Oh Yeah, I want her to be President...

So one of the great things about our country is that virtually anyone can run for a prominent national office. That's right, anyone, regardless of how unqualified or just down right ignorant they are. This was demonstrated in 2004 when James Hart was placed on the ballot as the Republican candidate for a house seat in the Tennessee 8th district after gaining 78% of the votes in the Republican primary. Mr. Hart's platform espouses his fundamental belief in the debunked and absurd principles of Eugenics. Eugenics advocates believe in selective breading and forced sterilization as a mechanism to purify the white race. Hart is known to show up on the door steps of those in his district wearing a bullet proof vest and brandishing a handgun while shouting "White children need to be protected" (by the way he is running again this year as a write in).

So yes, anyone and I do mean anyone can run for high office in this country. What is disturbing this year is that unlike Mr. Hart who is considered even by the staunchest, right wing, gun-toting, (and even racist) Republicans as a joke, we now have a Republican candidate for the second highest office in the land who seems to have the education and understanding of an elementary school student.

After avoiding the press for several weeks and giving no interviews or press conferences (as of the publication of this post she has still only given two interviews and held no open press conferences...boy I wonder what they are hiding) Governor Sarah Palin sat down with ABC's Charles Gibson to share her thoughts and finally answer some questions. While it is evident that Palin can speak English (evidently we didn't set that standard for our current president), the words that seem to spill ever so quickly from her lips certainly don't convey any great understanding of the world around us. In perhaps the most telling exchange, Palin clearly demonstrated her knowledge of our current foreign policy stance:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine? PALIN: In what respect, Charlie? GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be? PALIN: His world view. GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war. PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better. GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

Ok, so I am not sure that any further commentary on this is really warranted here, however, I will just for my own amusement (actually my own horror and despair) share just a brief thought.

While it is evident that Gov. Palin clearly had no idea what the Bush Doctrine is, or that it has been the guiding thought in our foreign policy for the last six years that is not the truly amusing (think scary) thing about her statements. She says that Bush is trying to "rid the world of Islamic extremism". Now, correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that we invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq because they posed a imminent threat to the security of our country. Saddam Hussein was barely a Muslim, and by no means and extremist. Instead he was a terrible dictator who killed many of his own people, siphoned wealth from his country, and most importantly to us here in the United States, picked a fight with Bush the elder. It is this simple reason (oh and I hear there might be oil over there) that we have chosen to invade a country, kill countless numbers of civilians, loose thousands of our own sons and daughters, and spend over $400 BILLION in taxpayer dollars. What makes Mrs. Palin's statements even more ridiculous is her insinuation at the end of the exchange that President G Dubya had "legitimate and enough intelligence" to take us to war. What fantasy world are we living in here? This is the same woman who once spoke at her church saying that God supported us going to war.

The day that Palin was announced as the Veep candidate I received over twenty phone calls from friends and family asking who this lady was, and why she had been picked? To this day I still cannot answer those questions. I understand her appeal to glasses wearing soccer moms everywhere. Yes she is one of you, an every woman, who takes care of her family and her home. That is all well and good, but shouldn't we expect a little more? I know many women who are great to their families, who balance careers and children, and who are the better of their husbands in every way (have you all met my wife?). These women show character and poise, but I certainly don't want them running the free world. The leader of our country needs to be knowledgeable, rational, educated, and have that indescribable quality of gravitas. Beyond the war, the millions of wasted dollars, the desecration of our individual liberties, and the explosion of the deficit, perhaps the most damaging legacy of the Bush Presidency will be the fact that he made it okay to be ordinary, okay to be uneducated on the issues, inarticulate in public, and corrupt in seclusion. The bar has now been lowered, we can only hope that one day it will be raised again.