Vice Presidential debate? This was no debate! Sarah Palin rarely answered the questions and simply used the venue as a forum for her scripted and memorized views. I was most disappointed with the moderator for not calling her on it. Most of the time when Palin spoke I forgot what question had been posed. The McCain camp could have chosen any person with a reasonable degree of information retention and an ability to wink, and that person would have been just as effective.
So was the bar set so very low that Palin did well simply by showing up and repeating the same rhetoric used in other speeches? Apparently so. She was applauded by her ability to stand there for ninety minutes without any major gaffes and use her pageant skills to relate to the average Joe.
I was at least comforted to hear some of the media pick up on Palin's avoidance of the questions, but I am dismayed at the lack of public awareness of what was clearly a coached espousal of the McCain-Palin party line.
I think it’s time for Americans to engage in self-flagellation or, at least, a not-so-gentle slap in the face to wake us up. Sarah Palin’s “folksy” appeal is endearing her to the conservative base and many undecided voters. Um…didn’t we choose our current President based on his “folksiness?” I remember well the sentiment at the time that George W. was someone you could “have a beer with,” and look how that choice turned out. Has our penchant for fast food affected our collective short term memory or is this simply the disturbing zeitgeist of our time?
I don’t want folksy. I don’t want to share a beer – or six beers with our leaders. I want boring. I want intelligence. I want educated. I want rational judgment. I don’t want a leader who plays hockey with our lives and then goes out for beer and pizza.
I guess that makes me an elitist. Give me a leader, not a friend.
My husband shamed me. After I finished my ranting over McCain’s choice of vice president, offended that McCain, as well as the Republican Party powers that be, believe that women are stupid enough to fail to see the obvious pandering to disaffected Hillary supporters, my husband reminded me that even the most alienated among them are bright enough to eschew McCain’s strategy. My husband is right. I would like to think that women who supported Hillary’s nomination bid (myself included) did so because they trusted her ability to lead our country and they endorsed her views. I would not like to think that these women’s only agenda was simply to put a woman in the White House regardless of platform. Any previous Hillary supporter who now votes for McCain and Palin because of some misguided feminism should not have voted for Hillary to begin with. Hillary Clinton was and continues to be about bringing our country back to reason. This election is not about gender politics. Rather, it is about intelligent and thoughtful choice.
Barack Obama is right: John McCain just doesn't get it.
