Why Not Palin for President?

Debaroo said:
Yeah that one seems to be a fuzzy point. She says she quit because the frivolous suits were bankrupting her (and the state of Alaska). I understand that she would be responsible for paying for any lawsuits - not sure how much the State would be responsible for.

Seems she was in a damned if she did, damned if she didn't spot. Not an enviable spot to be in - especially as a politic figure.
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... which again, doesn't bode well for her abilities as a politician. If she can't successfully navigate the minefield of governing 600,000 people without bankrupting the state in lawsuits, how's she going to govern 300 million.

My understanding is that Obama was a fairly good (competent) if unexceptional senator; Palin did not strike me as a competent governor.
 
drkitten said:
... which again, doesn't bode well for her abilities as a politician. If she can't successfully navigate the minefield of governing 600,000 people without bankrupting the state in lawsuits, how's she going to govern 300 million.

My understanding is that Obama was a fairly good (competent) if unexceptional senator; Palin did not strike me as a competent governor.
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If one is to believe the right-wing, those lawsuits were specifically thrown at her to bankrupt her/distract her so that she could not gain traction.
 
Debaroo said:
Yeah that one seems to be a fuzzy point. She says she quit because the frivolous suits were bankrupting her (and the state of Alaska). I understand that she would be responsible for paying for any lawsuits - not sure how much the State would be responsible for.
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This bothers me about her as well. It speaks poorly of her to regard ethics suits against anyone, let alone her, as "frivolous". Not only is she manifestly ethics challenged to have so many ethics suits to fight off, but she seems to regard ethics as so unimportant as to be deemed meaningless and not worth persuing.
 
T.A.M. said:
Here is why I do not like her.

(A) I do not think she is very smart. I mean intellectually. She is cunning.
(B) She is cunning.
(C) She is a far right conservative
(D) She, IMO, is not qualified, IN ANY WAY, to be leader of the free world.
(E) She lacks any form of world or international curiosity.

Redeeming qualities.

(A) She is a parent, and seemingly a decent one
(B) She worked hard enough to obtain a US State Governor title.

TAM:)
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Tam - I think your A. B in redeeming qualities are the ones that are galvanizing the right-wing voters. Oh and the C.
 
Debaroo said:
Yeah that one seems to be a fuzzy point. She says she quit because the frivolous suits were bankrupting her (and the state of Alaska). I understand that she would be responsible for paying for any lawsuits - not sure how much the State would be responsible for.

Seems she was in a damned if she did, damned if she didn't spot. Not an enviable spot to be in - especially as a politic figure.
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She made an excuse why she quit. Not surprising. What excuse would she come up with if being president was too hard?
 
This pains me to write, so bear with me:

George W. Bush was not stupid. He made some very bad decisions, fumbled his words a bit (let's be honest, we all do, those his were much, much, much funnier and embarrassing). But I am not convinced that he was a complete moron. I am not convinced he was stupid. Just very, very wrong.

Sarah Palin, by stark contrast, is stupid. Just plain stupid. She's got no gravitas, no spark, not one ounce of any decent quality that I would expect from a statesman.
 
Debaroo said:
If one is to believe the right-wing, those lawsuits were specifically thrown at her to bankrupt her/distract her so that she could not gain traction.
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So?

A brilliant politician would have arranged matters so that there wasn't a well-enough organized group of opponents to throw lawsuits at her.

A good politician would have kept far enough on the windy side of the law that the lawsuits could be dismissed without incurring substantial costs.

A barely competent politician would at least have found other sources of funding and expertise to handle the lawsuit storm and not allowed herself to be distracted.

Really, this claim is ironic to the point of stupid, or maybe stupid to the point of ironic. It's not like Obama isn't/hasn't been facing more or less exactly the same thing; how many lawsuits have people like Berg and Taitz filed against him? He's facing exactly the same legal storm that Palin collapsed under. The difference is that he hasn't collapsed and appears to be still able to do the job to which he was elected.

... which again suggests that Palin isn't the sort of person we want as president. If it were common knowledge that you could shut the office of the President down merely by filing a few dozen lawsuits, don't you think that hundreds of lawsuits would be filed each day?
 
TriskettheKid said:
This pains me to write, so bear with me:

George W. Bush was not stupid. He made some very bad decisions, fumbled his words a bit (let's be honest, we all do, those his were much, much, much funnier and embarrassing). But I am not convinced that he was a complete moron. I am not convinced he was stupid. Just very, very wrong.
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I disagree, I'm afraid.

What leads you to the decision that W was the smart one and not his advisors? To me, all the evidence points to W having the same relationship to Rove and Cheney that Kermit did to Jim Henson.

