Educating Sarah

There has been considerable talk about whether Governor Sarah Palin will become a new leader of the Republican Party. She did provide a spark to the McCain campaign and showed herself to be a highly attractive and gifted public speaker. Although some say she hurt McCain’s chances, I feel that she probably helped energize the Republican base of conservatives and the evangelicals.

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Palin indicated that she would be open to running for president in 2012. She said: “If there is an open door for me somewhere—this is what I always pray—don’t let me miss the open door…. Show me where the open door is, even if it’s cracked open a little bit, maybe I’ll plow right on through that.”

So the question remains, should Palin now become leader of the Republicans? Should she be seriously considered as a candidate for president in 2012? The answer is, probably not. There is a lot of evidence that Sarah Palin is a woefully uneducated person. It is true that America should be open to leadership by all kinds of people from all walks of life. But do we really want to be lead by a person who, by most definitions, has barely enough knowledge to be mayor of Wasilla?

During the campaign we got some hints of the rift that developed between Palin and the people who ran the McCain campaign. These people leaked word that Palin was a “diva” or a “whack-job.” But they did not give very much detail. Since the election, we have gotten more information from McCain aides about the split. Carl Cameron of Fox News reported that the McCain Campaign advisors felt that Sarah Palin lacked the degree of knowledge necessary to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

According to Cameron, although she is governor of a state that abuts Canada, Palin did not know what countries were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Canada, the U.S., and Mexico). This kind of ignorance would be excusable in an ordinary person, but we want our leaders to be smarter than the average jerk.

Apparently, in a debate that took place when she was running for office in Alaska, Palin said that Creationism should be taught in the schools along with Evolution. Combine this with her interest in banning books from the library and you have someone who, in my opinion, is intellectually challenged.

McCain people say that it was a nightmare for her campaign staff to deal with Palin. She refused preparation help for her interview with Katie Couric, and then blamed her staff when the interview was a disaster. Fox News reported that after the Couric interview, Palin turned nasty with her staff and began to accuse them of mishandling her. Palin would view press clippings about herself in the morning and throw "tantrums" over the negative coverage. There were times when she would be so nasty and angry that her staff was reduced to tears.

According to Newsweek, Palin's shopping spree was more extensive than previously reported. McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. In the beginning, one senior aide told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and three more for the campaign. Instead, Palin began buying clothes, shoes, luggage, jewelry and accessories for herself and her family from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband and children. An angry McCain aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

Some people feel that she can become a better-educated person if she runs for the Senate or takes the Senate seat of Ted Stevens. They say that she can pick-up the kind of knowledge of government, politics, world affairs, geography, and economics necessary to present herself as a viable candidate for president. I doubt it. She is forty-four years old. If she has not become a well-educated person by now, I doubt she will become one in the next four years.