John Kerry Comments on Sarah Palin’s “Zero Experience”
Our junior senator John Kerry was on ABC and had some words to say about Senator John McCain’s runningmate and her experience, or rather, in his opinion, the lack thereof.
You know, we’ve been warning against the third term of George Bush. With the choice of Governor Palin it is now the third term of Bush-Cheney. Because what he’s done is chosen somebody who actually doesn’t believe that climate change is man-made. He’s chosen somebody who has zero, zero experience in foreign policy. The first threshold test of a president, of a nominee, in choosing a vice-president is to prove to the American people that the person that you’ve chosen can fill in tomorrow. That they come with the requisite experience to lead the nation in foreign policy and in national security. You know, she may be, I mean I’m sure she’s a terrific person. I’m not attacking her. I think John McCain’s judgment is once again put at issue because he’s chosen somebody who clearly does not meet the national security threshold, who is not ready to be president tomorrow.
This is particularly funny coming from John Kerry, who picked John Edwards as his running mate. Besides having been elected to the Senate, and believing in man-made global warming, what other credentials did he have?
When it was suggested that Governor Sarah Palin has more experience than Senator Obama, Kerry got defensive.
That’s just ridiculous on its face. Barack Obama has been in the United States Senate. He has not been absent more than he’s been there. She’s been a governor for what, two years now. Barack Obama in four years.
So four years in the senate makes you qualified? Casting a few votes and showing up to work is all it takes?
But moreover, Barack Obama has traveled abroad. Look at the trip Barack Obama took. I mean its remarkable to me that the Republicans would try to denigrate a trip that a candidate for president takes where he attracts more attention, more support if you will, than a sitting president of the United States of America. That’s what you need in leadership for a president. You need somebody who can go to Europe and say to them, “We need more help in Afghanistan.” He actually called the Europeans to account on their need to be frankly more front and center in the effort to deal with Afghanistan than President Bush has. I think that’s leadership and I think the United States of America is well-served if we have a president who is able to do that.
Traveling abroad; another pre-requisite. Listen up all you college students studying overseas–you too are also qualified to be president under Kerry’s logic. (I suppose Kerry met the foreign policy requirement to be president after making one trip to Paris in 1971.)
Barack Obama has been recorded as being present during senate roll call a hundred times or so in 4 years, and traveled abroad–this, according to John Kerry, makes him qualified to be president. How many Americans out there show up to work (a thousand times, give or take, over 4 years) and have traveled abroad? I’ve been overseas, and I show up to to work, so I must be qualified to run for president according to John Kerry. Kerry says Obama also attracts more attention (and support) than a sitting president, and that makes him qualified for president. Heck, so does Paris Hilton, or even Michael Phelps (who just got back from China…), should they run for president?
Kerry is clearly trying to argue that a first term governor, particularly one having only served two years, is not qualified for vice president. Oddly enough, there have been a few governors once considered by Obama for his running mate, some also still in the midst of their first terms. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia, who started his first term in January 2006; Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who is a few years into her second term; Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a first term governor; and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who originally was vying for the nomination. Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska for two years; what executive decisions has Barack Obama made besides picking Joe Biden as his running mate? That answer is none. What has he done in the Senate? According to govtrack.us, Obama has “sponsored 136 bills since Jan 4, 2005, of which 122 haven’t made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted.” He has missed 23% of the votes since his term started.
Historically, there are six examples of one term governors who went on to serve as vice president: Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Thomas Hendricks, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Marshall, and Spiro Agnew. Half of them went on to be president. How about this for a history lesson: former two-term Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge, elected to the corner office in both 1918 and 1919, was elected vice president in 1920; succeeded President Warren Harding after his death in 1923; and was elected to his own term as president in the 1924 election. Palin is not alone.
If you objectively consider Barack Obama’s credentials for president and Sarah Palin’s credentials for vice president, there is no comparison. Palin is much more fit to be vice president than Obama is to president.
Sorry Senator, but your argument for why Obama is more qualified for president than Palin is for vice president is much like your own bid for the presidency: failed.
Follow us on TwitterJoin us on Facebook
TAGS: Barack Obama, John Kerry, John McCain, Sarah Palin.
Aaron Margolis is a life long resident of the Bay State, and works at an architectural firm north of Boston. Aaron has a Master of Architecture Degree from Boston Architectural College and is currently in the process of becoming of a Registered Architect.
Gerard Baker, U.S. Editor and ssistant Editor of the Times of London had this observation on Real Clear Politics yesterday.
