Independents: What do you think of Palin?

Great Debates
41

Hey, Bush came from the Ivies. I was underwhelmed. My attitude is that education is all about what you put into it- it is possible to be a great, thoughtful student acquainted with classical literature, philosophy, history, political theory, etc and come out of a state school. It is equally possible to be Bluto’s (from Animal House) cosmic twin and come out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.

I came out of a second tier school, had a great education, and when I moved on, I was able to compete effectively with folks who graduated from schools with bigger names. I’d be more interested in learning about what she studied there and what kind of student she was, rather than making this a debate about where she comes from.

Furthermore, how many of you guys are always complaining that the government is only being drawn from the elite, and those with the money to get into and pay for an ivy league, rather than the middle class or lower class?

42

It does seem to have been an excellent choice, so far, in that she has tremendous appeal. We’ll have to wait and see how she does in the coming weeks.

Overall, though, I find it extremely funny how Republicans, who made fun of Democrats for “drinking the kool-aid” and falling for a vacuous celebrity with no experience are now “drinking the kool-aid” and falling for a vacuous celebrity with no experience.

The irony, it burns. It really is sickening to see people from both parties go to (conscious or subconscious) mental contortions to justify ridiculous positions, usually at odds with other things they are, or recently were, espousing. I’m seeing more and more of this and it is really turning me off politics. People are just completely irrational when it comes to their political opinions.

Personally, I never caught the Obama bug, and I never saw why the media were so enamored with him. He looks like a decent and intelligent person and would make a good president, but his speeches did not, for the most part, make me feel “wow” (with a couple of exceptions).

The same with Palin. The media seem to be enamored by her, but not only do I think she is faaar from compelling, I thought her speech last night was painful to watch. No charisma, just a steady shrill voice to deliver Republican talking points and ad-hominem attacks. Very amateur-hourish in delivery. (Of course the speech content was professional, since it was in fact prepared by experienced professionals).

To rephrase the charges Republicans have made: I have not drank the kool-aid, I’m not a Palinbot, I don’t think she is the Chosen One, and I don’t think she hit it out of the park last night.

She is a bad choice for VP (if you’re thinking about the country, and not simply about the best way for McCain to win), and if McCain dies, this country is in serious trouble.

There is no way she is capable of having tough negotiations with Putin, Middle East leaders, Iran, etc. And almost surely, she is not capable of running the whole country.

The “big three” (Clinton, Obama, McCain), I can see running the country and dealing with foreign leaders and crises. Palin, not.

That doesn’t mean I’m predicting that McCain will lose the election. He may in fact win if the current tidal wave of awe with Palin continues. And if he doesn’t die in office, it won’t be too bad if he wins (although I’ve lost a lot of respect for him in this election cycle). But if he does get elected and dies in office, this country will suffer.

43

I am a registered Democrat because I live in New York. My voting history is only 12 years long, and have only voted for Democratic presidential candidates. I have voted for candidates of all flavors for other federal, state, and local positions. My political preferences are probaby typical for the young digerati: free trading, secular, civil rights absolutism, pro-choice. I have little in common with either the evangelical base of the right or the blue collar Catholic union base of the left. Though my inclinations are progressive, I am not a populist.

I am appalled by McCain’s choice of VP. I am perfectly willing to admit that my reasons are self-serving: she is everything I am not and cannot relate to. She, her trashy family, and her teary Walmart wedding are completely alien to me. I am constantly mystified that there are so many millions of people for whom this is perfectly normal, acceptable, or even desirable. She is the small-time competitive jerk that everyone went to high school with and the fact that she appeals to what I consider to be the lowest common denominator of American society makes me kind of sad.

It’s a strange world out there. I think she is completely unfit for this candidacy. Since McCain 2008 is not the same as McCain 2000, my vote is unchanged.

44

I’m not sure if a Canadian onlooker can be called “independent”, but I’m chiming in anyway.

Looking at it from up here in the Great White North, I feel like I’m watching some weird TV signal from a planet far, far, far away. I live 8 miles from the US border and I go across the line a few times a year on business and I see perfectly normal looking people doing perfectly normal looking things and then . . . I see Mrs. Palin’s speech last night.

