McCain Says Palin Isn’t Qualified To Be President
14th September 2008
by gordo
Yep, that’s John McCain, saying that Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani aren’t qualified to be president because they served as governor of Massachusetts and mayor of New York City “for a short time.” Joe Sudbay points out that Massachusetts has 10 times the population of Alaska, and New York City has 1,000 times more people than Wasilla. Meanwhile, Sam Stein reminds us that both Romney and Giuliani served longer than Palin did. Stein also points out that Palin’s interview with Charles Gibson only served to reinforce McCain’s assessment of her qualifications:
For critics, Palin’s interview with ABC on Thursday evening was an apt demonstration of the criticisms McCain raised about mayors and governors back in October. In her first interview since being tapped as McCain’s vice president, Palin showed, in some respects, the limitations of her foreign policy capacity. Time’s Joe Klein wrote, “A joke… This woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about. What an embarrassment.” Unable to define the Bush Doctrine and contradicting McCain on Pakistan, she acknowledged that she had only visited a handful of countries and never met with another world leader. Then, it was her turn to ridicule the lengthy Washington resume that defines McCain.
“Charlie, again, we’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time,” she said to the ABC host. “It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”
For Democrats, the revelation that McCain doesn’t think Palin is qualified to be president is a cause for both joy and apprehension. On the one hand, McCain has given the Obama campaign an unexpected gift. But Rachel Maddow expressed concern about he fact that this very big gaffe was discovered more than a week after Palin’s selection, and it was discovered by the media, not by the Obama campaign. It’s time for the Obama team to step up its opposition research.
(cross posted at This Old Brit)
September 14th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Wonder how many “foreign countries” George Washington had visited before he became president.
Ole Rachel and the rest of you moonbats miss the point (and the boat) entirely.
Her supporters KNOW that Palin is inexperienced and hardly expect her to be hip on all the Beltway terminology.
Handle this one with care now bats, else you’ll wind up spitting and sputtering worse than the Obama campaign…..
That’s what they LIKE about her!
It’s a Mr Smith Goes to Washington kind of thing-a woman of the 50’s (pre moonbat emersion) style and mindset-fiercely independent, fighting to protect her brood and her reputation, doesn’t need a nanny or a fainting couch, unsullied by the corrupt bureacratic debauchery of Beltway “insiders”.
So please keep throwing your punchless little pebbles at her; most Americans just love knocking them out of the political ballpark.
“Oooh butt, RAYYYchel said…….”
Just pathetic.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:14 am
None, of course. But he did command this little outfit known as the Continental Army for a few years under extremely difficult circumstances. He never went to France, but he coordinated military activities with the French against the British.
Awaiting next dumb statement from Bedrock.
September 14th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Palin is selected to fit one demographic…The Appalachian voters.
Remember that Hillary voters during primary brawl? The map?
September 14th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Tommy–
Actually, some of the places Washington went during the French and Indian War were technically part of France. And yes, it’s pretty silly to pretend that Washington knew as little about international affairs as Palin does.
At any rate, BRT can pretend that it was Rachel Maddow who said that Palin wasn’t qualified if he likes, but the fact is that it was John McCain who said that serving as governor of Massachusetts or as mayor of New York City wasn’t sufficient experience to be president.
September 14th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
You’re being a little rough on the Mountaineers, but you all are going to hear trailer trash and poor white trash a whole lot more in conversations about Palin. When I used trailer trash in a previous post I didn’t pull that out of thin air. Palin scares more people than the polls and the media are noticing.
McCain has pulled even with Obama riding the Palin bubble out of the convention. Given that Palin suddenly quit cooperating with the Alaska investigation despite promising to cooperate completely at exactly the time that McCain announced her selection, it looks like she didn’t know it was coming until the very last second. That looks like McCain couldn’t find anybody else. He had to make a splash, because that was all he had, and in the process threw away his platform and his reputation.
All it is going to take is a pin prick and they sink. I think there is a leak already. As they come down off the convention bump, which everybody does, I don’t see the slide stopping.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Dutch–
The insider accounts say that McCain wanted to make a big splash and shake up the campaign. His advisers suggested Romney, but McCain thought that his campaign was doomed unless he could find a way to co-opt Obama’s message of change.
McCain wanted Lieberman, but Lieberman would have caused the religious right to bolt the party because he’s too pro-choice, too pro-gay, and too… what’s the word?… Jewish. So they went with Palin.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
They market tested Lieberman. Remember their european trip together? The poll needle didn’t budge, so Lieberman was dropped.
I think Palin is an implosion waiting to happen. She is not agile enough and not ready for national stage. She is going to make big blunder one of these days. (with financial market collapsing, things are going to get complicated.)
