About Sarah Palin

The media, both traditional and blogs, have been aflame about Sarah Palin since McCain picked her as his running mate last week. I promised an article about her and this is it. I know it's well after the fact, but I wanted to give myself time to think and let the initial hysteria on all sides of the aisle to die down.

There are several things that I frankly don't care about:

1. I don't care that she's a member of the NRA. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I am not a gun owner, but I am a staunch supporter of people's right to bear arms. I will continue to support that right. Gun ownership is not only good for personal security, it is also vital for the protection of our fundamental liberties. That Gov. Palin supports that right is great. It's not a make or break issue for me, but I'm happy to see a candidate that feels as strongly about gun ownership rights as I do.


2. I don't care that Bristol Palin is pregnant. What happens in the Palin home is a private matter and children should not be used as pawns or targets in elections. I'm happy that Obama came out and said as much. I don't think that he personally will use the issue against them, but I know that a lot of blogs have used it already to both mock her and rally to her side. Bristol is 17 and 17-year-olds in this country make decisions without their parent's consent all the time. Now is clearly no different. Just because Bristol's mom is the governor doesn't lend her any more authority at home.


3. I don't care that her husband once belonged to a secessionist party. Spouses disagree on politics, and Todd Palin felt differently than his wife. He still might. I don't see why this is an issue. Politics is a matter of both emotions and personal philosophy, and there are valid reasons to seek answers to our political questions in independent parties. This notion of secession is not even unique to the US. It shows up all around the world. In the interests of full disclosure I would like to point out that I am a member of the Free State Project and fully support its efforts.


4. I don't care if she wore a Pat Buchanan button. It's not even clear if she wore the button or not, but I don't care. I don't even care if she voted for him. The time in question about the whole Buchanan button affair comes from when she was mayor of Wasilla and Buchanan stopped in the town for a campaign event. It'd perfectly natural for a mayor to wear a button for a candidate out of respect for them, and she might have even liked his politics at the time. This was back when Buchanan was not quite the controversial figure he is today. I think it was beyond appropriate for the Obama campaign worker in Florida to attempt to draw a link from Buchanan's seemingly pro-Nazi stance and Palin. I haven't seen or heard anything from Governor Palin which indicates she's a Nazi and I highly doubt she is


5. I don't care that Sarah Palin is a woman. I can't honestly claim to know what McCain's strategy was in picking Sarah Palin, if he even had one. What I want to do is talk about the issues in play, and her gender does not play into that. I'm not sure why everyone questions if she's even able to be a leader because she's a woman, or because she's a mother, or because she's a mother of five, ad nauseum. There have plenty of women in history that have been more than capable leaders, and there's nothing inherently gynecological that prevents her from being a great leader.

Having got all of that out of the way, here's what bothers me about Sarah Palin.

1. I don't like that she's holding herself up as a reformer when she really isn't. The McCain campaign keeps highlighting that she was opposed to Ted Steven's "bridge to nowhere", but she really wasn't. She initially supported the bridge and welcomed it's construction. Only after public opinion turned against the bridge did she have second thoughts, and when the project was canceled, she kept the federal money that'd already been given to Alaska. Furthermore, one of her first acts as the mayor of Wasilla was to hire a law firm that specialized in soliciting earmarks from Washington. In fact, in her terms as mayor, the city of Wasilla received more federal money than it ever had in its history. This is not the record of a reformer.

   On top of this, she is under investigation for trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired while he was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute. There are an abundance of abuse of power stories in politics, but when someone stands up and says "I really am different and I'm here to clean things up!" they'd better mean it.

   Lastly, a lot of pundits are saying that Palin worked magic with the budget of Alaska since she's been governor. It is honestly not hard to make the Alaska budget work when you're as flush with oil money as the state is.



2. I don't like that she's addressing the officers of our military and exhorting them to do "God's Work". This is not a Christian nation. Ours is not a Christian military, and the missions it takes out should not be considered "God's Work". Our military represents and protects the 300 million Americans who live in our nation. A secular nation. Whether or not the majority of our population claims to be Christian, we were founded to be a nation where all religions are respected. Our military must be the purest distillation of this ideal because they are the forces that must defend it.

