Is McCain Palin Agenda Dumbing Down America?
Why Devalue Experience, Judgement and Qualifications?
Oct 2, 2008 Rosemary E. Bachelor
Does Palin think it elitist to require of leaders a broad understanding of our diverse, globalized world, or to require practical answers to such problems as financial instability, global warming and natural resource depletion?
If her attack on valid leadership criteria is deliberate it shows contempt for voters and continuation of the Bush headset.
Countries That Don’t Like Us
In her acceptance speech, Palin said she wouldn’t give aid to countries that don’t like us.
Is Palin’s field recipe for dressing down the donkey one that leaves poor people abroad without food, breeding that desperation and anger that feeds terrorism? Real questions: Why don’t foreign countries like us? What should we do about it?
Alaska a Foreign Policy Training Ground
If being Alaska’s governor gives global foreign policy experience, then when she became governor was she briefed by the U. S. State Department? How many Americans believe that if Russia were to attack they would aim nukes at Fairbanks instead of, say, Los Angeles?
Palin seems to think having a passport is an elitist privilege…something rich kids use to see Europe. Sarah should stand in the airline check-in queue for an international flight out of New York, Miami or Dallas. There are people of every age, from diverse levels of education and income, traveling for numerous reasons.
She Sold the Airplane
Introducing Palin to Americans, McCain said “She sold the airplane; she fired the chef.” Sarah put the airplane reserved for Alaska’s governor up for sale on E-bay, didn’t get her price and finally took a $600,000 loss.
Yes, she fired the chef. She spends more time at her Wasilla home than in the capitol. She also charges taxpayers for every night she sleeps in her own house.
Some people think black or white: It’s slam dunk right or p-poor wrong. However, it takes knowledge, reason, logic and morality to deal with nuances of complex issues. Americans expect leaders to have and use such tools.
Whose Big Fat Resume?
Palin told ABC news anchor Charles Gibson ”We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big fat resume that maybe shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment.” That description fits Sen. McCain!
“Whether this hints at a new type of anti-intellectual elitism, is a glimpse of narrow-minded fundamentalist religious views—often defined as God-driven simplicity—or is simply ignorant lack of judgment and wisdom, doesn’t matter,” said a Sept. 13 New York Times editorial, concluding “all three are scary!”
If Palin is capable of running the U.S., why is she constantly briefed by coaches from the Bush stable? Isn’t the McCain/Palin duo pushing change?
“I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U. S., but that it might prevail,” wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on Sept. 13.
Perhaps thousands of Americans like to think they, too, could run America after some “how-to” briefings. Do voters need educated more than Palin, especially if she is shrewdly, deliberately dumbing down America to get votes?
There is a companion article on criteria for selecting effective leaders.
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