Sarah Palin and all that campaign nonsense about 'experience'

I agree. Far too much is made of experience as a qualification for the presidency.

Anyone can see that Vladimir Putin and Ahmadinejad will be quaking in their boots, should McCain keel over from a heart attack. Not to mention Maliki and um, the president of Israel--whoever that is.

And nuclear non-proliferation and national security concerns are for sissies. Any reasonably intelligent person could pick up the basic elements of that file in a couple of weeks, tops.

The administration of justice is a breeze, too, just ask Gonzalez. And crumbling infrastructure and problems of inner cities? That's all for whiners and hand-wringers.

The only thing experience is good for is helping to develop better judgment and more wisdom. Some people never develop these traits, no matter how much experience they acquire. Some people have excellent judgement from day one.

Basing your estimation of a candidate on the amount of experience they have instead of on the wisdom they display misses the point entirely.

Mrs. Palin displays awful wisdom. She is uncertain about the cause of Global Warming while her state's glaciers melt at record rates. She is friendly to teaching creationism in public schools while our country slips further behind the rest of the world in science and technology. She is almost completely ignorant of foreign policy in a time we fight two wars and struggle to attend to multiple brush-fires throughout the world.

It is not her lack of experience that troubles me, it is her terrible judgement on important issues that causes my skepticism.

K

And the wisdom of putting someone like her in line directly behind a 72 year old survivor of multiple cancers in a time of world-wide social upheaval troubles me even more. It calls Senator McCain's judgment into question.

K

How ironic, to see McCain under his "Country First" sign.

In these dangerous times and terrible economic conditions - knowing he's 72 and have four times had cancer - he gives us someone for a potential leader of the free world whose value is exclusively political, valuable only for the purpose of getting him elected President.

What would happen to America and the world, if McCain were incapacitated, and this governor of 18 months and mayor of a hamlet of 6000 were dealing with Putin, the Taliban, the Chinese – not to mention the horrific economic wreckage we must urgently deal with?

How could he sell out the best interests of our country to get himself into the Oval Office? He was a hero.

Country first? I'm sure it was. It clearly is not, any more.

How very sad.

"Judgment" is the operative word. And I have to severely question her judgment when she insists on portraying herself as a "soccer mom" in an attempt to woo the women voters from Obama.
Can you imagine her as president, trying to stand up to Putin or the crazy who's president of Iran with the sobriquet of "soccer mom" haunting her??
And this is not a purely theoretical concern. The average life expectancy of a man is the mid-70s: McCain is now 72 with a history of a deadly form of cancer that's struck 4 times.

This is a hoax on America.
John McCain looks sicker now, than 4 years ago. Melanoma is normally fatal, he's had it TWICE, unheard of.
Ask yourself. WOULD I VOTE FOR SARAH PALIN FOR PRESIDENT. NO!
Sarah, are you ready to be President, "yup, yup, sure".
Sarah, what do you think of the war in Iraq?
"I haven't really thought about it"! This is startling!
If this is what is going to pull the McCain base in, I pray Americans finally wake up to the long nightmare.
Oh, and by the way. She left her town of 8,000 people, $20 million in debt! Typically.
Of course, the investigation will be covered up, of course it will. Cheney will see to that!

Justin is being deliberately provocative here. Judging by the cogent and well informed responses, he has succeeded.

Experience or not; trying to woo H. Clinton voters or not (which seems like they would want more moderate choice); it seems as if McCain spent little time with Palin. I don't know if this is “normal,” but if the average person were to choose their VP perhaps they would want to spend a bit more time to see if they really want this person on their team. I mean, to get hired these days it takes (or so it seems) at least three interviews, perhaps a job skill test, a background check, etc.

Article: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/29/1307122.aspx

Finally someone who is being sane in all this insanity. The office of Vice President has never historically been held to the same standards as the office of President, with regards to experience. What happened to the American model of making a difference, pulling one up by his or her bootstraps and wisdom over experience. How about we take a time out and let the dust settle and take a deep breath? Before we make anymore quick judgements based on some kind of experience scale, try reading up on previous elected Vice President candidates like; Spiro Agnew, Harry Truman, Henry Walace. All were Vice Presidents of Presidents that changed the face of the United States.

Corporate ID, regarding some former VP choices, fair enough.

But, when it was clear that FDR's health was fast deteriorating, Wallace (seemingly a near-communist, but most charitably a man of poor judgment) was bumped from the ticket in favor of Truman, a pragmatic middle-of-the-road guy -- a man of some good JUDGMENT, even though he had no executive EXPERIENCE.

With McCain's age and his 4 bouts with melanoma, we may be facing the same need for VP caution that existed with FDR's last run for president.

I understand McCain only met with Palin once to discuss the vice presidency. I feel like the country has been stuck with John McCain's one-night stand--and he wants us to marry her.

What an insult to women: One set of boobs is NOT interchangeable with another! Palin is the antithesis of everything Hillary Clinton stands for. She has NO NATIONAL EXPERIENCE, NO INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE, AND SHE IS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF VIRTUALLY EVERY ISSUE, UNLESS YOU'RE AN EVANGELICAL. It is clear that this is a political choice, not "doing what's best for the country", as McCain claims. Talk about poor judgment!!!!

Answer this: if by some horrible coincidence, both McCain and Obama died the day before the election, who would you vote for?

