Musings on Sarah Palin

I leave for Madrid on Wednesday!! I'm pretty much packed and a ball of very nervous energy. I'm excited, of course, but still very nervous.

I've had a lot of time for the past five weeks or so to re-immerse myself in fanatically following the presidential election. I remember the extreme sinking feeling I felt at the beginning of freshman year when I realized junior year in Spain would conflict with the first presidential election for which I am of legal voting age. I considered only going abroad for the spring semester so I could be in Washington, DC for the election, but in terms of major life events, there will be many more elections, and I can still follow this one from Madrid.

The national political ascendancy of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has me slightly reconsidering that decision.

Why do I hate Sarah Palin so very much? Long story.

I was raised a Roman Catholic Democrat, and in my family the political aspect of that culture is just as, if not more, important than the religious aspect. My father is not religious. My mother almost walked us out of church in 2004 when the message of the homily was leaning towards "You are going to Hell if you support the pro-choice presidential candidate." My grandmother, may she rest in peace, had dementia and would repeat the same three anecdotes over and over again. One of them was about how she had been raised in a Democratic family. I guess you can call my family card-carrying blue dog Democrats.

I have been on the Obama bandwagon for as long as there has been a bandwagon. Like just about everyone else, I found out about Barack Obama in 2004 when he was running for the U.S. Senate. When he gave that amazing keynote speech at the 2004 convention (I'd have to say it still tops his 2008 convention acceptance speech), I beamed with pride at the next U.S. Senator from Illinois. Illinois politics (both parties) are an absolute mess. But I respect and admire both Senator Obama and Senator Dick Durbin (who is also a Hoya!).

Even as a freshman in the Senate, people began calling on Senator Obama to run for president. I do NOT like President Bush. My political awakening was during my freshman year of high school as the U.S. invaded Iraq, a war that Senator Obama and I both opposed from the start. The U.S. needed a serious change, and I saw Senator Obama as a leader with the potential to inspire the country and lead us into the 21st century. Sometimes I have difficulty telling people exactly why I so strongly support Senator Obama, but I tell them that I am 20 years old, so for my first presidential election I reserve the right to support a candidate simply for the way he speaks to my generation.

I would call myself a feminist. I never considered this a bad label until I got to college and came under fire from certain male individuals for these views. Some might have therefore expected to be on the Hillary Clinton bandwagon. My mother was one of those Baby Boomers who was a diehard Hillary supporter until the bitter end, seemingly simply because she was a female (we will return to my mother a little later). To me, however, feminism means not supporting a candidate solely because she is a woman, but rather treating her as a human being above all else and evaluating her on the strength of her ideas. To me, Senator Obama was the stronger of the candidates. However, I do have a lot of professional respect for Senator Clinton and would have supported her had she received the nomination. I even saw her end her campaign at the National Building Museum in Washington in June.

Last summer, I told people that I hoped John McCain won the Republican primary because he was the only Republican presidential candidate I could bear to live under. At the time, his campaign was in a shambles and I thought he had no reasonable chance of actually winning. I would later eat my words. While I am glad that there is no possibility of returning to the U.S. under a President Giuliani (his foreign policy was terrifying...he seemed to think all Muslims were part of a mythical post-modern force of evil out to get us; I loved Joe Biden's line about Rudy Giuliani using "a noun, a verb, and 9/11" in every sentence), McCain is a more difficult opponent for the Democrats (and somehow he wrapped up the nomination months before the Democrats settled things!).

Why is McCain a more difficult opponent? Because, historically, he has been more of a moderate in his Senate career. You can call him a "maverick" if you want, although I am not sure that the tendency to buck the advice of others and follow your gut feeling is necessarily a positive attribute in a president. His first presidential decision, that of selecting a running mate, seems to have been made on a whim after realizing that as a moderate it would be political suicide to select someone such as Joe Lieberman (TRAITORTRAITORTRAITOR).

When Obama announced his choice of a running mate, I felt nothing. The addition of Joe Biden did not influence me positively or negatively.

When McCain announced his choice of a running mate, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. When a press release on his campaign's website confirmed that Sarah Palin was in fact John McCain's choice of running mate, I was flabbergasted. It felt like such a cheap shot for the votes of heartbroken Hillary supporters such as my mother. I rushed out to see a bargain matinee of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 because I needed to have a positive female moment.

The effect of the movie did not last long enough. In my mind, Obama's speech (not as good as 2004 but still mesmerizing) and the entire convention became an afterthought. On that end, John McCain succeeded, I guess.

The moment of truth for me on the day Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain's choice was a phone call with my mother. She had not shown an ounce of support for Obama and was threatening not to vote. On the phone, she announced that she was highly insulted by McCain and was now fully on board the Obama campaign. What a relief.

That evening I saw an encore of Sarah Palin's Ohio speech. She didn't seem that likable to me, but I can see why people find her engaging. She is young and engaging (and some people like what they see as the whole sexy librarian angle).

She energized the base. She is extremely pro-life, allowing absolutely no exceptions, apparently going so far last year as to tell the press that even if her own daughter (then 16) was raped she would expect her to carry the child to term. Religion is very important to her.

