Did you mean to say “Palin” cause I could swear this could apply to Obama too. Only difference is that Palin is running for VICE-President whereas Obama (if elected) will be President guarantied
I’m ok with mediocre, especially when it’s of one trait or another.
Unqualified: that’s something different. Some candidates have such a severe deficit in experience, smarts, temperament, anger management or managerial skill to make them utterly unsuited for the Presidency. There’s a minimum bound which should not be crossed.
During the lost weekend, I compiled a list of 32 Republican women who had more experience than Sarah Palin. About a dozen were serious candidates. But there were a fair number of the remaining nonserious ones that were not advised but still not utterly unqualified.
What a pile of crap. According to the polls, Obama won the debate. He is smart, he knows his stuff, and the fact that he was never the mayor of a little town full of bars open until five am and fast food joints means nothing. For evidence of executive ability and strategic thinking he out-maneuvered the Clinton machine.
Do you have anything positive to say about Palin, or are you stuck with the same old talking points? I’m happy to see that not all Republicans are so intellectually and morally bankrupt to support this person - it gives me some hope.
Defend her, or admit she’s a danger to the republic.
Bullshit. Obama can think and talk rings around this woman. He recently held his own (and won, among independents) in a foreign policy debate with the supposed foreign policy expert John McCain. We’re not talking about “experience” here…this isn’t a lack of experience we’re seeing with Palin’s stumbling, bumbling, learned-by-rote responses. We’re talking about someone who has no understanding of the issues she’s being coached on, period. Her answers are rote parroting of her coaching…she’s not integrating the information into her understanding.
She’s in over her head. Obama is not. And any attempt to make an equivalency between them is utter and absolute bullshit.
No comparison. None. Whatsoever.
Sarah Palin was a little overwhelmed as Mayor of Wasilla (pop 5500 in 2000), so she hired an administrator, but kept her salary at roughly the same level. She has less than 2 years experience as Governor of Alaska, and has never shown any interest or curiosity regarding wider issues of public policy. That’s ok. But it contrasts sharply with Bill Clinton (for example) who attended policy seminars for decades before rising to the Presidency.
As for Obama, he has prerequisite experience in legislative, policy and managerial areas. And of course he’s a terrific orator.
Being a state Senator and brokering cross-party deals (as with the death penalty) certainly counts. He was a popular law Professor at a leading law school (University of Chicago) as well as editor of the Harvard Law Review. So he has smarts. He obviously has Washington exposure, authoring Lugar-Obama on nuclear proliferation and Coburn-Obama on federal budgetary transparency.
And he attracts bright people. He manages them well: not only did his campaign topple the favored candidate, it was also highly innovate and free of internal rancor or drama. While McCain surrounds himself with lobbyists, Obama favors policy experts like Austin Goolsbee and Samantha Powers.
And Obama doesn’t shy away from press conferences or the Sunday talk shows. Sorry, but there’s really no comparison.
Just to be clear, I’ll note that Mitt Romney (R) knocks the ball out of the park on most or all of those criteria. So this isn’t just a partisan thing.
That’s because he’s not human. 
Except for the ones about temperament, or anger management, or managerial skill in the role of a government executive for that matter. Or even experience, since he was only Governor for half a term before starting to phone it in so he could get treatment for his severe case of Potomac Fever.
What results do you think Romney can take credit for? Managing the Big Dig like he got elected to do, perhaps? Don’t make us New Englanders laugh.
That’s exactly it. It’s not because she’s a Republican. Frankly, while I wouldn’t be happy if John McCain won in November, if Palin weren’t on the ticket, I wouldn’t be particularly AFRAID.
Frankly, I think it’s insulting to women for these people to believe that any random woman will do as vice-president. There are a multitude of Republican women with a long-term understanding of government and international affairs…Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Olympia Snowe, to give just two examples.
Our distaste for Palin has nothing to do with her being a woman or being a Republican. It has to do with her being a tabula rasa as far as the knowledge and understanding that a vice-president who’s a 74-year-old heartbeat away from the Oval Office should have.
Governor of a moderately large state, turnaround artist for the Olympics and his stellar private sector experience show his managerial prowess. His experience is more than adequate and frankly early onset Potomac Fever is a good thing for Presidential candidate. Thinking seriously about the Presidency for more than a couple of years is itself a sort of qualification.
True, he looks like a robot on TV. (That’s part of the plan. BWHWAHAHAHAHA.) And there’s plenty that I could attack him for. But unqualified? No. He passes the minimal prerequisites with flying colors.
And the weird thing is he said when Obama was absolutely correct on the facts: McCain messed up hugely re Spain.