Obama: Worked his way to the top by cultivating, pandering to and stroking the most powerful interest groups in the all-pervasive Chicago political machine, ensuring his views were aligned with the power brokers there.
Palin: Worked her way to the top by challenging, attacking and actively undermining the Republican party establishment in her native Alaska. She ran against incumbent Republicans as a candidate willing and able to clean the Augean Stables of her state’s government.
Political Biography
Obama: A classic, if unusually talented, greasy-pole climber. Held a succession of jobs that constitute the standard route to the top in his party’s internal politics: “community organizer”, law professor, state senator.
Palin:A woman with a wide range of interests in a well-variegated life. Held a succession of jobs – sports journalist, commercial fisherwoman, state oil and gas commissioner, before entering local politics. A resume that suggests something other than burning political ambition from the cradle but rather the sort of experience that enables her to understand the concerns of most Americans..
Political history
Obama: Elected to statewide office only after a disastrous first run for a congressional seat and after his Republican opponent was exposed in a sexual scandal. Won seat eventually in contest against a candidate who didn’t even live in the state.
Palin: Elected to statewide office by challenging a long-serving Republican incumbent governor despite intense opposition from the party.
Appeal
Obama: A very attractive speaker whose celebrity has been compared to that of Britney Spears and who sends thrills up Chris Matthews’ leg
Palin: A very attractive woman, much better-looking than Britney Spears who speaks rather well too. She sends thrills up the leg of Rush Limbaugh (and me).
Executive experience
Obama: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of his campaign staff and a vast crowd of traveling journalists
Palin:Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of 500,000 people in her state, and that impact crucial issues of national economic interest such as the supply and cost of energy to the United States.
Religious influences
Obama: Regards people who “cling” to religion and guns as “bitter” . Spent 20 years being mentored and led spiritually by a man who proclaimed “God damn America” from his pulpit. Mysteriously, this mentor completely disappeared from public sight about four months ago.
Palin: Head of her high school Fellowship of Christian Athletes and for many years a member of the Assemblies of God congregation whose preachers have never been known to accuse the United States of deliberately spreading the AIDS virus. They remain in full public sight and can be seen every Sunday in churches across Alaska. A proud gun owner who has been known to cling only to the carcasses of dead caribou felled by her own aim.
Record of bipartisan achievement
Obama: Speaks movingly of the bipartisanship needed to end the destructive politics of “Red America” and “Blue America”, but votes in the Senate as a down-the-line Democrat, with one of the most liberal voting records in congress.
Palin: Ridiculed by liberals such as John Kerry as a crazed, barely human, Dick Cheney-type conservative but worked wit Democrats in the state legislature to secure landmark anti-corruption legislation.
Former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz – a Democrat – said. “Gov. Palin has made her name fighting corruption within her own party, and I was honored when she stepped across party lines and asked me to co-author her ethics white paper.”
On Human Life
Obama: Devoutly pro-choice. Voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have required doctors to save the lives of babies who survived abortion procedures. The implication of this position is that babies born prematurely during abortions would be left alone, unnourished and unmedicated, until they died.
Palin: Devoutly pro-life. Exercised the choice proclaimed by liberals to bring to full term a baby that had been diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome.
Now it’s true there are other crucial differences. Sen Obama has appeared on Meet The Press every other week for the last four years. He has been the subject of hundreds of adoring articles in papers and newsweeklies and TV shows and has written two Emmy-award winning books.
Gov Palin has never appeared on Meet the Press, never been on the cover of Newsweek. She presumably feels that, as a mother of five children married to a snowmobile champion, who also happens to be the first woman and the youngest person ever to be elected governor of her state, she has not really done enough yet to merit an autobiography.
Then again, I’m willing to bet that if she had authored The Grapes of Wrath, sung like Edith Piaf and composed La Traviata , she still wouldn’t have won an Emmy.
Fortunately, it will be up to the American people and not their self-appointed leaders in Hollywood and New York to determine who really has the better experience to be president.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/sarah_palin_vs_barack_obama.html
Political experience
I have never cared too much about experience. What matters is Sarah Palin’s past support for Pat Buchanan, her past membership in the Alaska Independence Party, and her unabashed opposition to abortion. She is a right-winger’s dream candidate!
John Kerry PLease Will the voters in state finally do the right thing and vote out this pompous irrelevent gigilo windbag
Harry Truman had an even thinner resume and he seems to have done rather well.