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Friday, August 29, 2008
McCain’s choice of Palin erases doubts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The only question now is the spread, the over/under.
Vice presidential candidates rarely affect election outcomes. The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will.
On the Friday it is announced, the sun is gloriously bright in Atlanta, appropriate to the mood of the Republican Party. In one morning, it becomes entirely clear: John McCain can be elected president of the United States. He can win and in the process make history.
The first woman on the winning presidential ticket won’t be a liberal Democrat. It’ll be a conservative, a working-woman conservative, a mother of five married to a commercial fisherman.
With her selection, it is possible to begin to fully understand the devotion most blacks have to Barack Obama and to the prospect that he could be the first black to occupy the Oval Office.
Sarah Palin is that historic figure for women and for the conservative movement.
Conservative women in politics often find themselves without the support network that the good ol’ girl network represents for Democratic women or the good ol’ boy network represents in both parties.
When women of the left speak of “women’s issues,” they speak always of women as though they are of one mind, and it is theirs. When they complain that not enough women are in high places, it’s not conservative women they seek to promote. In fact, I can never remember in the Georgia General Assembly or elsewhere women of the left objecting to the perceived mistreatment or glass ceiling that affects women of the right. More commonly, they are vilified in the same way that most blacks of the left vilify Justice Clarence Thomas.
Two decades ago, when women were just beginning to move into judgeships and other important political positions, I thought they would revolutionize public service, primarily because they were outsiders. They were not of the good ol’ boy networks. Unaffected and uncorrupted by an inherited culture, they could therefore be reformers. They could promote ethics and transparency and accountability because they were not invested in the system.
Truth be told, women in power have been changed by the culture more than they have changed it.
But Sarah Palin, perhaps because she came to power as an outsider in a state with an ingrained culture of political corruption, is still the fighter, still the reformer, still committed to ethics, transparency and accountability in government. She’s a fiscal conservative with the courage to cut the budget and tell Alaskans to lessen their dependence on federal largesse. She’s fresh. She’s real. She’s the Washington outsider untainted by the culture that exists there.
Any misgivings I had about John McCain as the Republican standard-bearer are erased by his boldness in choosing Palin.
When successful in November, she will give the nation an opportunity to see a confident conservative woman who knows what she believes, and who practices what she preaches. She is pro-life, for example, and nobody in American can question her convictions. When faced with the option of aborting a child she and her husband knew would be born with a condition that would require their lifelong care, she chose life. It’s not an abstract with her, nor is it a political power game. It’s life. She’s genuine.
Yes, she’s inexperienced on national security and foreign policy issues. Yes, she most likely won’t be able to name the prime minister of some obscure Third World nation and can be tripped up in the “can-you-name” games that journalists play. Yes, Alaska’s a small state. Yes, she has only two years’ experience as governor — though that’s two years more of actual decision-making experience than any of the three men the two parties will nominate.
But as the number-two, the seasoning will come. And while Alaska is small, she has demonstrated that she can make decisions that taxpayers see as in their best interests, which is why her approval numbers are through the roof.
This week’s the Republican convention. There’s no need there to harp on the choices the Democrats have made.
Instead, remain upbeat and introduce America to Sarah Palin. They will love her. Oh, happy day.
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First woman could be conservative. Yes!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pinch me. Yes! Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, will be on the ticket.
She’s got it all. She’s a strong fiscal conservative, a champion of transparency and accountability in government, a leader capable of leading the charge on a sane and practical energy policy that involves drilling where experts believe there’s oil. She is, too, a strong pro-life believer who is unquestionably true to her convictions. She and her husband knew that their child would be born with Down syndrome — and they did not choose to end his life by abortion.
This is a gutsy call on John McCain’s part. She has no more credibility on national security and foreign policy issues than does Barack Obama. But we are talking here about the under-card. As vice preident, she’ll have an opportunity for seasoning.
The prospect that the first woman in the White House will be a conservative is a hallelujah moment. Yes!
Faux fees, drought dent, the Internet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Yes! Greater transparency. Cobb Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Schuster, declaring “democracy is not a bad thing,” pushes Cobb EMC to give members a genuine opportunity to control the governing board. And he pushes the board and its subsidiaries to disclose profits and losses and the names of stockholders in a management subsidiary. Super ruling.
Builders who need therapy because of a downturn in the housing market may be too fragile to be in the business. They may be a better fit as toll booth operators. It’s not this generation’s job to translate every unpleasantness into a call to the couch.
Representatives of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute in Atlanta are the go-to guys when reporters need somebody to argue against tax cuts, spending caps and other taxpayer-friendly checks on state spending. As a recent report calling for more subsidized child care makes clear, the organization doesn’t want to cut taxes or cap spending because it wants more of your money spent on new or expanded social programs.
Cuts in state spending are certainly possible. The state’s in the golf course business, for example, subsidizing them to the tune of $1 million a year. Golf courses should be financed entirely by user fees. Those are legit. It’s not a user fee, of course, when $10 is added to the price of auto license tags for trauma centers, as proposed. That “fee” is a tax. There’s no real connection between the “fee” and users.
U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Penn.) was identified in CNN labeling as “opposed to abortion rights, as was his father,” former Gov. Bob Casey. To translate from the negative: He is pro-life. His father was denied a speaking role at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his views on abortion.
An Italian priest and theologian is organizing a beauty pageant for nuns, allegedly to counter the view that they’re not pretty. Too bad. In Vietnam, I saw Montagnard women who had never seen themselves in a mirror. There was a physical and spiritual beauty in their lack of awareness. Don’t make nuns mirror-gazers.
Jason Cecil, president of Georgia’s Young Democrats, estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of his friends would never consider dating a conservative. “I don’t see myself dating a Republican.” Oh, date ‘em. They’re not all conservative. And some days, not even most of them.
Do not say that. Don’t. Rain here from Hurricane Fay “would put a pretty significant dent in the drought,” said meteorologist Stephen Komarik. The drought can never be considered mitigated until everybody has the low-flush toilet and installs synthetic grass on the front lawn or moves into a high-rise. We’re not there yet. Don’t be suggesting that rain is drought-affecting good news.
Saving Grady Memorial Hospital from bankruptcy may not have been the smarter course. Bankruptcy would have signaled the need for a quick and major transformation in the way it does business. As it is, execs will be battling “cultural and behavioral barriers” for years to come. The “cultural and behavioral barriers” have always won.
Southerners are given to understatement. An example is this headline: “Ga. politicians: Biden not likely to swing state” to Obama. Not likely, as in, “not a chance.” If you take the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate and pair him with the third most liberal, the ticket’s chances in Georgia are “not likely” improved. Sam Nunn’s just pulling our leg when he says Biden could help Obama carry Georgia.
Ah, the Internet. I waited excitedly to see who would post the 100,000th comment on the Thinking Right blog on ajc.com. It was spam, promptly unpublished.
You’re kidding, right? The nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation is not paying 26 percent of its revenues, or $211,000, to its executive director. Don’t bother calling me for donations.
Voucherize Clayton County.
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