Palin would never say horseshit, though. She’s more likely to say horse pucky or h-e-double toothpicks. :rolleyes:
[hijack] Actually I’m a little uneasy about McCain’s Iranian policy and his reactive tendencies. But that’s a judgment call, and not something that is patently obvious. I can think of reasonable arguments to the contrary. McCain beats the barest of minimum bars on all counts, but that is not and should not be a big accomplishment - it should be expected. [/hijack]
Among those minimum bars is the ability to give a press conference, on demand.
Oooh! Oooh! Let’s have Palin debate Paris Hilton!
Well, good point.
But nobody’s worried about her being Vice President.
The Olympics I’ll give you. The transferability of venture-capital management to government, even at the state level, I will not. Results as MA governor (I live there), certainly not, in fact the opposite.
For a candidate, perhaps, if he doesn’t get as desperately pandersome as Romney has. After the election, not at all.
Ya know, every time I read this thread, I am constantly amazed at the hypocracy of the Obamaites.
When Republicans first mentioned his lack of experience, the Dems made much of the the fact that experience did not make much of a difference as President (there were even some comparisons to Lincoln). Guess what Obamaites, you convinced me! That’s right, maybe being President is one of those things for which experience means very little since the really is no experience for quite possibly the single most important job in the world.
But now that Palin is running on the Republican ticket (as VP not the P), a lot is being made about her experience. Sure she may sound completely out of her depth, but no more than Obama when he started his run in the primaries. Even now, Obama sounds very simplistic (to me a Progressive) with his lower taxes and raising spending to boost the economy (maybe he’s channeling Reagan), or on foreign policy next to McCain who can say, “I’ve talked to these leaders. I’ve been to these places.”.
But when I raised this point earlier, I was challenged to support Palin rather than bash Obama’s inexperience. OK, here I go: Theodore Roosevelt. Civil Service Commisioner, President of the New York Police Commissioners board, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for one year and Governor of New York for two years before being elected vice-president to get him out of politics (he was seen as a troublemaker by the GOP). Great President! Do I think Palin as the next TR? Maybe/Maybe not - but it does show that inexperience is not the hinderence the Dems (now) make it out to be.
Bottom line for me: both Obama and Palin are inexperienced for the job and show it early in their respective campaigns. Obama has gotten a lot better due to his advisors and I assume Palin will also if Vice-President. So if inexperience didn’t matter a few months ago in the Democratic primaries, it shouldn’t matter now.
Bottom line for me is that she will be the Vice-President and may never be President whereas Obama will be President from day one. If the situation were reversed (viz. Palin for President and Obama for VP), I would hold her inexperience against her a lot more and give Obama the pass.
You’ve apparently wholly bought into the Republican Meme of Obama=NO experience. I don’t know any Democrats who have ever said that, or argued that no experience is necessary to be President.
Instead, what we’ve argued, over and over and over and freaking over, but what isn’t sinking in to many of you, is that he has a ton of relevant experience, he just hasn’t “governed” anything or spent his lifetime in the United States Senate.
President of Harvard Law Review
3 Years Community Organizer
4 Years Civil Rights Attorney
10 Years Constitutional Law Professor (which overlapped his previous and subsequent positions)
8 Years Illinois State Legislator
3 Years United States Senator
That is not at all the same as NO experience.
Governor Palin has experience, too. She’s been on the PTA, Mayor of her home town and a state Governor for about a year and a half.
Her experience, when placed side-by-side with Barack Obama’s experience, downright pales. He is head and shoulders more qualified based on his body of work, for a position in national politics, especially on the level that requires knowledge of foreign affairs and Constitutional issues.
She’s a dwarf, he’s a giant.
There is no reasonable comparison.
You need to understand that inexperience is one thing, and being completely out of one’s depth is quite another. I’m willing to cut Obama a pass on his relative underexperience because he demonstrates a clear grasp on the issues, is in tune with the concerns of the electorate, and articulates his ideas clearly and concisely. He may be underexperienced but he clearly shows that he can play in the Presidential leagues. Palin shows none of this. She cannot even construct a coherent thought when a merciful interviewer is pitching her softball questions gently. She demonstrates ignorance of current events, national politics, and international relations… I refer you to her drawing a complete blank on the subject of the Bush doctrine. It doesn’t appear that she’s read a newspaper since 2002 and frankly I’m agog at how she even managed to become Miss Alaska. If you’ve watched any of the interviews we’re talking about here or read any of the quotes, I can’t see how you possibly could have missed this.
Oh, and having said that, Obama’s experience blows Palin’s out of the water, as mentioned above.
If Governor Palin was 1/4 as knowledgeable and 1/4 as thoughtful and 1/4 as capable as Teddy Roosevelt, I’d be four times as comfortable with the thought of her being one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency.
She is not, and she is demonstrating that at every opportunity. We’re well beyond the lack of experience now; you’re a day late and a dollar short. She’s demonstrating every day that she is not knowledgeable, she is not thoughtful, she is not capable. She is, in short, as incompetent to be Vice-President of the United States as I am.