[Vision2020] Thomas Sowell — my soul brother

[No Weatherman]

October 18, 2008
Record vs. Rhetoric
By Thomas Sowell

Apparently there is something about Sarah Palin that causes some
people to think of her as either the best of candidates or the worst
of candidates. She draws enthusiastic crowds and provokes visceral
hostility in the media.

The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience
and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency"
if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less
experience — none in an executive capacity — and his would itself be
the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected.

Sarah Palin's record is on the record, while whole years of Barack
Obama's life are engulfed in fog, and he has had to explain away one
after another of the astounding and vile people he has not merely
"associated" with but has had political alliances with, and to whom he
has directed the taxpayers' money and other money.

Sarah Palin has had executive experience — and the White House is the
executive branch of government. We don't have to judge her by her
rhetoric because she has a record.

We don't know what Barack Obama will actually do because he has
actually done very little for which he was personally accountable.
Even as a state legislator, he voted "present" innumerable times
instead of taking a stand one way or the other on tough issues.

"Clean up the mess in Washington"? He was part of the mess in Chicago
and lined up with the Daley machine against reformers.

He is also part of the mess in Washington, not only with numerous
earmarks, but also as the Senate's second largest recipient of money
from Fannie Mae, and someone whose campaign has this year sought the
advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who was at
the heart of the subprime crisis.

Why then the enthusiasm for Obama and the hostility to Sarah Palin in the media?

One reason of course is that Senator Obama is ideologically much
closer to the views of the media than is Governor Palin. But there is
more than that. There are other conservative politicians who do not
evoke such anger, spite and hate.

Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the
presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic
tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington
Beltway.

More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to
the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name
colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling
that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or
think the way they think.

Worse yet, from the media's perspective, Sarah Palin does not seek
their Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

Much is made of Senator Joe Biden's "experience." But Frederick the
Great said that experience matters only when valid conclusions are
drawn from it.

Senator Biden's "experience" has been a long history of being on the
wrong side of issue after issue in foreign policy. He was one of those
Senators who voted to pull the plug on financial aid to South Vietnam,
which was still defending itself from Communist invaders after the
pullout of American troops.

Biden opposed Ronald Reagan's military buildup that helped win the
Cold War. He opposed the surge in Iraq last year.

Sarah Palin will not be ready to become President of the United States
on the first day that she and John McCain take office. Nobody is.

But being Vice President is a job that can allow a lot of time for
studying, and everything about Governor Palin's career says that she
is a bright gal with her head on straight. The country needs that far
more than it needs people with glib answers to media "gotcha"
questions.

Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are
people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and
dedication to this country's fundamental institutions are beyond
question because they have not spent decades working with people who
hate America. Nor are they people whose judgments have been proved
wrong consistently during decades of Beltway "experience."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/record_vs_rhetoric.html