Well, she is a hockey mom.
I think perhaps my main requirement for a public leader is, above all else, intellectual curiosity. You can come up with a different conclusion than I would, but if you are at least looking at facts, listening to alternative solutions, then I can at least respect that you are participating.
Regretfully, I can't really name a single Republican in public office who meets that definition, though I'm certain they are out there.
And this? This is from their shining star, a likely 2012 Presidential Candidate:
Now, I'm not pretending that the Healthcare Summit was all that effective or useful. (Though I think it was, in some political ways.) But there are probably ten people out there who think they have a shot at the Republican nomination next year, and at least the same amount of Democrats who, if Obama wasn't running, would feel similarly. I'm reasonably sure that Sarah Palin is the only one who wasn't paying attention today.
A wholly unserious person, who is taken credibly as a potential leader. Wow.
I don't remember you complaining when Obama was filling out his NCAA tournament bracket on live TV.
ReplyDeleteMeh. It's easy to blame an airhead Republican in Alaska for potential woes. In the meantime, a bunch of losers in both parties in our own state has led us into very real and actual economic perdition. You aren't old enough to remember the usual party resistance to a health bill that is strikingly like the current health bill being fought over. The fact that it was Republican-originated during the Nixon administration only meant that different players were playing the same role.
ReplyDelete@Curtis, actually what I said exactly was:
ReplyDeleteMore specifically, I find it pretty awesome that he's actually playing a bracket. (And yes, if John McCain had won and did this, I'd probably think he wasn't keeping his eye on the ball. I'm a hypocrite, but at least I acknowledge it.)
Also - as you well know - it's not a slam on Palin for liking sports. Hell, that's one of the few things I like about her. It's the lack of interest in policy. She wants to be President because she wants to be President, and has thus far shown no actual indication that she knows tenth grade civics.
@sweeper Touche on California, it's a mess here I can't help but go crazy over when I think of it. Total mess. But the GOP in DC isn't usual party resistance - there's no common ground and the bill they are opposing is almost exactly the same as the one Republicans proposed as an alternative to Clinton's healthcare proposal in the 1990s. Some are even the same guys who proposed it. Now, that should have amounted to something, but the point is the GOP congress is against all of this mostly to not give Obama and the Democrats a win, not to actually help the American people. That's a shame, and an indictment of our system.