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By MARK CURRY
TAIPEI - Supporters of Sarah Palin answer her critics by asserting that “this country has become great because of the ordinary people who are willing to stand up for what is right and fight for it,” as one poster wrote at Lucianne.com.
Only a “Beltway insider” or an elitist would fail to see the value she brings to the McCain ticket, the logic goes. In fact, conservative pundit Kathleen Parker was hounded for a recent column that, in her own words, suggested “Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.”
“I am a traitor and an idiot,” Parker wrote yesterday in describing the gist of reader response to her critical column. “Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should ‘off’ myself.”
I’m curious, then, how Palin supporters would explain a poll released in today’s Washington Post that found 60 percent of registered voters believe the Alaskan governor does not possess “the kind of experience it takes to serve effectively as president, if that became necessary?” Further, one third stated they were less likely to vote for the McCain ticket because of his choice for vice president. The poll surveyed 1,271 registered voters representing a broad spectrum of our society. Are those opposed to Palin traitors and idiots, too?
The fact is Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president under the Constitution. She is a native-born American, 35 years old or older, and has resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years. But do we want her to be one heartbeat away from running the Free World? So far her performance in and outside the media has been unpersuasive to the point of being repulsive. Her answers for the most part have been incomplete and sometimes non-existent. I’m beginning to wonder if she will deliver any sort of thorough and intellectually satisfying non-teleprompted statement on policies concerning any of the major issues facing us today. I’m not saying she can’t. I’m only saying she has not delivered. Yet.
Tonight is her opportunity. The conventional wisdom concerning this debate is Palin supporters will be able to consider it a small victory should she string together more than a few persuasive sentences. But I’m demanding more. And I’m not talking about pablum of the sort she delivered while debating with Andrew Halcro during the Alaskan gubernatorial contest. Halcro, who ran as an Independent, wrote in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor that Gov. Palin is “a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality. Against such charms there is little Senator Biden, or anyone, can do.”
No. If Sarah Palin ever expects to get my vote she needs to convince me tonight with the details of her plan for solving the myriad issues confronting all of us, whether we be Ivy League elitists or Hoosier homemakers. We’re all Americans and we deserve nothing less from our would-be leaders.
Tags: Mark Curry, Sarah Palin
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This entry was written by and posted on October 2, 2008 at 11:41 am and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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