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but if I were John McCain, I'd be watching my back--I wouldn't put it past Rove and Co. to arrange for John McCain to die of "natural causes" a month or so after taking office so they can run Palin via remote control, a la The Manchurian Candidate.

Quote from TIME magazine: "When asked if he would keep the straight talk coming, McCain replied, "You think I could survive if I didn't? We'd never be forgiven ... I'd have to hire a food taster, somebody to start my car in the morning." "

I'd suggest he start now...

To say "Sarah Palin has more administrative experience than McCain, Obama and Biden combined" is sophistry of the most base sort.

This assumes that the only administrative experience that counts is being governor (or Mayor if you're Giuliani). The usual Republican talking point from which most of the mainstream media take their clues is that she has more "executive" experience, not "administrative" experience. Both points are asinine.

Some would consider running a midsized company to constitute executive or administrative experience. Obama has run a campaign with more than 500 employees and thousands of volunteers for 18 months under intense media attention and has run circles around all of his competitors, most of whom started with great structural advantages. Does that constitute administrative experience? How about running a Law Review with 80 editors? How about sitting on the Board of numerous corporations and organizations? Obama's done all of this not to mention 12 years of legislative experience and being a law professor at one of the nation's top law schools. But that doesn't count either.

No, apparently, if you're Republican and you've chaired a couple of PTA meetings and were mayor of a town of 6000 -- never mind that this post didn't even come with VOTING rights unless there was a tie -- that makes you Ronald Reagan.

Pathetic.

We've heard for months that experience mattered above all. Now, it doesn't. Will the media call McCain on this insulting choice? Of course not, but hopefully the truth will come out despite the media.

She supported the Bridge to Nowhere. She passed a windfall tax on oil companies. She improperly used her position to pressure the firing of a state trooper for personal reasons. Every thing about her is spin, smoke and mirrors.

But she's got that administrative experience, right?

Old McCain has done the right thing, picking a young former beauty queen to complement him. Americans would love anything that is youthful and pretty. Who knows if the US will have the first woman in the Oval Office within the next several years?

Why should any one care about experience? What a president (or for that matter a vice president) needs is a pool of highly qualified and conversant advisors in all disciplines. The rise or fall of the president depends upon whether the advisors succeed or fail. The rest goes to acting. A person incapable of theatrical performance should not become a leader, let alone be running the most powerful nation on earth. (Tan Boon Tee)

K - Experience?? Since when has the VP candidate experience been an issue. FDR who has confined to a wheelchair chose Wallace (a commissionar of Agriculture for his VP). Nixon chose Spiro Agnew who had less Governor experience than Palin. I think using McCain's age and cancer survivor status is an excuse. The VP issue is not your real issue, your real issue is McCain's age and possible reacurrance of cancer. The key is going to be who he surronds himself with, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. These are who you should be concerned with, based on our last 8 years.

Corporate ID, in looking at your September 1, 2008 8:43 AM posting, you seem to be saying a president needs only to pcik good people, then sit back and handle the paperwork.

As a retired president and CEO in industry, have to respectfully, but strongly disagree. Any complex organization will be faced with conflicting goals that only the chief executive can resolve -- based on his/her own personal JUDGMENT.

One hypothetical: The Secretary of State wants to negotiate with Iran, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defense wants to attack Iran, and the Secretaries of Energy and Treasury say to placate Iran at all costs because we need their oil and need to keep the dollar strong. All are capable people.

Palin has never come close to being faced with that kind of confilct.

And at 72, McCain is about 4.6 times less likely to survive to 73 than a 52 year-old man is likely to survive to 53. To be more precise, a 72 year-old man has 1 chance in 33 of dying in the next year. Think that's nothing to worry about? Well, there's 1 chance in 700,000 that during any year lightning will kill you. Yet in a storm you take reasonable precautions against lightning, such as avoiding stand-alone trees, or being out on lake in a boat.

Is McCain taking reasonable precautions against a calamity that's 700,000/33 = 2,121 times more likely to occur than being killed by lightning?

Walt,
I am not sure any candidate comes to the office of the presidency with that type of experience (confronting Iran). If not experience then what should we be looking for? Because we are faced at this moment with multiple choices where experience is lacking?
I am a manager of a company that spends a lot of time looking at the past accomplishments and successes that a person brings to a project. I want to see where this person made a difference, how did they inovate a process, how did they respond to a failure. Did they go with the flow (take the easy route) or did they take a stand even when they knew it would put them in the minority. I am hoping between now and November that I will see this in either candidate.

While statistically experience may have played little in past elections, I can't recall any prior VP's whose experience involved two years of governership of an island and six years as mayor of an iceberg with the population equivalent of a state college.And I could overlook this pick had Michael Phelps been running for president. But I would encourage anyone with any input to the contrary that indicates Ms. Palin is ready to become commander-in-chief upon inauguration, more so than Romney,Lieberman,or Polenti and would therefore be the obvious, non-political decision for VP.

Alaska is an island? This is news!

"K - Experience?? Since when has the VP candidate experience been an issue."

If you had bothered to read what I typed, you would have seen that I don't value experience over judgment.

"Basing your estimation of a candidate on the amount of experience they have instead of on the wisdom they display misses the point entirely."

How much more clear can I be?

K

You're correct, Alaska is a continent, not an island. And there's a bridge near it, that really does'nt go anywhere. Palin supported the project to build it.