Apologies for the derail and I'll take it to PM if necessary.

FWIW, I don't disagree that Palin is/was a complete idiot. But I think that's part of what the Republican power structure was looking for -- someone pliable (like Bush) who could be trained to say the right things in a folksy yet charismatic way. (And I'll give her this -- she's charismatic.) I think they were hoping for another Kermit -- a Miss Piggy? -- but she wasn't disciplined enough to mouth her lines and she wasn't trainable enough to be allowed out without a handler.....
 
Cynic said:
This bothers me about her as well. It speaks grou of her to regard ethics suits against anyone, let alone her, as "frivolous".
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To be fair, just because a lawsuit has the word "ethics" in its title doesn't mean that it's not frivolous. A lawsuit, for example, can be frivolous because it describes conduct that's obviously ethical -- or because it describes events that obviously never took place, and therefore has no factual basis.

In other words, an obviously groundless suit is frivolous.

The scary thing is that there were so many ethics suits that were not "obviously groundless." As I said earlier, a better politician would have conducted herself in a way that didn't create such an obvious appearance of impropriety (which is what gave the lawsuits traction).

Sure, maybe she ran a clean ship if you looked closely at it. But at a distance -- for example, as would be taken in a motion to dismiss for lack of basis -- it looked dirty enough to be worth investigation.
 
drkitten said:
I disagree, I'm afraid.

What leads you to the decision that W was the smart one and not his advisors? To me, all the evidence points to W having the same relationship to Rove and Cheney that Kermit did to Jim Henson.

Apologies for the derail and I'll take it to PM if necessary.
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You misunderstand.

I'm not saying the man was Einstein. Nor am I saying he was like Reagan, running the show.

I'm just saying that, looking at the evidence, I'm not convinced he was a complete idiot.
 
drkitten said:
It's not like Obama isn't/hasn't been facing more or less exactly the same thing;
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You beat me to this point. It was exactly the thing that was nagging in my mind continuously.

Although, not to combine threads, but would this be an example of (if true) the need for some sort of legal reform (e.g., tort for insurance claims).
 
drkitten said:
Sure, maybe she ran a clean ship if you looked closely at it. But at a distance -- for example, as would be taken in a motion to dismiss for lack of basis -- it looked dirty enough to be worth investigation.
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She did have the more difficult task of being in a state that already had one politician found guilty of ethical violations. Perhaps the magnifying glass was trained more acutely than it would have otherwise been.
 
drkitten said:
So?

A brilliant politician would have arranged matters so that there wasn't a well-enough organized group of opponents to throw lawsuits at her.

A good politician would have kept far enough on the windy side of the law that the lawsuits could be dismissed without incurring substantial costs.

A barely competent politician would at least have found other sources of funding and expertise to handle the lawsuit storm and not allowed herself to be distracted.

Really, this claim is ironic to the point of stupid, or maybe stupid to the point of ironic. It's not like Obama isn't/hasn't been facing more or less exactly the same thing; how many lawsuits have people like Berg and Taitz filed against him? He's facing exactly the same legal storm that Palin collapsed under. The difference is that he hasn't collapsed and appears to be still able to do the job to which he was elected.

... which again suggests that Palin isn't the sort of person we want as president. If it were common knowledge that you could shut the office of the President down merely by filing a few dozen lawsuits, don't you think that hundreds of lawsuits would be filed each day?
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Thanks Dr. K - all great points.
 
SO since a fair few people (myself included) here agree that she is not the sharpest tool in the shed, WHY IS THERE ANY KIND OF SUPPORT for her as a possible candidate to run the country? Like what goes through the minds of people who would vote for her? I just don't get it.

TAM:)
 
T.A.M. said:
Here is why I do not like her.

(A) I do not think she is very smart. I mean intellectually. She is cunning.
(B) She is cunning.
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Wait... why is her being cunning on the list of reasons not to liker her? I understand your point A, and agree that intelligence is a valuable asset in a president and is not synonymous with cunning. And I even understand the idea that you'd rather have an intelligent, non-cunning person than a not intelligent but cunning person. But would you really prefer an intelligent but not cunning person to an intelligent and cunning person? I certainly wouldn't. We've got enemies out there, and having a cunning president would be useful.

Note that I'm not trying to endorse Palin specifically, merely the quality of cunning over the lack thereof, all else being equal (which, granted, is never the case).
 
I guess because I consider "cunning" to be a deceptive trait, such as the use of deception or trickery to obtain things, rather then doing so honestly or with pure smarts.

TAM:)
 
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