I like Sarah Palin, but…

The one good thing we can take away from the first 25% of Barack Obama’s train wreck of a presidency is that it isn’t a job that’s particularly conducive to on-the-job training. While Obama is an outstanding speaker with a magnificent and well-tenored voice, a grand sense of timing and speechwriters that could be the envy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, his ability to deliver on his promises is not so great.

---

But part of the reason this novice president is unable to deliver on his promises is the promises were vague and nebulous, tending to hyperbole, as in his promise to “heal the planet” and “lower the ocean levels,” etc. Americans went to the polls last November to elect a president who only had a vague clue about what he was going to do and had even less of a clue about how he was going to do it. The reason Obama won the presidency is that most of those voting for him imagined that he would be delivering some program, which they imagined would better their lives, however vague the candidate was in articulating it. And the Fourth Estate, that is the former mainstream media, failed in its responsibility to point out Mr. Obama’s shortcomings and losing themselves with thrills running up their legs. And that’s only how Obama affected the male members of the media (pardon the pun); one wonders how the female media types took to his oratory. So we can safely draw the conclusion that anyone seeking to sit in the Oval Office really needs to have a clear picture of his or her policies and then needs to convince Americans in tangible ways how those policies will benefit the country and the means through which they will be achieved. There is a fairly strong movement afoot to convince Sarah Palin to run for president against Obama in 2012, something that I believe to be ill advised. Don’t get me wrong; I really like Sarah Palin. I like her conservatism, her grit, her devotion to fiscal prudence and her antipathy towards corruption. In short, I like her idealism. But to tell the truth, I think a Palin Presidency would be just as disastrous as the current presidency is proving to be and I don’t think the US can handle any more presidents that will need to be trained to do the job once they take office. Unlike David Frum, I don’t believe that Ms Palin is hopelessly unqualified because she is of limited intellect. Many made that same comment about Ronald Reagan, but he proved to be one of the best presidents of the 20th Century and could rank among the top handful of presidents ever; right up there with Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson. What concerns me about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience on the national as well as international scene, which could result in a potential disaster of a presidency just like Obama who sat in the Senate for two years and spent the other two years of his term in campaign mode. I never thought I’d actually say this, but truly, I believe Hillary Clinton would have made a more effective and hence better president that Obama. Ms Palin should serve in the congress for one or two terms at least to get the lay of the land before attempting a run for Messiah, er president. I agree with much of what she has said, but the facts are, she hasn’t really said all that much definitively, except mouth conservative platitudes about lower taxes and smaller, more honest government. And I’m all in favor of these things; I just want her to be able to deliver them. When one thinks that Barack Obama is sitting in the oval Office with his party in total control of the legislative branch of the government and is unable to deliver any of the things he’s tried for, then one comes to understand the magnitude of what a conservative Republican President would have to be capable of doing in order to deliver on her promises. In that sense, Sarah Palin is too much of a newbie.

---