Citizen Dentist

Sarah Palin is like Jesse Ventura; she's a "novelty" governor.  Every once in a while, Americans like to stick it to the pols by electing an amateur.  It shakes things up for a while.  Sarah Palin is a joke, but now McCain has endangered our beloved nation by taking her seriously. Here's a scenario:  McCain is elected, he dies or is taken out by a conspiratorial maniac, and there's a dangerous small-minded, uneducated, right-wing fringe religious-bigot demagogue in charge of the nuclear stockpile.

Governing is the most difficult of all arts, and yet Americans seem to think it's a snap.  When you take your car in to be fixed, you want an experienced, knowledgeable mechanic, not, not an actor or an athlete.  I'm yet to meet a person who wants his impacted wisdom tooth treated by a citizen dentist.  But to run the government -- let's just hire anyone at all.   

I'm reading Milan Kundera's excellent novel, The Joke.  It's set in 1950s Czechoslovakia, and like all novels of the communist era, portrays a world in which the government is in the hands of mediocre people chosen and promoted not for brains, wisdom, or talent but for ideological orthodoxy.  t's a system that's doomed to failure, but it's exactly the system that has now been imposed on this country by the Bush administration, which regularly hired graduates of Patrick Henry and Liberty --ideologically pure right-wing colleges -- over applicants of genuine distinction.      

Republicans oppose affirmative action when it works to the advantage of the underrepresented, but they are its greatest proponents when it comes to political correctness.  Major examples (there are zillion minor ones) are such disasters as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Justice Clarence Thomas, and now likely Vice President Sarah Palin.

Comments

[Otis Jefferson Brown]

In defending her foreign policy credentials, Palin boasts that you can see Russia from Alaska. I can see the moon and stars from my house. I guess that makes me a rocket scientist.

[Axel Sprengtporten]

As usual, my good friend OJB goes too far and overstates his case. Advising us not to get caught up in the daily news cycles, OJB seems to have done just that: got caught up in the hysteria of defeatist liberal political bloggers reacting to Palin.

You're the one who should relax, OJB.

As for a return to self-confident liberalism, it's already happening. We codgers can contribute money, but it's the younger liberals - running for office and working in campaigns on both the Clinton and Obama sides - who are doing the real work and making it happen. Arthur Schlesinger's "Cycles of American History" was eerily prescient: the great conservative era that began with the liberal crack-up of the late 60's is ending. Lies, hypocrisy, incompetence and right-wing thuggery will no longer carry the day.

[Otis Jefferson Brown]

Last night I watched part one of Charlie Gibson's interview with Palin on ABC. It's clear now that John McCain - in one of the most cynical, reckless and irresponsible ploys in American political history - has selected a moron to be one melanoma away from the presidency of the United States.

Equally dispiriting is the state of American liberalism. Years of being beaten up by right-wing bullies have turned liberals into a bunch of timorous, hand-wringing wimps who panic at every little bump in the road. Relax, liberals. Don't get caught up in the ups and downs of the daily news cycles. This is not 1988 and Obama is not Dukakis. Obama and his strategists know where the electoral votes are, and they've got the ground game to win them.

I'm hoping that a victory this year will herald a return to the muscular, self-confident liberalism of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.