isn’t privvy to the behind-closed-door machinations that go on into dealing with problems involving other areas around the globe. It has always been expected that a president, once elected, would contend with foreign policy in the same way that he deals with any other area of his responsibility: to the best of his ability. We don’t demand that our presidents be economists, but we expect them to deal effectively with the economy. We don’t expect our presidents to be military experts, but we expect them to function effectively as Commander-In-Chief, etc., etc., etc. In virtually every area that comes under the purview of the presidency, we expect our presidents to learn on the job, using a combination of knowledgeable advisors along with their own intellect, judgement and wisdom in order to do so effectively.

An issue was made of Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience for the sole purpose of undercutting her viability as the Republican candidate for vice-president, and a purpose willingly promoted by the entertainmment media (it was Tina Fey, in her impersonation of Palin, was the one who, IIRC, first used the line “I have foreign policy experience because I can see Russia from my house”).

It was simply a hit job propogated by the media against a candidate they were desperate to discredit for fear that Palin would draw votes from women who might otherwise vote for the Democrat. No other presdent, much less vice-president, has ever had a significant issue made of their prior foreign policy experience or knowledge.

155

Nah. It’s merely that SA decided that Post 104 doesn’t count because it doesn’t contain the specific and arbitrary wording that he demanded after the fact in Post #116.

156

So it’s your contention that back in 1976 they had an entire presidential debate dedicated to an utter irrelevancy?

157

My contention is exactly what I said it was, which is that Jimmy Carter was never deemed unfit for office because he lacked foreign policy expertise. (Nor, as I said, was Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, GWB, or Barack Obama.)

In debates, candidates discuss various issues that they will be responsible for once in office and how they will handle them. By that time they have assembled advisors and developed at least a preliminary idea of what they want to say. They try to anticipate the questions they’ll be asked and they rehearse their responses. In the area of foreign policy, they are usually quizzed about how they would handle certain specific areas of conflict. They aren’t asked questions that carry the implication: “So, what do you think you know about foreign policy, anyway?”

158

Wait a second. Are we going for ‘reasonably’ or ‘to your satisfaction’? Because they appear to be different standards.

If we’re sticking with reasonable, let’s try this again:

159

This is starting to feel like we’re debating the Black Knight. We keep cutting off his arms and legs but he keeps insisting he’s winning.

160

The problem with that quote is that Couric set up a false premise. Palin had not said that Russia’s proximity with Alaska gave her foreign policy experience. So Couric set her up. Palin then tried (clumsily) to use her position as governor of Alaska to say that by dint of various negotiations and agreements between Alaska and Russia which had taken place under her watch gave her some insight into dealing with a foreign country.

Now, you can argue that she did this clumsily, that she handled the interview poorly, that she lacked the polish one would expect from a high level politican, and I would not disagree with you. But you cannot say that she claimed being able to view Russia from her house gave her foreign policy experience. Yet that is exactly what has been said in this very thread and elsewhere among the liberal set all around the country. And it is false! Simple as that. Disliking someone does not give you free rein to lie about what they said.