Palin versus Obama
Article added on September 15, 2008
John McCain is allegedly a shrewd politician who chose a
hockey mom to win the presidential election. Yes, Sarah Palin has no foreign,
defense and security policy experience. But she is the only one of the four
candidates with executive experience. In any case, the citizens of the
United States will elect a president with no executive experience (with the
exception of a short period of John McCain at the end of his military
career).
The outrage on the Left is sweet. The poster boy on the Democratic ticket is
not running for the post of vice president, he is on top of the ticket.
Barack Obama has not achieved anything substantial in his entire career, be
it as social worker in Chicago or as a legislature in Chicago and in
Washington, D.C. Sarah Palin has achieved more in her less than two years as
governor than Obama in his entire career.
Greed is an unpleasant feature of human nature, economic cycles and bubbles
- who remembers Bill Clinton's dot.com bubble? - are unfortunately a part of
the economic reality. The danger is high that American voters, destabilized
by the self-inflicted economic downturn, will go for the protectionist,
interventionist and socialist recipes of the former community organizer with
his wife who, until early 2008, had a
$317,000-a-year job as vice president of community and
external relations manager
of a tax-exempt nonprofit Chicago hospital which provides health care to low
income patients. No wonder they make no profit paying some $25,000 per month
to the hospital's vice president PR lady. Let's be clear, Michelle is
irrelevant when it comes to Barack's qualification to be vice president, but
her job corroborates the impression that both Obamas have not worked in an
environment where they have learned to understand where the money comes from
and how the economy works.
Alaska was the champion
of earmarks before Sarah Palin arrived. In her job as mayor, she sought
earmarks to get infrastructure to her small town at the end of the
world, that is why she hired a lobbyist far away in Washington for $30,000 a year, that was
much cheaper than sending her own people down there once a month or so.
Later, at the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she realized how
corrupt the system was. As governor, she cut down the number and the volume
in dollars of Alaska's earmarks, despite some resistance from politicians
and lobbyist. She is not the
“Thanks, but not thanks” poster woman, but at least she is marching in the right
direction, now in sink with John McCain, who is the only of the four
candidates left to have consistently opposed earmarks. It is
difficult for the Alaska governor to go from being the U.S. champion of earmarks to
being the shining example. Considering that Alaska depends almost entirely
on the oil and gas
industry, her reforms are remarkable. She took these interests on at least three times - that is
courageous and change we can believe in. It is difficult in politics to
change anything. And Palin did it as an outsider of the old-boys-club, as
she described the system. Don't underestimate how remarkable her
achievements are.
The U.S. and the world will be better off with the old guy who is for free
trade who, in 2008, contrary to the opportunistic Democratic poster boy,
voted against subsides for farmers although it may hurt him in the election.
McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, may not be the ideal vice presidential
candidate, but she once ran her own fishing boat and, as as mayor and
governor, had to take decisions with economic consequences. At least in
three occasions, she took on the big oil and gas interests which dominate
the economy in Alaska and improved the economic and financial situation of
Alaskans. That is why her approval ratings are sky-high, making her the most
popular governor in the entire United States. This may change later, but for
now, she is not the one who voted
“present” 130 times.
Sarah Palin's churches and her appearances there may rise some eyebrows, but
they pale in comparison with Jeremiah Wright's rants - e.g. the U.S.
government spread AIDS to eliminate African-Americans - whom Barack Obama at
first could not
“disown”, although all the rants were already know. Palin vs Obama is a
comparison the Illinois senator cannot win.
Barack Obama is almost as slick as the trial lawyer who denied having
fostered a child out of wedlock; do you remember John Edwards? After the
primaries, Barack Obama simply said that some of his earlier statements had
been made in the overheated climate of the primaries and, therefore, were
not valid. He went to Israel, where he said that Jerusalem belongs to the
Israel, just to backtrack later when it even occurred to him that the status
of Jerusalem was one of the key issues to be negotiated between Israel and
Palestine.
Barack has never held an executive office and, therefore, never could make
errors with great consequences. But do you want somebody with no
accomplishments to become the leader of the Free World? As Rudy Giuliani put
it in his Republican Convention speech:
“Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada.” Hillary Clinton was
right when she said:
“Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a
lifetime of experience, and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he
gave in 2002”. For the record: in
fact, Obama delivered the speech as the keynote address in the 2004
Democratic Convention.
Barack Obama loses the comparison with Sarah Palin almost on all fronts,
with the exception of foreign and security policy. However, Obama - as well
as Biden - was wrong regarding the surge. In the Democratic primaries, he
said that he would meet with the world's dictators without preconditions and
only later partly backtracked from the initial statement. In his time as
member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, Obama has not achieved
anything outstanding.
Sarah Palin is fresh and new and, therefore, a media phenomenon as was
Barack Obama not so long ago. Her star may partly fade until the election,
but her record is and will remain better than Obama's, and she is only the
co-pilot whereas Obama is on top of the Democratic ticket. Obama can only
lose by attacking Palin. No wonder, he seems to have decided now to
concentrate his attacks on John McCain.
It's the economy, stupid! Not only in this regard, the McCain-Palin ticket
looks much stronger than the Obama-Biden ticket, especially given the
probability that both houses of Congress will be in the hands of the
Democrats in November.
