The Wing-nut from Wasilla, reporting as unfit for duty.
Anyone who hasn't watched the Sarah Palin interviews by ABC News' Charlie Gibson should log onto YouTube or the ABC News web site and tremble in fear. That's what I did after missing the initial broadcasts, as I was out both nights covering other stuff. Palin came off as what she is: a hockey mom governor with zero experience in foreign policy, who has never met a foreign leader, and who possesses the sort of smarmy self-confidence that comes of telling children what to do on a regular basis. Essentially, she's a major lightweight, who seems about as informed on the issues of the day as George W. Bush was when he was running back in 2000. In short, she's George W. Bush in not-so-high heels, minus the Alfred E. Neuman mudflaps for ears.
Does anyone recall the way Bush was sold to us back in 2000? He was the millionaire next door, the "regular" guy (despite being the scion of an oil and political dynasty), whom you could sit down and have a beer with, as opposed to the stuffy, and sometimes professorial Al Gore. Bush too was a class-A lightweight. (I know what you're thinking, "Was?") Remember when Bush sat down with a Boston reporter in 1999 and couldn't name the heads of state of three major world hotspots: Chechnya, India and Pakistan? A fourth, Taiwan, he got half right by calling Taiwan's then President Lee Teng-hui, just "Lee."
Might a better cognizance of the international stage have helped our President not guide us post-9/11 into the invasion of a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks? Could that have spared us a $3 trillion war, over 4,000 U.S. dead, an untold number of civilians wiped out, and the scorn of the international community? I think so, and I think that's a helluva lot more important than who you'd rather have had a Bud with back in 2000.
Palin, of course, is not running for President, but she is as conservative as Bush, and then some -- anti-abortion even in the case of rape and incest, against restrictions on the ownership of automatic weapons, for the Iraq war to the point that she believes that it's God's plan. Gibson asked her about that comment, revealed in the now famous YouTube clips of Palin speaking before a group of students at a Pentecostal church in Wasilla where she used to worship with her family. She compared her statement to a famous quote from Abraham Lincoln:
“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right”
Nice try, Sarah (or to be more precise, her handlers), but you ain't no Abe Lincoln. And the Iraq War ain't the Civil War. Instead, it's a bogus misadventure that we've engaged in to the detriment of our own security and best interests. In the same video, you also asked for the students at this wacko Wasilla Bible college to pray for a $30 billion natural gas pipeline. And you intimated that one of the pastors of that scary, speaking-in-tongues church foresaw your rise to the governorship.
Hey, Bush thinks the Big Man Upstairs has been guiding him, too. (He famously told a Palestinian delegation that the Lord ordered him to "end the tyranny in Iraq," though the White House later denied it.) That must be of great comfort to him when his approval ratings are in the 30th percentile.
Crikey, Palin wasn't even familiar with the Bush Doctrine! (Despite Charles Krauthammer's claims to the contrary, most people who follow the news know what the phrase means.) Gibson had to tell her what it referred to when she so obviously had no idea and was winging it. This strike first, preemptive war policy is a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, and Ms. Hockey Puck Head is clueless as to what it means? I know she's running for Veep and not Prez, but if McCain strokes out and leaves us with this Wasilla Wackjob in charge, lookout. During the Gibson interview, she was gun-ho about going into the state of Georgia as well. Which sounds just fine, if you're ready for WWIII.
This podunk princess with that screechy voice that could curdle milk can't even level with us when it comes to the Bridge to Nowhere and all the earmark gravy Alaska garners. That's straight out pork people, and not the lipstick on a pig kind. And Alaska earns ten times the government assistance that Obama's far more populous home state of Illinois receives, as Gibson pointed out in the interview. Gibson also nailed her on the fact that she was for the Bridge to Nowhere, changing her position when Congress backed off it. Anyway, Alaska still took the moolah, spending part of it on a Road to Nowhere, as ABC reported in a segment prior to the airing of Friday's portion of the interview.
No wonder her Republican handlers have been keeping her away from the media, and instead have her regurgitating the same speech she gave at the convention, over and over again. I understand Palin's appeal. Yes, she does have the common touch. She's approachable and homey. GOP guys find her hot. Republican women wanna swap working mom war stories with her. I get it. But haven't we learned from Bush's disastrous presidency that the person you wanna party with isn't necessarily the person you want steering the ship of state? Unless you're blinded by the light reflected off those square, librarian peepers of hers, the Gibson interview should prove that Palin's greener than an Alaskan fir, twice as sappy, and absolutely unfit for duty.