September 14th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Palin is giving the McCain campaign just what it wants, diversion from the real issues in the campaign. However, the debates are coming and dodging those issues will be very difficult. The issues, which reflect the failures of the Bush administration and the Republican control of Congress, can’t be avoided then.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:24 am
So what? it boils down to maybe only two who were willing to run with McCain. Lieberman definitely wouldn’t have worked. Regardless of the positions involved, there is a little thing I call damnation of the turn coat that even conservative Democrats might honor. And the hard right wouldn’t have been very enthusiatic either. The market testing was probably necessary to convince McCain himself of what nearly anybody else could easily see.
Palin has already made enough fatal blunders that when one finally gets hooked in the estimation of the general American population, the rest will pile on, and the slide will quickly become an avalanche. I certainly agree that it is not if, but when that will happen.
Will she stick with the ticket when that happens or blame McCain for not protecting her well enough, that is the question in my mind. In the past she has turned on her own Republican sponsors and mentors in Alaska, when she thought it was to her advantage. If she splits she may save some of her reputation for being a maverick in Alaska, but McCain’s hope for the White House is immediately and irreconcilably down the crapper at that point. If she sticks it out with McCain she may destroy her own hopes for future national office.
Personally, I think there is something like a 40% chance she won’t be on the ticket on election day. McCain’s post convention bump is starting to slip. The more it slips, the higher that chance goes. If she is going to jump ship, she will have to do it early enough so she can salvage her status at home and cover up her own part in it. The longer she waits the harder that will become.
McCain’s choice of Palin pretty much reverses much of what he has been campaigning on throughout this election. There really is no defined McCain campaign any more; it is all over the board now with opposing positions on most issues. He had no choice but to go into the convention with someone; he has no chance unless that someone remains on the ticket to the end, but given who he chose he has very little to campaign on left either.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Honestly, I don’t think either McCain or Palin has an alternative to sticking with the current ticket. Unless it turns out that Palin got electroshock therapy in a mental institution, she’ll be on the ticket in November.
The problem is that she can’t leave the ticket without being disloyal and a quitter, and he can’t boot her off the ticket without admitting that he made a colossal error. She is McCain’s Dan Quayle: a candidate selected to appease the religious right and to attract women to the ticket who has little knowledge or experience. As with Quayle, there’s little the campaign can do except cross their fingers and hope that she doesn’t hurt the ticket too much.
The fact that Bush the Smart did win, despite the presence of Quayle on the ticket, should make Democrats uneasy. Most people will overlook the VP candidate in order to vote for the president they want, and in terms of raw intelligence, Palin has Quayle beaten by a country mile. But she might be a weaker candidate anyway, because there are a lot of questions about her honesty and her cronyism, and a lot of voters think that corruption and lying are worse qualities in a politician than ignorance and inexperience.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Good post; at least until you got to the moonbat talking points of “corruption and lying”.
I think it’s been pretty well documented by now that Palin hasn’t been “lying”,word weaseling by the nutroots community nothwithstanding.But more importantly, most Americans(as opposed to liberals and media jackals) KNOW that she wasn’t lying about the f…ng bridge or anything else. Frankly OohBama loses another point every time the meme gets repeated,so fine with us.
As far as “cronyism” is concerned, that’s so weak it’s just comical. Name any elected official, or business executive for that matter,who chooses to be surrounded by people who aren’t on board with the program or the leader.
Picking the people who you believe support you and are on your team is one of the priviledges of leadership which, of course, most moonbats won’t understand at all since most of them have never led anything at all since they operated some over-priced and under-lemoned lemonade stand in grammar school.
“And ye shall dwell in the ever darkening grotto of despair, Diebold, hanging chads, wimpy candidates and hopeless desperation for all eternity.”…or at least for another four years.
Love it!!
September 16th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
gordo,
Palin has made her reputation in Alaska by turning on the leadership of the Republican party, including her own mentors, which include Murkowski, Young and Stevens, all of whom she worked closely with and for up to the point she stabbed them in the back, including quitting in one case, as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Granted they had it coming and then some, but she didn’t attack political opposition any more than her own political allies. I don’t think she has all that much concern about loyalty. Most other people would, like you say, be concerned about being disloyal like that, but she has a track record of that very thing.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Where has that been documented? Redneck Daily and Bubba’s Throne Room Reader?
From the New York Times:
Maybe you don’t have a problem with handing $95,000 in taxpayer money to a woman who’s clearly unqualified, but I do. Especially when she’s supposed to be running an important government agency. Didn’t we learn anything from Brownie’s handling of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina?
September 18th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Was that the same one who couldn’t keep the state owned dairy open, and then couldn’t find a buyer for it either?
September 18th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Actually, that appears to have been the responsibility of Alaska’s creamery board. Here’s the take from the conservative Wall Street Journal:
The crony in charge of the Creamery Board was Kristin Cole, who immediately pissed away $800,000 in state funds, not including her salary.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
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Thanks.