Will the country blindly accept intelligence bestowed upon Palin by the media, especially after the current President's intelligence. My guess is yes; which is why I am straight up questioning Sarah Palin's competence. In her eight days on the national stage she has demonstrated no capability for logical thought. At her introduction last Friday (8/29) she regurgitated a speech written by somebody else. The following weekend in Pennsylvania she essentially repeated the same speech. Palin's third and most recent public appearance was her acceptance speech at the RNC in St. Paul. Here she gave yet another speech written by somebody else, but this time it was also written for somebody else. The McCain campaign has also been insistent on eliminating any of her interaction with the media. Palin has been the VP candidate for a week and has herself contributed nothing of substance to her national introduction.
But perhaps I'm being too critical and expecting too much out of Palin in such a short time. Let's say I do give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she isn't stupid. If I focus on her time before her nomination as VP I can come up with two glaring examples in which she lacked mental fortitude; the first revolves around her successful outing of an established figure in the Alaskan Republican party, and the second incident arises from the situation around her daughter's pregnancy, but has nothing to do with her daughter.
Her first display of incompetence occurred in between her unsuccessful run for Lieutenant Governorship of Alaska in 2002 and her successful run for Governor in 2006. During this time she suffered from what I'm going to refer to as the "Washington Complex," a condition in which you believe yourself to be the law. At some point Palin grew irritated with certain members of the Alaskan Republican party and vowed to stir the pot. She succeeded with the eventual indictment of Randy Ruedrich and Gregg Renkes. If you piss off the ruling party in Alaska some people are going to remember; your only option at this point is to be squeaky clean or risk revenge. At this point Palin should be commended, but the story isn't over. Palin would eventually dismiss Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, citing performance-related issues, but it appears that Monegan was dismissed for refusing to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law instead. This is the point where she developed the "Washington Complex." It turns out some people did remember her earlier activity; in response the Alaska Legislature commissioned an investigation into the conditions surrounding Monegan's dismissal. She thought she was above the law and caught, ignoring the cardinal rule of politics: someone is always watching.
When you base your candidacy on the family values, religious right, stereotypical small government and lower taxes Republican candidate it's definitely not good for your political resume when your seventeen year old daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock. But as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin could have very easily just declared the couple married; Boom, problem solved. It would have been the politically expedient thing to do, but it would also have been the best thing for her daughter and potential son-in-law. There is really no downside to this civil "wedding"; the marriage would have been easily deniable (the baby was premature) and could just be erased if needed. Palin's lapse in logic is comparable to George's WMD debacle (but on a much smaller scale); if you make up false war pretenses, it seems logical that you should also make up false WMD's, but George didn't and neither did Sarah. If Palin is going to play the "mother of five" card she probably should have put her child first; unless of course, she couldn't think of it?
In any case Palin has fifty-nine days to demonstrate competence and so far she's squandered eight.
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Can Sarah Palin Think?
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