I am pro-choice. Raised Catholic, this position has put me very much at odds with church orthodoxy, leading me to all but leave the church. Do I think abortion is a good thing? No. Could I probably ever have an abortion myself? Probably not, although I have never been in the extreme circumstances where most pro-lifers see the merit of exceptions. But I don't think the government can interfere with a woman's right to choose, especially when that interference is religiously motivated. Not every woman is ready to be a mother, and I think every child should have a mother who is ready to care for him or her. While adoption is an excellent option for many women, the fact remains that there are still too many children already on this earth in desperate need of care. Abortions are going to happen anyway, as this has been a fact of life for all of human civilization, so I think women should have access to safe and legal procedures. My views can be summed up in the following statement: "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."

Issues such as abortion, while they may have energized the base for President Bush, are not at the forefront of a president's agenda. However, such social issues do come into play when nominating Supreme Court justices. I am no legal scholar (yet, anyway), but I understand that the Roe v. Wade decision is on shaky legal turf, so the appointment of the next justices is vital to the preservation of choice. I was horrified when I heard Mitt Romney state in his speech at the convention last week that the current Supreme Court is too liberal. EXCUSE ME?!?!?! The good news is that his speech seems to indicate a lack of faith in the McCain-Palin ticket and posturing for 2012 to bring the party back to the base (flip flopper, by the way).

While the convention was on hold in St. Paul (which I thought was an extreme overreaction) as Gustav headed for the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Bristol hit. The story that 17-year-old Bristol Palin is five months pregnant evidently emerged because bloggers apparently very unkindly alleged that four-month-old Trig was Bristol's son, not Sarah's. What a relief to have to story disproved by the revelation that is impossible because she got pregnant while he was in her mother's womb. I think it's pretty sad that candidates' families' personal lives get shoved to the forefront. We should be focusing on the issues (although I haven't found an issue position of Palin's that I agree with...). Senator Obama handled this situation very gracefully, reminding the media that he was born to a teen mother.

As a feminist, I full support women's ability to balance motherhood and career. Palin seems to have managed quite well as governor of Alaska (although vice president is quite a different position). On a personal note, though, I have to wonder why she would accept the position knowing that her teenage daughter was pregnant. People were going to notice, even if Bristol was hidden away. Instead of being handled quietly, Bristol Palin's situation became front page news (although to me it looked like she and Levi Johnston enjoyed their moment as a pseudo-Hollywood glamour couple at the convention?). I'm not sure I could do that to a daughter.

I'd like to take a nanosecond of your time to gloat about how abstinence-only sex education does not work. Out of my system now.

Sarah Palin, in my humble opinion, is not qualified to be vice president, especially not vice president to an old man who suffered unspeakable horrors as a POW and has battled cancer.

You can argue that Barack Obama is not qualified to be president. Their careers in elected office have been roughly the same length, as I understand it. He spent eight years in the Illinois State Senate and four years in the U.S. Senate. She spent hers as the mayor of Wasilla and the governor of Alaska. His resume may be thin, but for the past four years he has been subject to extreme scrutiny. Being the mayor of Wasilla may be executive experience, which Senator Obama is admittedly lacking, but it is a SMALL TOWN. I have never lived in a small town. My current hometown, Western Springs, is what I consider a "tiny suburb of Chicago." I think we have about 12,000 people. It is hard for me to imagine being in an isolated place with even less people than that. The entire state of Alaska has less people than Lake County, a collar county of suburbs around Chicago. I'm not saying that she has been a bad governor in her almost two years (although a more careful look at her record would probably damn her in my eyes) have been unsuccessful. She has just been completely out of the national spotlight, even the realm of national policy. She admittedly knows nothing about the war in Iraq...or what the vice president even does.

She also has been devastatingly misrepresenting her own record. When she talks I just can't believe a thing she says. She portrays herself as a reformer, but her sense of the facts are obscured. She initially supported the Bridge to Nowhere. She has requested billions of dollars worth of earmarks for the state of Alaska despite the fact that they are filthy rich from oil production. I also just don't like her tone. Community organizers serve a vital role in downtrodden communities. Obama has been involved in reform legislation, thank you very much.

I guess I'm pleased that McCain has surrendered the experience argument, although I am now worried because the base does not see through Sarah Palin. They adore her.

Energy policy is probably the area of domestic policy that is most interesting to me. I am very concerned with how our country will face the challenges of balancing concerns of national security with environmental protections. Sarah Palin does not seem to care for the environment, despite being an avid outdoorswoman. She would drill offshore in an instant, and will likely convince McCain to change his mind on the issue. So much for protection ANWR from harvesting oil that is literally a drop in the bucket.

I welcome the opportunity to get to know Sarah Palin better, as hopefully she will be exposed to the world as the transparent inexperienced right-wing nut job I already see. She, the McCain campaign, and the Republican establishment have been criticizing the media for asking questions about her and looking into her background (she obviously is not yet ready for solo interviews), which she should know from graduating from j school, that's kind of the media's job. We need to know more about Sarah Palin. Frightening as the truth may be.

I'm not sure that the line of argument in this rant has been coherent, but I just don't trust Sarah Palin to lead this country.