It’s really beyond belief. I can’t reconcile the image of that shrill, sarcastic, smug, self-satisfied woman with anything that a real nation might really want in a possible leader. She said nothing that would make me consider her as a viable candidate. Nothing. Not one word. Just blathering on and on, spewing talking points and partisan crap about the opposition. No recognition of a nation out there in difficulty, just yap, yap, yap. She kept making this face, I wish I could explain what it looked like to me, maybe I’m the only one who saw it, but it was sure as hell offputting.

On the other hand, she could have spoken with the tongues of men and angels and I wouldn’t consider her anyway, since her Left Behind brand of smarmy religiosity turns my stomach.

45

i don’t think I’ve ever seen this point be laid out so well. It’s exactly right.

46

And exactly like what Republicans do with the religious.

But I should probably butt out of this thread. I am a Demcrat now, since I registered Dem to vote for Obama over Clinton. But I voted for Bush in 2000 (and I am still kicking myself), and held my nose for Kerry in 2004.

Anyway, it was always Obama for me. My reaction to the selection of Palin is one of puzzlement. She’s like Bush in a pantsuit, except she can speak good.

47

I’m for Obama but I called my mom last night to get her reaction. She’s a political independent (I know she voted for both Clinton and Bush… at least Bush’s first term), divorced in the 1980’s and makes enough to own a paid-off home in Naperville, IL (which isn’t free living). I use her as my bellweather since she watches the news and stuff but isn’t the kind to watch C-Span or check the Gallup daily tracker every afternoon. I’d say she’s a social moderate and a fiscal conservative.

Anyway, she was very empathic that McCain lost her probable vote over Palin and that it’s my mom’s opinion that McCain shot himself in the foot. Previously she was leaning hard towards McCain because she’s unsure about some of Obama’s past dealings. She thinks that McCain’s VP pick is extremely important due to his age and, while she likes McCain, she shudders to imagine Palin in the Oval Office. She’d rather vote for Obama (to whom she gives good odds that he’ll take a bullet, God forbid) and feel comfortable with Biden as the potential next president. She says she can’t imagine Palin dealing with Iran, N. Korea, Russia, etc.

She was very sympathic to Palin’s family issues and feels that most of it is no one’s business. But that doesn’t do anything to make her think Palin is prepared and “Governor of Alaska” doesn’t impress her. She was very turned off by her speech. She believes, more than ever, that Palin was picked only for her gender and not for what’s best for America.

It was an interesting phone call. I didn’t try to correct her on anything (like Obama’s past) and just let her unwind about it and she kept me on the phone for a good 40 minutes. Of course, she’s an Illinois voter so her vote is worthless in a practical sense but I imagine her “type” is seen across the country.

48

I’m an independent , voted for Reagan, Clinton and W (tho I do regret the W vote).

I think Palin is as qualified to be VP as Dan Quayle was.

She is as qualified to be president as GWB is.

And yes, her nomination has changed my vote from McCain to Obama.

The appeal that John McCain had for me, was that he is moderate. Choosing such a far right running mate makes it the standard old Republican ticket, which at this point is thoroughly distasteful. The thing that scares me most about her is her anti-choice position. She is not the type of republican that thinks Roe v Wade should be overturned and left to the states. She thinks it should against federal law to have an abortion, even in cases of incest. I could never vote for anyone who does not think it important to keep abortion be safe and legal.

And teaching children creationism while failing to teach them about birth control is a recipe for unwanted teen pregnancy. The proof is in the pudding.

49

That’s pretty much the impression that I get of her. She’s the petty overenthusiastic middle manager at some unremarkable Middle American office driving her dumb kids to soccer (or in this case hockey) practice while her husband watches NASCAR.

Probably people who don’t know what they are talking about.

We only see them as elite because we are introduced to them in their adulthood after they have already made great acomplishments in politics, education, business or whatever field they are in. Bill Clinton, for example, was born to a regular middle class family.

