An excellent opinion piece from her home state:
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/530764.html
Palin support is fueled by emotion, not competence
STEVE HAYCOX
COMMENT
Published: September 19th, 2008 12:27 AM
Last Modified: September 19th, 2008 03:30 AM
Sarah Palin's selection as vice-presidential running mate has raised significant questions about her readiness for the job. Critics have raised concerns about her experience, her competence and governing style, and her veracity and consistency.
Supporters respond to the criticism from a populist context. Instinct and emotion are sufficient for rendering a judgment about Palin's qualifications for vice president, or president, they argue. The visceral reaction she elicited at the Republican National Convention, and subsequently campaigning, seems guided not by rational analysis but by deep feeling, a sense that small-town sensibilities are adequate for running the country. She is, supporters say, a born leader, and that's all one needs to know. To them details are not as important as instinct, details most likely dredged up by misguided elitists anyway.
Palin's critics argue that the details make all the difference, that they demonstrate what kind of vice president, or president, she would be. Her management of the city of Wasilla is under scrutiny. There, she hired a lobbyist who got significant earmarks into the federal budget; with a sales tax she secured passage of a bond to construct a sports facility that's too far from the city center on land the town doesn't own; she redecorated her office without authorization from the City Council.
In her campaign for governor she initially supported the Ketchikan bridge project, then when Congress refused to dedicate the funds for that project, opposed it.
As governor, she appointed as head of the Agriculture Division a high school classmate without known qualifications, one of several appointments that suggest cronyism. Her unelected, unappointed husband receives official state e-mails and sits in on high-level meetings.
On the campaign trail, she has argued that Alaska's proximity to Russia and being head of the Alaska National Guard constitute foreign relations and executive experience. And since her selection for the national ticket she has changed her response to the Legislature's investigation into her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, from welcoming encouragement to a refusal to cooperate. In addition, a McCain-Palin campaign lawyer has acknowledged advising a state-hired attorney on the Troopergate affair.
On a more broad front, people who have closely watched her performance as governor report a lack of curiosity about the details of government operations and a failure to delegate authority.
These are the kinds of details critics deem important. For them, such evidence far outweighs any instinctual or visceral positive response to Palin. Actions, the critics advise, speak louder than words, and these actions suggest absence of the perspective, prudence and discipline consistently found necessary to govern effectively.
Populism and expertise have been in tension in American politics since the beginning of the republic. The first U.S. constitution, the Articles of Confederation, had to be scrapped after less than a decade partly because of too much populism: Fretful taxpayers in the several states prevented the Articles Congress from achieving the unanimous vote necessary to implement a tax policy.
In the subsequent constitutional convention in 1787 in Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton argued for universal manhood suffrage in electing the House of Representatives, a populist measure. But the founders insulated the U.S. Senate from populist impulses by having its members elected by the several state legislatures (changed by amendment in only 1914), and similarly insulated the presidential choice by providing the Electoral College. Thus, the finished Constitution incorporated both philosophies, but clearly relied more on expertise than on the people's instinct.
So also, later, in the Progressive Era, reformers balanced new populist measures -- direct election of senators, extending the vote to women, providing initiative, referendum and recall at the state level -- with regulation by experts in virtually all areas of government, from monitoring the banking industry to managing the country's natural resources.
Karl Rove has suggested that infatuation with Sarah Palin will not last through the remaining seven weeks of the campaign. Partly that's because most voters recognize that choice by viscera is no good for the nation, not in a time of nuclear potential and economic turmoil. Experience brings familiarity, humility and better, more effective judgment. The country will be more fortunate if Palin gets the opportunity for more executive experience, completing her term as Alaska's eighth full-term governor.
Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
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