Can Palin overcome the derangement of the opposition?
Image via WikipediaSarah Palin continues to galvanize the imagination of both her ardent supporters and her hectoring adversaries. It is easy to understand her appeal to those who have rallied behind her and her possible candidacy for the office of president of the United States. She has a lot going for her: charm, personableness, natural smarts, moral probity, executive competence, independence of character, and a passionate love of country. These are undeniable advantages, or should be in any sane political environment.There is much more.
At the same time, she steps up to the plate with two strikes against her — or, in an alternative baseball universe, with three, four, or five strikes already logged in the umpire’s clicker. PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome) flourishes on the liberal-left, to the extent that a correspondent to Salon.com suggests “we get rid of Palin” by having her electrocuted like one of Michael Vick’s dogs. According to the media scuttlebutt and her innumerable liberal detractors, she is poorly educated, brings no foreign policy experience to the job, shoots her own dinner, comes across as politically unnuanced, and, perhaps the most cutting strike against her, lacks gravitas. These negatives are obviously serious disadvantages for anyone contemplating a run for the presidency, but are they valid criticisms? Is she really “out” before she even takes a swing? Let’s consider each of these knocks against her in turn.
To begin with, Palin is by no means poorly educated; she merely did not graduate with a degree from an Ivy League institution, which by any reasonable account in today’s academic milieu should stand decidedly in her favor. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley and other so-called elite universities charge prohibitive tuition fees while, for the most part, delivering second-rate curricular fare. They represent the kiss of intellectual death — unless, of course, one wishes to enter the service of the State Department or practice trial or immigration law. Palin did well to avoid these bastions of mainly liberal-left political correctness.
As for the absence of foreign policy experience, David Jenkins reminds us in an article for PJM that, with the exception of the elder Bush (who, incidentally, was no presidential cynosure), “it is not common for presidents to enter office with foreign policy experience.”...
She does seem to make those who oppose her crazy. In recent weeks she has been challenged on perfectly valid points she has made by smart asses in the media who were just factually wrong. Those mistakes on their part tend to vanish into the ether once she or her supporters point out the truth, but they do little to destroy the credibility of those who hate her.
She has been getting some fair treatment from a few mainstream media interviews such as recent interviews in the NY Times and Time Magazine. Both refrained from the anonymous sources used by many in the media in attempts to discredit her.
Since Christmas there have been attempts by Democrat leaning polling firms to suggest she is not electable. Why would they do that? These pollsters seem to be trying to say that everybody but Huckabe does not have a chance, and he does not seem to be running. If he were, you can bet he would be getting the can't win treatment too.
Sarah Palin will make the case for her candidacy if she decides to win. She will pick her top three or four issues and hammer them. I have always agreed with her on most issues and view the other stuff as just noise to be ignored. Whether she can get other voters to do the same will determine her fate.
Her best issues are energy, where she would destroy Obama and his carbon phobe administration, national security, and the economy, where Obama has run up the debt and the unemployment figures. She could really hammer him on jobs and the energy issue is a place where he is vulnerable on jobs and on revenue generation for the government.
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