Missing Link

Sarah Palin: A Pit Bull in Geek Sheik?



Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2008

by

I am so done with the whole Sarah Palin saga. It is already old, old, old.  I used to be a school principal and I am telling you I've met Sarah Palin before, many times over actually, in the form of every PTA President I've ever worked with. She fits the PTA President mold stereotype perfectly.  She is a Mom, she's bright, she's opinionated, she's outspoken and she knows what everyone else should be doing.  I can just hear her voice giving the rally speech about the big cupcake sale on Friday afternoon!

Admittedly, Sarah Palin is somewhat more accomplished than most of the PTA Presidents I worked with but I don't find her to be more talented.  Most of the women I worked with had college degrees.  They were stay at home moms who needed a place to put their talents to use.  To a greater or lesser extent each one was effective in leading the four or five other working PTA members who formed what I used to think of as the "angry core"; that being the small group who did all the work but who needed too much control to delegate or include anyone with new ideas.  They were angry because they felt put-upon in doing all the work and yet they couldn't give up any control and thereby drove everyone else away.

The problem for me is simple.  Do I want Sarah Palin, a PTA President stereotype extraordinaire, going nose to nose with Vladimir Putin, the former KGB Chief?  The thought makes me worry about her lack of political and diplomatic expertise. 

One thing Sarah Palin hasn't demonstrated in her brief and limited political career is diplomacy.  Sarah Palin has the PTA President sense of self assurance that she describes as "pit bullish" and which John McCain seems to think is going to work miracles in Washington and abroad.  Barracudas are not the most fearsome fish in the Washington pool or in the Global pool: Sarah would have to swim with the big boys, the great white sharks.

Sarah Palin's brand of pit bull diplomacy isn't new; it's George W. all over again.  Sarah Palin's self description and the tales of her management style say a lot about her personality and her world view and it sounds a lot like what we have now.  If Sarah Palin says there's going to be a bake sale on Friday then there is bloody well going to be a bake sale on Friday and you better grease up some cake pans and get baking.

That isn't change, that's status quo and it hasn't worked here or aboard for the current administration.  I was familiar with a lobbyist who worked in Washington when George W. came into office.  He described an extreme level of control and a deep fear of stepping out of line both which pervaded Washington from the various Departments to the Republican representatives.  He described an iron fisted grip on every public agency and every elected official and that people were running scared.  He said that even the old timers were dismayed at the new atmosphere.  A venerable Republican representative we both knew retired rather than work in the new atmosphere.

I suggest that iron fist leadership style didn't accomplish anything.  Change didn't come and improvements didn't happen.  The current administration is about to leave and the country is a mess after 8 years of conservative control.  Sarah Palin is proposing the same style of management and the same style of diplomacy and John McCain is calling it change as if calling it change makes it different.  But Sarah Pain isn't different.

If Sarah Palin is elected, she will represent the United States of America as our Vice President and I am simply not convinced that she knows enough.  She has barely been out of Alaska and never in the political sense.  Will she want assert her barracuda style and step to the microphone at the UN or in a foreign country and direct Putin to make cupcakes?  I sincerely doubt that he's going to whip out the blender and a box of Betty Crocker mix.

Being smart and dictatorial might be good enough for a PTA President, a mayor of a tiny town or even over the short term as a governor of the 47th largest state in the union; but, it isn't what I want in a VP.  I want a VP who is intelligent, savvy, diplomatic, skilled at debate and who sees around corners.  I want someone with international experiences.  I do not want someone who's experience with the world is Idaho and Alaska.  I do not want someone who, rather than debate, is simply skilled at declaring her positions are right and warning that everyone better roll over and play dead or get mauled by the pit bull.

I don't think that Sarah Palin has proven she is more than a PTA President who simply connected with the right people and rose up in Alaskan politics.  She did not do that alone.  Someone funded her campaign and it wasn't the Republicans of Democrats who she went after for corruption.  It was someone who benefitted from her house cleaning and they paid the way to get her elected.  Even pit bulls have owners and leashes.

We don't need four more years of inflexible, dictatorial leadership from an angry core.  We don't need a PTA President, we need a Vice President.  We don't need a pit bull or a barracuda, we've had Dick Cheney.  Do we really need four more years of the equivalent of Dick Cheney in geek sheik drag?  I don't.
Just a simple curmudgeon observing life in the USA.  Cranky posts to his blog regularly at http://crankyblog.com.

This Article has been viewed 252 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.