My Musings On Experience

A good friend of mine said to me the other day of Sarah Palin, something along the lines of, "Just because she's inexperienced doesn't mean she's unknowledgable or incapable." My friend was right, and it got me to thinking. I concluded that it's not really experience that has me concerned, as much as capableness.

What if McCain's running mate was Bobby Jindal instead of Sarah Palin? Jindal was a congressman for three years, and became Louisiana governor 8 months ago. Less experience, I think, than Palin's two years as governor of Alaska, even if you leave out her years as president of the PTA.

Jindal graduated with honors from an Ivy League school, and received a master's degree in political science from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, having turned down acceptances to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School. Palin attended FOUR different schools (University of Idaho twice, having transferred out then back in to graduate) before finally receiving her bachelors.

Jindal, though I disagree with his positions, is a thoughtful man who would clearly be capable as an executive. Someone who could manage a meeting with world leaders, without being on the receiving end of mockery and outright cringing on the part of the American people. Someone who I think is qualified to run the country. I'm not worried about his lack of foreign policy experience as governor, because I'm confident that he follows world issues, is interested in them, and forms opinions, and can converse knowledgably about a range of issues, even those not directly affecting his constiuents in Louisiana.

Palin, though, is a train wreck. She can't answer simple questions, like, "What newspapers do you read?" She's barely conversant on even the big talking points associated with her ticket, much less an in-depth conversation about complex issues affecting the country. It's been reported that she had a thirty minute attention span during Alaska Gubernatorial debate prep. I think, perhaps, she can't be bothered to pull facts out of her head, or maybe she has such an intense lack of interest in global issues that it all just flies right out the window.

Since George W. Bush has made the United States a laughingstock for the past eight years . . . I, for one, don't want ANOTHER "Joe six-pack" running the country. I want someone a whole lot smarter than myself. I want someone with intellectual curiousity and interest in the issues s/he is asked to manage. Wouldn't you rather see the former President of the Harvard Law Review take office than someone who had to transfer back and forth FIVE times between different third-rate colleges, just to get her undergraduate degree? Wouldn't you rather have the guy who is conversant on a range of issues, over the person who can't name a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade, even though she's been busy mouthing off about "activist judges?" Does she even know what that means? I'll take the smart guy, thanks.