I don’t know about you, but I think the person who runs our country should be chosen from the elite, not the median.
And what’s with this “First Dude” horseshit? It’s fucking embarassing. “Oh! Here’s our new Vice President and her uneducated snowmobile driving beer drinking husband!”

50

Oh, snap!

51

I completely agree. I want our leaders to be Great People. I want them to have overcome humble origins, gone to Great Schools, done Great Things. The fact that this race to the middle resonates with so many people is terrifying for me, because as much as I try, I simply cannot understand it nor relate to it.

52

You really see a difference based on which schools people go to? I find this attitude not simply elitist, but wrong-headed.

A college degree is a practical necessity for a lot of things, but when I’m looking at someone’s qualifications I don’t give a fig about where they went to get their undergraduate degree. I’m more concerned with what they’ve done since getting that degree.

I don’t want to choose the most mediocre candidate for a given position, but I also don’t believe that where someone matriculated defines whether they are mediocre.

53

Considering someone a member of an elite simply because of where they went to school is going to be classism, at least as often as it might represent meritocracy. Just for example: I’ve never heard that Yale is anything but an elite school, but I also do not consider George W. Bush to be any kind of elite other than as a member of an elite class. Certainly not a mental giant. A focus on the “right” schools is going to be far more likely IMNSHO to generate a ruling class rather than the sort of genuine elites I’d want to see formulating policy.

54

School was just an example. Going to an elite school is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of being a Great person. Clinton scored a Rhodes scholarship despite his demonstrably un-elite background. This is the sort of achievement that I am talking about.

55

Yeah, schools should not be a litmus test. I do think that an excellent school can be a sign of a focused and intelligent person. But how did you do while you were there? What was your focus of study? Did you attend on scholarship? Were you a legacy?

I think there is a significant upgrade with serious graduate study, like law or science. Not business so much. If you are a businessperson, I want to see results in the real world.

The problem is that many successful businesspeople don’t have any desire to be in politics, and most politicians have only done political stuff, so it is hard to judge “real world” effectiveness. I have lately looked hard at the campaign in the race for president, absent any other factors- because it is such a drawn-out and unweildy enterprise, and yet moves incredibly fast, I think that management style in a modern presidential campaign gives us a glimpse of the cadidate once he or she is in office. With the examples of Clinton and Bush (i am a bit young), I think this is a fair predictor. I think we were probably boned to a certain extent in 2004 regardless of who we picked- Kerry’s campaign was anemic and Bush’s was just evil.

56

Fair enough. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from anu-la1979’s criticism based on University of Idaho, and I jumped a bit harder than I should have. My apologies.

57

To be fair, she does have a bachelor’s degree.

58

Palin scares the crap out of me…well, the idea of her being president. I don’t think it’s likely, but you never know what will happen between now and November…maybe Obama will be caught in an affair, or get assassinated, or Track will get killed in Iraq and get a big sympathy vote for the McCain ticket.

She represents everything that has gone wrong with the Republican party since it started courting the Christian Right. Before I decided I was Independent, I considered myself a Republican. I think Nixon was actually a good president with some bad character flaws. I don’t think much of any of the Democratic presidents we’ve had this century, even the best of them seem woefully misguided. People like her are why I am not a Republican, and she’s only a heartbeat and an upset from being the leader of the free world.

59

No problem and no need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure I had articulated my view clearly. I went to a Ivy for college and knew plenty of people who majored in beer and weed. The fact that they managed to graduate does not make them any less retarded.

I suppose what bothers me even more is that Palin, like Bush, seems fantastically unintellectual. Despite my own current negativity towards McCain, I have no doubt that he actually cares about ideas, even if he is not exactly an expert. That says a lot in my book. Palin is the mediocre but competitive girl done good, and for some reason, that just burns me up. In a few days, I hope I will have a better understanding of my visceral reaction.

60

I was seriously considering voting for McCain this year. I liked a lot of what he had to say in 2000. If he had gone with Hutchison, he would’ve had me. Palin’s stances on abortion and evolution make it impossible for me to vote the McCain ticket.