The Porch Swing

By Sam Harris | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 20, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth’s surface (she didn’t have a passport until last year), or that she’s never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska’s geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin’s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter’s microphone, saying things like, “I’m voting for Sarah because she’s a mom. She knows what it’s like to be a mom.” Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

What they said:

“Is This Tomorrow?”

If I have to listen to one more media type seriously and respectfully discussing Sarah Palin’s “qualifications” for office, as though there were any remote way on earth she has the intelligence, education, skills, or background to be even a cabinet member, I will just scream.

Sarah Palin is lamentably ignorant, narrow-minded, uneducated, small-minded, and lacks ANY experience in the kinds of thinking, analyzing, compromising, or big-picture seeing that a president or vice president does.
Let’s put aside (although it’s hard), the lies and misrepresentations in her speech, her ethical lapses in Alaska, all the family & baby dramas, and let’s even set aside (although it’s hard), her extreme right wing views on so-called “social” issues.
Putting all that away, the real problem is that there is NO indication that she has ever taken even a passing interest in foreign affairs or international relations, or has EVER engaged in thoughtful study of economic  policy, environmental science, globalization of labor and production, the social dynamics of largely Muslim countries, climate change, constitutional law, the role of the judiciary in our society, financial markets, the structure of our tax code, health care, space travel, infrastructure repair, educational issues, effective consensus building (she’s been a bully in Alaska), or any of the other issues that the next president & vice president will have to deal with.  Does she even speak a foreign language?
Honest-to-Pete, I could care less who is more “down to earth” or who has a “story” I can “relate to.”  Haven’t we learned anything from eight years of a president chosen on the basis of who would be more fun to have a beer with?
What is “elite” anyway, besides the newest insult?  If elite means more intelligent, better educated, more practiced and adept at analysis of complex multi-faceted issues, better spoken, better able to interact appropriately with world leaders, possessed of a greater fund of general cultural knowledge, and being the Law Review editor of Harvard – then, yeah, I want the elite one.  Field-dressing a moose, watching kids’ hockey games, firing state officials who won’t fire your sister’s ex-husband – these are neither the things the president does, nor are they preparation for being vice-president.  It’s not who has more “executive” experience, or who is the best speaker, whose family is the most engaging, or who is “just like us.”  Leading the free world – damn right, I want someone in the top percentile of everything.
Far as I can tell, Palin was overmatched as mayor of Smallville, Alaska.  I shudder to think of her with potential responsibility for the whole country.