About that interview

I saw the first part of Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin. Every concern I had about her was reinforced and a new one added: She is dangerous.

The overall impression she left was that she was briefed, but ill-informed. She was coached, but ignorant of world affairs. She was given talking points, but didn’t have the underlying knowledge of what she was talking about. She came across as facile, smarmy and arrogant—and we’ve had eight years too many of that in the Bush-Cheney regime.

All of this isn’t based merely on the fact that she had no idea what Gibson was talking about when he asked her about the so-called “Bush Doctrine”, which describes the Bush-Cheney-McCain assertion that the US has the right to attack any country in the world pre-emptively and unilaterally if, in their sole opinion, it means “preventing a terrorist attack”. When this was all explained to Palin, she endorsed it.

More of my concern came from Palin seeming to seriously believe that her little hops overseas, and the fact that you can see Russia from part of Alaska, has given her foreign policy and national security experience. She dismissively said that there had been other vice presidents with less “experience”, and she may be right. But they weren’t alive in the dangerous world of instant terror we find ourselves in now. With the Democrats we have the able and experienced Joe Biden ready to step in should something happen to Obama. With the Republicans we’d have and novice traveller, and that’s all the more dangerous when she seemed to think nothing of blithely suggesting war with Russia over Georgia (memo to Palin: Georgia did strike first, so the Russians certainly considered themselves provoked, whether you did or not).

When Gibson asked her whether she hesitated even for a moment in accepting McCain’s offer to be his running mate, she said she didn’t. Most people would at least pause and wonder whether they’re the best person. Sarah Palin had plenty of reasons to wonder but, apparently, she sees her time as a small town mayor and less than two years as governor of large (but largely empty) state as somehow qualifying her to be president, should McCain die in office.

If Palin had run in the primaries, she would’ve been dispatched pretty quickly as completely unqualified. But now she’s being anointed as some sort of demi-god, ready to rise from obscurity to be president. She’s not ready to lead, and her total lack of relevant experience and qualification makes her unfit. Add her ignorance of the world and her extremist views on many domestic issues and she’s downright dangerous.

We’ve just had eight years of incompetence and ignorance on the loose. We don’t need more of the same.