Thompson was also a fairly successful lawyer (he was involved with the Watergate hearings) and actor, so not only does have a background on the issues, he can think on his feet, and cover it up when he’s at a loss for words.
As George W. Bush has proven. However, very few people approach the presidency as merely a goal to score the way he did. (Even he gave some thought to the presidency; he just got tired pretty quickly and quit thinking when it got too complex.)
Well, again, she certainly had Alaska’s agenda at her fingertips, even if she was a bit overly glib in her answers. She didn’t sound quite as intelligent or well-spoken as Napolitano, but then it’s rather that I find the conservative to sound as intelligent as intelligent and well-spoken as the Democrat in any context, and I can’t really get past that.
But I think that Sarah Palin would be better in interviews than the one her Rovian handlers are trying to mold her into.
More generally, I think that experience and intelligence can substitute for one another. McCain graduated at the bottom of his class, but his experience partially compensates for that. (He’s similar to Biden in that way, as it happens.) Clinton had no Washington experience, but he had followed politics for a long time and was a very bright man.
In the case of Palin, she has zero Washington experience and minimal Gubernatorial experience, which is asking for trouble. Alas, it seems she lacks natural brilliance, which isn’t a shock considering her college years.
The fact that her handlers won’t let her appear on Sunday talk shows or hold press conferences reveals that her resulting skills are wanting.
The hypocrisy criticism is a crock by the way. Demanding that a candidate meets a minimum bar on some criteria is very different than saying that more of that quality will necessarily make a greater candidate.
Yup. And I kept records (BWHAHA…urk). Since this is the 2nd request I’ll resurrect the parlor game when I get around to it, caveats and all.
Will you post a similar list of the Democrats with more experience than Barack Obama?
Or here’s a good one - how about posting a list of Democratic Presidential candidates that got more votes than Joe Biden in the primaries? Hell, how about a list of the ones that got more than TWICE the votes of Joe Biden in the Primaries?
While we’re at it, let’s do a one-on-one - Barack Obama’s experience and qualifications against Hillary Clinton’s.
Oh, wait… You mean experience doesn’t matter after all? Or is it only irrelevant in a Presidential candidate? The VP needs more, perhaps?
I can’t believe that in a year when the Democrats have put up the least experienced candidate in about a century, that you can sit there with a straight face and say that McCain is irresponsible for not picking the most experienced candidate available. If you applied your own logic to your Presidential picks, Obama wouldn’t make the top 50.
I guess we can talk about that in the new thread, right?
I see that I wasn’t clear. Let me try again.
Sarah Palin is wholly unqualified for the Presidency. She can’t swim.
McCain has more experience that Obama. Obama has more intelligence than McCain. Obama has sufficient experience for the Presidency. McCain has sufficient intelligence for the Presidency. Both attain minimum adult requirements for the various characteristics I mentioned earlier. Palin does not.
Again, we’re talking about minimum standards. Is it really that hard?
LOL. That has to set a new record for understatement.
I have no problem with McCain not picking the most experienced candidate available. [1] And nobody has implied otherwise.
You’re spluttering, Sam.
[1] That would be GWBush’s father, right?
That’s great Sam. It really is.
Now could you actually address the topic of the thread, and if ya could, do it without using the word “Obama.” I’ll start it off for you. How did you feel about the recent Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric? Did it leave you feeling (a)better about Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate (b)worse about Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate (c) no different about Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate (d) Barack Obama sucks.
Here’s a small hint: One of these answers is wrong.
You forgot (e) Palin makes John McCain look like Winston Churchill. It occurred to me this morning that this is probably the real point of this whole charade.
I have said before and I will say again: executive experience is NOT a reliable indicator of performance. I will trot out the list again, if you don’t recall it. Almost all of our top 10 Presidents have had executive experience; almost all of our WORST 10 Presidents have too. Experience is not the issue.
The issue is being a horrific, incurious, uninformed dumbass. We’ve already proven that those qualities make a terrible President.
Well, those qualities make a hands-off, figure-head president whose primary role is to shake hands and show up and smile at public events. And to put cronies into public jobs. Kind-of like Georgie W Bush. A Palin administration would like very much like his, except that there would be no Cheney.