   Taking a step back from the specific incident I mentioned, I also want to mention that I'm absolutely frustrated that Palin's pastor has preached sermons that are just as incendiary and filled with invective as those that Jeremiah Wright has preached and the media's done nothing to follow up on it. If the personal politics of Rev. Wright were so important to consider, then certainly it should be questioned when her pastor says:

   "I hate criticisms towards the President, because it's like criticisms towards the pastor -- it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That's what it'll get you."

3. I don't like that as a VP choice she comes from the largest oil-producing state in our country and her husband works for an oil company. I am not suggesting malfeasance here. Let me repeat that. I am not suggesting that there is any thing untoward or underhanded going on here. What bothers me about this is that we've got McCain collecting money hand-over-fist from the oil companies and a VP pick who is heavily invested in oil companies as the possible leaders of our nation. We badly need a plan for the future away from oil and I don't think that that kind of leadership is going to come from these two.

   Furthermore, I think her environmental policies in Alaska have been awful. Palin does not believe in global warming. She doesn't think that we need to worry about it. I don't think that being that dismissive about the environment is good leadership. It's not even being a good Christian, which Palin swears to be.



4. I don't like that she wants to end a woman's right to an abortion. I firmly believe that our bodies are ours to rule over. What we choose to do with them should be left to our choices, as long as it does not hurt another person. This includes using drugs and alcohol, consensual sex amongst adults, and abortion. While it is clearly open to debate as to whether or not aborting the fetus is killing another human being, it is the plain truth that pregnancy can be dangerous to women. Women still continue to die while pregnant and during child birth. I absolutely believe that abortion should be a last resort move, but access to it should not be cut off. That is what being pro-choice really is about. Being able to make a choice. Making abortion illegal will not end it, any more than making drugs illegal has not ended their use. Instead it will drive abortions back to the shadows, putting more women at more risk. This is a failed policy from the get go.

   While we're at it, I want to point out that Palin wants to take away a woman's right to choice but when they released their press release about Bristol Palin they said that she had made the "decision" to have the baby. Decision implies she had a choice, which is exactly what Gov. Palin wants to take away from women.

   And another point that continues to bother me. Republicans have continued to say that Bristol's pregnancy is a personal matter and should not be used for political gain by the Democrats, and then immediately spin around and say it shows her dedication to being pro-life. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim that the matter's off-limits and then try to spin it.



5. I don't like that Sarah Palin is against equal rights for gays. History has been clear. There is a constant give and take: governments seek to limit the rights of minority groups, groups that are due equality under law. Apartheid, Jim Crow, sixty years ago our own government sought to prevent inter-racial couples from marrying. Today they're all clearly wrong. And yet we continue to have people, a lot of people (like Gov. Palin and John McCain), in our country and government who would tell us that it is okay to limit the rights of gay people. They say it's not only okay, they tell us it's the moral thing to do.

   I do not believe that what two consenting people (or more) do in their home is the purview of the government. Furthermore, when people enter into a relationship with each other and seek legal protections, we should make it available to them. Marriage is not solely a religious matter. It is also a civil and legal matter, and we should not deny people the rights they seek.

   And to those who say we can't allow people to be married when they're gay because of what the Bible says, I'd like to point out that in the Bible, 1 Timothy 2, it says that women are not to have a position of authority over men, so by this very verse Palin has broken the "Lord's word" by being governor.

   By the way, it was verses like that, and others, that were used to deny women positions of power around the world and to deny them the right to vote. Those people were wrong then, just as they are now about gay people.

6. I really detest how dismissive she has been about "community organizers". You know, I get that it was intended as a dig at Obama himself, and that it was political theater, but it was so despicable. It's is not just because I have donated my time to causes, and have given money to community organizations, but also because Palin claims to be a Christian and gives lip service to Jesus, but what was he, aside from the Son of God? Oh, that's right, he was a community organizer. So was Gandhi. Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr, the list goes on.

   To mock their important work smacks of elitism. Only an elitist would find work done for the community as somehow "beneath them". As if serving something larger than yourself is contemptible. Which is funny to hear coming from a party sponsoring a military man for the presidency.