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Just a simple Cherokee trial lawyer, Barkman has been forcing his opinions on others in print since, for reasons that passeth understanding, he was an unsuccessful candidate for state representative in 2002. His philosophy: "If people had wanted me to be nice, they should've voted for me."
EJ Dionne has an excellent piece on why the same conservatives who embrace Sarah Palin and her paper-thin resume denounced Harriet Miers for lacking the experience to be a Supreme Court Justice. And while we're at it, what mainstream political figure gives an (albeit recorded) address to a bunch of lunatic-fringe secessionists? This is good judgment?
Labels: Conservative Hypocrisy Watch, John McCain, Sarah Palin
posted by The Local Crank | 1:34 PM
4 Comments:
Dionne says: "Now, the balance on experience shifts toward the Democrats, and it's not just for the obvious reason that Joe Biden is manifestly more qualified than Palin."
Again, it strikes me as odd that eight years executive experience, no matter how small the town or the state she governed, vs. ZERO years executive experience for Obama, Biden OR McCain, somehow underqualifies Palin to be VICE-president.
True, she doesn't have a long legislative voting record by which to judge her views as the others do, but I think it's frankly bizarre that Dionne (and many others) consider THAT to be a more important credential for the presidency than genuine executive experience being in CHARGE of something larger than a Senate office.
More proof, I suppose, that most Americans vote for president based on their pet issues rather than on the depth, breadth, and relevance of the candidates' resumes and qualifications to LEAD and to GOVERN.
P.S. If I didn't know better, I'd think that much of the pundits' discontent over Palin comes more from the fact that McCain chose a) someone they didn't expect, and b) a Washington outsider. There seems to be an underlying message that if you're not a household name and you haven't been in Washington for several decades, you have no business being VP (though, bizarrely, being at the top of the ticket with less experience is okay).
What's even more bizarre is that Obama himself spent much of his primary campaign running AGAINST the entrenched establishment, career politicians, Beltway insiders, etc. and promised to bring a fresh new perspective to the office. Then he turned around and picked a 30-year Washington fixture to be his running mate, and was praised for the decision. McCain picks someone with the kind of outsider perspective and credentials Obama spent most of the last year praising, only to be ridiculed for the choice.
Of course, this IS partisan politics, where hypocrisy is never lacking on either side, so it's mostly a meaningless observation on my part, like pointing out the color or trajectory of the sun.
I disagree with your theory that executive experience is somehow "super experience" in the public estimation. In one-up battles with no incumbent president, you have Kennedy over VP Nixon, Eisenhower over Gov. Adlai Stevenson, and by then we're back further than I can remember off the top of my head. In all other instances, it was "executive experience" vs. "executive experience". By the GOP's increasingly elastic definition of "executive experience" even JFK doesn't count because he was a Lt., j.g. in the Navy.
<< I disagree with your theory that executive experience is somehow "super experience" in the public estimation. >>
Actually, I'm not convinced that executive experience IS that critical a factor in public opinion anymore, which is why I offered my theory above that "most Americans vote for president based on their pet issues rather than on the depth, breadth, and relevance of the candidates' resumes and qualifications to LEAD and to GOVERN."
Also, I think television completely and irrevocably changed the dynamic of presidential elections, so that presidential contests became less about experience and more about style/appearance/charisma/etc. Kennedy probably owed his razor-thin and controversial victory in 1960 to television more than anything, and Eisenhower arguably DID have a great deal more executive experience than Stevenson--not in length of years, perhaps, but certainly in his responsibilities and historic accomplishments as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The number of people he commanded was far greater than any governor ever did, as was the scope of their mission.
I freely concede that my own personal opinion on the value of experience is very much a minority opinion these days. Hell, both the Democratic and Republican primaries this year proved pretty conclusively that voters don't give a damn how impressive someone's resume is, as guys like Bill Richardson and Tommy Thompson learned to their dismay. In a different era, a smoke-filled room of party leaders might have anointed one or both of those guys to be their party's standard-bearer, but those days are long gone.
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