Palin has no interest in actually running things. She didn’t even want to run Wasilla. That means the people running the campaign would run things, and that means Rove. Palin will make the speeches, meet with the foreign leaders, and spend as much time in Alaska as she can possibly get away with. She’ll occasionally have some mild input into policy, but it will be very rare, because she’ll be surrounded by people who are both smarter than she is and who know the turf, which she doesn’t, so even if she wants to take over, she’ll be thwarted. So she’ll spend her time in D.C. with the First Dude setting things up to make sure they’ll be very, very well off by the time they get out of the White House, and probably after her terms, go to work as a lobbyist. She should be very good at it.
Too funny! 
She probably ran around as a kid, yelling “you used a swear! I’m telling!”
Okay, my personal dislike of the woman is now showing…
**Sam Stone **, while there is an argument that selecting someone with such a gross lack of involvement/engagement with non-Alaskan issues and only tepid executive experience severely undercuts the “Obama has no experience” meme, that is not, I believe, relevant to the list you’re reacting to.
The original list was posted right after the announcement. It’s purpose wasn’t necessarily to compare her to Obama, but in reaction to the general “who did he pick?!” notion that she was a political gimmick picked by McCain primarily for her gender and very base level of alignment with the party (i.e., the energizing evangelicals thing).
What’s the Alaska equivalent to “cutting brush at the ranch”?
I expect that Palin as V.P. would be doing a fair bit of this.
Shooting wolves from a helicopter? Hunting moose?* Going to hockey practice to watch? How about spending some real time with Tigger or Trigger or whatever that child’s name is? Going to his physical therapy and speech therapy sessions?**
*not opposed to hunting moose or wolves (if their population is too high); am opposed to helicopter hunts.
** I am not about to start a war here or a hijack, but I cannot understand how she is going to combine all that a Down’s baby needs (and all of that is not yet determined, let us hope he has mild needs) with being VP. I am not saying women shouldn’t be VP or that women with babies shouldn’t aspire to high office etc–I’m saying that as a mother of 3, none of them special needs, I cannot see how she is going to find time in the day to do so. Isn’t her husband back to work as well, so who is raising this kid? 
C. When I want to learn more about a candidate, Katie Couric is not my journalist of choice. Evidently, people in this thread feel otherwise. That’s fine. But one interview, no matter how botched, does not define a candidate. Frankly, I’m waiting to see how she does vs Biden.
I hope it’s ok to say, as someone who doesn’t participate in debates here but has been reading everyone’s opinions for many years, that I respect Sam’s opinions and the second of my two reservations about McCain have been addressed. I am comfortable with Palin now. I was also worried about Roe v Wade but it was explained to of in another thread that there was on danger in it being overturned.
The McCain campaign!
Seriously, I’d bet that a surrogate would take care of the kid. A nanny, for instance.
Then you might want to call the McCain campaign and tell them to let her go on some of the Sunday shows. Right now, the dearth of interview material isn’t a function of a lack of potential and willing interviewers, it’s a function of the limited availability that the campaign has put Palin forward for.
At the moment, it’s not a matter of all of us just loving the way Couric is interviewing her. It’s a matter of the Couric interview and the Gibson interview being the only national availabilities she’s given. Hannity doesn’t count…while I wouldn’t say that Couric and Gibson are in the tank for Obama, Hannity dug the hole and built the tank around himself for the Republican Party.
Incidentally, a lot of us over here in Obamaland feel like Couric’s been softballing her, actually. Not that the questions are easy, as such, but they’re not gotchas or anything like that. They’re answers that any competent vice-presidential candidate should be able to at least bullshit his or her way out of. That Palin apparently can’t even do that (and she’s a freakin’ politician!) appalls me. You can tell that Couric wasn’t planning her questions to be particularly devastating…she seems constantly surprised that Palin is having such trouble answering them coherently, as if the level of “easy” she dialed them down to was supposed to allow her to knock them out of the park or at least to look mildly competent. I think Gibson was flabbergasted at the answers he got, as well. These two aren’t deliberately sandbagging her…I believe they genuinely calibrated their questions toward what they’ve grown accustomed to being a medium-level political operative and found that the actual interview subject doesn’t even come up to that level.
That’s the point. The Couric interview should have been easy - just a fluff piece. She should have been able to put all her talking points into some sort of coherent order and that would have been enough. Why was she not able to do that? Why was she reduced to a rambling, nonsensical mess when asked the most basic of questions? Nobody ever expected this interview to be a hard-hitting interrogation, ferreting out the nuances of the candidate. She couldn’t even handle an interview with Katie Couric - how is she going to sit at the table with people who are actually going to challenge her?