That’s not true, and not what I said. I looked at Shodan’s inference that presiding over the Senate meant being “in charge of” the Senate, and his remark that “[a] President presides - that’s what the word means.” While I quoted the earlier part as well, that actually was laziness - it is not required for my argument.
As I have just said to Shodan, I am not interested in the argument as to whether the VP is in charge of the Senate. Just that trying to claim the definition of the word President makes it an open and shut argument is a false one.
Palin did say it was possible to see Russia from Alaska, and did proffer it in the context of trying defend her foreign policy cred. Fey was riffing on that.
I know, but IdahoMauleMan is talking about the exact phrase and assuming that it is widely assumed to be a genuine Palin quote, i.e. look how dumb the lib’ruls are.
I just wish I could’ve been one of Palin’s advisors/speechwriters. Though I disagree with much of her politics, I’d’ve considered it a great intellectual exercise to present a conservative viewpoint in an articulate intelligent way. I would have gone with “Life in Alaska is a hard business for hard people, and the remaining 49 states are going to learn that hard times are ahead. Decisions will be made that may not be popular, but will be right. John McCain can make those decisions.”
Google is no help at all on the matter, except that once you eliminate the right-wing bloggers using it in the “hur hur stupid lib’ruls” context, about half the search results say it is or is “probably” apocryphal.
I may be misremembering/hallucinating but I recall reading that it started out as a Jules Feiffer cartoon in The Village Voice. Take that recollection with as large a grain of salt as you like.
While a reasonable(ish) semantics argument could be made that the words she spoke were correct, it presumes a degree of nuance and subtlety — and most importantly — an understanding of civics that Palin showed in no other circumstance. To stick this broken clock on a pike and parade it about the village square as some sort of testament of her competence is the height of buffoonery.
Make the case all you want that the precise text of her statement was technically correct. But try and inject your reasoning into the vapidity of her greater context and you just look foolish.
I might be willing to give Palin a pass on the “in charge of the senate” thing. It was technically incorrect in that the VP isn’t actually “in charge” of anything; John Adams tried being “in charge” of the first senate and they basically told him to sit down and shut the hell up. I understand what she was trying to say, though; that she agreed with Cheney’s view of the VP as not having to comply with executive orders as part of the legislature (and not having to comply with subpoenas as part of the executive branch, neatly enough). I think Cheney’s view is untenable, to put it charitably, but I don’t fault her too much for a gaffe in saying she agreed with it.
The Russia thing though, was just a flat out laughable answer. It’s true she never said “I can see Russia from my house,” Tina Fey did, but Tina Fey’s joke was mocking what she actually did say:
What’s worse, though, is her quote from last month in an interview in Esquire.
:smack: Governor, the mockery was not over the fact that you claimed that you could see Russia from Alaska. The mockery was over the fact that you claimed that your state’s proximity to Russia gave you foreign policy experience. As someone wittier than I said, I can see the Moon right out my window, but that doesn’t make me an astronaut.
My God, I can’t think of a better proof for how dumb she really is. She actually doesn’t even GET THE JOKE. She really thinks people were laughing at her because they thought you can’t really see Russia from Alaska? What an idiot. This is the kind of person you mess with by sending her to the store to get a left-handed spatula, not put in charge of nuclear weapons. I so hope the Republicans try to run her in 2012.
Although Palin isn’t even close to being in the Gipper’s league, either smarts-wise or communication-savvy wise. But she probably wouldn’t run the risk of going senile in the latter part of her 2nd term, if she was elected reasonably soon.
I’ve often been suspicious that McCain just found her (and her folksy, down-home winking)incredibly charming when he had her to his ranch for the (3 day?) interview. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part. Mavericky, if you will.
I’m not so sure about either of those. What she lacks is experience, and she’s going to get plenty of that in the next 4-8 years. We’ll see if she learns. If she does, she’ll be a very dangerous opponent in 2012 or 2016 (depending upon how well Obama does).
Wow, your perception of both Palin’s abilities and of public perception of her in the US are both wildly miscalibrated.
What she lacks, first and foremost, is anything approaching the intellect to be POTUS. As much as people like me ridiculed Bush’s mental capacities, the truth is that he was probably reasonably bright for the most part. His incapacitations came from a chronic inability to articulate himself well, an arrogant incuriosity and a psychological inability to self-evaluate. Now that he’s gone, I can admit that he probably wasn’t actually as dumb as he sometimes appeared to be.
Palin, on the other hand, is every bit as dumb as she appears to be and then some. Pravnik’s cite above exposes genuine intellectual deficiency on her part. So do her creationist beliefs, for that matter.
When you add in the extreme social views, the hypocritical ethics issues, the hypocritical policy issues, the hypocritical attacks on her opponents, the hypocritical patriotic correctness, the crazy religious views, etc. you do not have a recipe for a “dangerous opponent.” Mean and stupid failed to beat Obama last time, it’s not going to do it the next time.
Time has already told. Sarah Palin does not have one single problem to deal with in her political career, she has about a dozen, and only one of them (experience) is at all likely to go away.
