David Warren: Political Lives
|
|
Published October 30th, 2008
Today’s column by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen takes on the question of “experience”:
There are “credentials,” and then there is “cred.” It is sometimes necessary to shorten or otherwise alter a word, to recover its original meaning. Here we are discussing not a job resumé, but what can be seen through it.
Of the four candidates on the two U.S. presidential tickets, it strikes me that both John McCain and Sarah Palin have some credible personal background to equip them in dealing with the interface between politics and life. By comparison, neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden has ever done anything much, except master party political machinery.
on 
JR,
This is a pretty weak argument. Obama, just like Palin, started with nothing and had to work the local political machines in order to get started (just because he started in Chicago and she started in Alask doesn’t really change anything).
The same can be said for Biden, he doesn’t come from money, he got where he is on his own chops.
Yes, we all know she’s a fiesty Maverick, that wouldn’t hesitate to “pull the trigger.” But is that what we really want? Isn’t that how we ended up in this mess in Iraq? (I mean, apart from the whole lying about why we went there)
Wouldn’t you rather have the smartest MF you can find making those kind of command discisions? (I don’t know, maybe some who graduated 1st in his class at Harvard as an example.)
Why do we keep picking people who we think would be cool to have a beer with? Don’t you think having someone in the White House who has an intimidating intellect and a “smooth” persona would be a good thing right about now?
Look, we both know that Obama isn’t going to able to keep all his campaign promises (name one President who did), in order to fix all the problems facing this country he’s going to have to bend on any number of them.
Maybe the old McCain would be able to, not sure about the new and “improved” version, but Palin? Come on! She seem’s like a pretty black and white kind of gal. Unfortunitly, the world really is made of shades of gray.
Just to keep it straight, Obama received his his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, but i’m pretty sure he wasn’t first in his class (unless that was more a metaphor than a direct reference).
Yes, Jeremy, Obama did receive his J.D. from Harvard, whereas Sarah Palin went to five colleges in four years and her pretensions to foreign policy experience are that she can see Alaska from her window.
Unlike Obama who has been articulate and thoughtful, she has refused to answer direct questions both in interviews and in her one debate with Joe Biden.
It’s fine to support somebody and to make a partisan case for them, but this columnist didn’t really make a good case because his comparisons were so far off target.
Weak, go read George Will, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Gen. Powell, and the McCain campaign which has labeled Palin a power hungry diva… all more credible than some dude none of us has ever heard of.
Jeremy,
My bad. I’d thought I’d read he finished first, but after looking it up I couldn’t find it. Although he was the President of the Harvard Law Review, which is a fairly significant accomplishment.
Look, my point really is that he’s a smart dude. And I don’t think that most of the people reading this blog is truely believe that he’s a communist or a radical, or that he’s going to end America as we know it.
But of the choices we’re being offered he may be the smartest guy out there. And at this point, I”m ready for someone really really smart.
Frenchy, i’m not too sure about the belief thing. And to be honest, the more i’ve thought about it, the more depressing it’s become. Either a good number of people actually believe that he’s a radical, bent on transforming America into a Soviet second coming, or they are perfectly comfortable pushing a viewpoint which they don’t believe, and whipping up false outrage. An “ends justify the means” scenario. Maybe it’s just the followers falling in behind the leader (McCain), and taking his lead. He’s stated he doesn’t consider Obama a socialist, and yet his campaign seems comfortable continuing to push that line. The irony of course being that a good portion of our strongest allies are far more socialist than we (atleast judging by governemt ownership of industry).
In many ways, as excited as I am by the potential prospect of an Obama presidency (and have been ever since reading Dreams of my Father back in 2004), i just want this to be over. The great campaign of ideas i was hoping for has been drowned beneath the bogs of association and innuendo, and partisanship more bitter than I thought possible (and thats saying a lot after experienceing Rovian-style politics). Wednesday can’t come soon enough.
Well said Jeremy. The good news is we’re almost there.