Ever since John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, pundits and reporters have been using the word “wow” as in “McCain wows the nation,” and “Wow, we didn’t see this one coming.”
I’ll add another one: “Wow! This is so awesome for the Obama campaign!”
If John McCain, 72, is elected president, he will be the oldest newly-elected president in our history – not two years younger than Ronald Reagan was when he was elected to his second term. Although McCain’s 2001 operation to treat skin cancer was successful and he has “survived without a recurrence for more than seven years,” McCain’s age means it is especially important to know who would become the most powerful person in the world if President McCain had to leave office.
This is the astonishing fact, as obvious as the sun is bright: If McCain wins the election and then has to leave office for some reason, Sarah Palin, 44, would become the most powerful human being on the planet, our commander-in-chief, our diplomat-in-chief, our chief problem-solver. If McCain wins, Palin will be “one heartbeat away” from the presidency, and the heartbeat in question has been beating for 72 years, including more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.
Under normal circumstances, a Palin presidency would seem absolutely ludicrous and unacceptable to the American people. Sarah Palin is obviously not qualified to be the most powerful person in the world.
The easiest way to make this clear is to tackle the silly push-back Democrats hear from Palin supporters — you have to feel sorry for these people — who say, “Palin is no less qualified to be president than Barack Obama.”
Of course she is less qualified than Barack Obama!
Let’s recall some relevant facts about these two potential presidents, drawn largely from Wikipedia articles about them. For an Alaskan bloggers’ view on Palin, click here. To read what some Alaskan newspapers are saying, click here.
1. Barack Obama has an undergraduate degree in political science (with a specialization in international relations) from Columbia University. Sarah Palin hold an undergraduate degree in communications-journalism (with a minor in political science) from the University of Idaho. I’m not certain, but I suspect it’s harder to gain admission into Columbia than it is to get admitted into the University of Idaho — and it’s easier to graduate from Idaho than Columbia. (But maybe I’m just an Ivy League elitist.)
2. After college, but before he went to law school, Obama went to work in Chicago helping former steel workers who lost their jobs due to plant closings. It appears that after college, “Palin briefly worked in broadcasting as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations and with her husband in commerical fishing.” Straight out of college, Obama demonstrated a commitment to public service and grass-roots politics. Palin didn’t.
3. Not only did Obama earn a law degree from Harvard (easily among the top ten law schools on the planet), he also became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Below I’ve listed a relevant excerpt from a Wikipedia article about the Harvard Law Review.
Prominent alumni of the Harvard Law Review include Supreme Court Justices Edward Sanford, Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Charles Hamilton Houston, Alger Hiss, Archibald MacLeish, Secretary of Transportation and Brown v. Board of Education attorney William Coleman, Jr., Judge Richard Posner, Chief Judge Henry Friendly, Chief Judge Michael Boudin, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, former Canadian ambassador Allan Gotlieb, former Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, former New York State Solicitor General Preeta D. Bansal, University of Texas President William C. Powers, and former Harvard University president Derek Bok.
Anyone who doubts the significance of being chosen to lead the Harvard Law Review should find a lawyer and ask him or her if they think it’s a big deal. (Hint: It’s a big deal.) Obama later taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, easily one of the top 10 law schools in the United States.
Palin doesn’t have a law degree, or any advanced degree for that matter. Given that she’s only 44 years old, I’d love to see what her grades were at the University of Idaho.
4. Sarah Palin’s political career began in 1992 when she ran for city council in her hometown of Wasilla. In 1996 she was elected Mayor of Wasilla, a town with a population of less than 10,000 people. Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. Obama was elected to represent the 13th district. I’m having trouble finding the population of Obama’s Senate district, but I understand that there are 59 seats in the Illinois State Senate representing districts with roughly equal populations. The current population of Illinois is more than 12 million — so if we divide 12 million by 59 we get roughly 200,000. Let’s assume, for the sake of being conservative, that Obama’s Senate District was only 25% as large as that — that still means Obama’s constituency in 1996 was five times as large as Palin’s. Furthermore, Obama’s constituency came from a city that draws high-powered professionals from all over the country, whereas Palin’s constituency didn’t. (I don’t mean to dis Wasilla, but let’s be honest.)
5. Barack Obama was re-elected to the state Senate twice, in 1998 and 2002. Palin was only re-elected once, in 1999, to be mayor of her town. In a state with an annual budget of more than $50 billion, Obama participated in passing plenty of legislation. As a former reporter who spent a lot of time covering towns about the size of Wasilla, I’d conservatively estimate that her town’s budget for everything — schools, roads, police, etc. — never exceeded $50 million. So Obama was a much bigger fish (representing 50,000 to 200,000 while Palin represented 10,000) in a much bigger pond (at least 1,000 times bigger, money-wise).
6. In 2004, Obama was elected to represent the entire state of Illinois as a United States Senator. His constituency: 12 million. In 2006, Palin was elected to represent the entire state of Alaska as governor. Her constituency: just under 700,000. In other words, Obama has spent nearly four years representing a population more than 15 times the population Palin represented for less than two years.
7. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama has some real foreign policy experience at the national level. Palin has none.
8. About three months after Palin took over as governor of Alaska (state budget: $6.6 billion), Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Since then, Obama has been the chief executive officer of his campaign, managing thousands of employees and volunteers, in an environment where most campaigns fail. Under tremendous pressure, he has had to make daily decisions not just on public policy positions, but also about money management and communications.
So if we look at the last 18 months of Obama’s candidacy, we see Obama leading a multi-million dollar organization to a point where he is the Democratic nominee for president and ahead in the polls. Meanwhile, if we look at Palin’s 20 months as governor of Alaska, do we see a similar level of achievement? Palin is certainly popular in her home state, but has she, a first-time governor, accomplished anything comparable to what Obama has achieved as a first-time presidential candidate?
Obama won the Democratic primary by defeating Hillary Clinton, making him one of the great dragon-slayers in contemporary American politics. (No offense to Hillary Clinton intended.) Palin won the Alaska gubernatorial race by defeating incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican Primary. What does it mean to have defeated Frank Murkowski?
I would have more respect for the possible presidency of Sarah Palin if she had at least tried to compete in the Republican Presidential Primary, and if she’d managed to avoid making a fool of herself. That’s the question: If Palin had tried to become president on her own by campaigning for the job, could she have made it through two months of a campaign without saying something that would disqualify her for the job? Is her apparent competance as a candidate a carefully constructed fiction of a Republican campaign machine rallying around it’s VP selection? We know what would happen if Biden ran for President: He has done so twice, appearing in dozens of nationally televised debates and emerging with the respect of the American people, earning high praise from former President Bill Clinton.
It’s also important to note that McCain and Palin met only once or twice in person before he chose her to be his fill-in for leader of the free world.
Obama is obviously more qualified to be president than Palin. Everything we know about Obama tells us he is smarter, more experienced in government, more committed to public service. And if Obama becomes president, he will have earned that position by campaigning intensively in almost every state in this country. Palin hasn’t earned a spot on the ticket — it’s been given to her in a transparent ploy to attract women who don’t care about abortion, global warming, teaching science, etc.
I agree with Paul Begala. McCain is out of his mind.
I say this as a graduate of Columbia that Number 1 is a bad criteria and discredits the other seven which are valid.
There a plenty of state school graduates that have achieved greatness and plenty of Ivy Leaguers who have done absolutely nothing with their lives.
Comment by John — August 30, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
John, I think you’re being dishonest. If asked to choose between hiring a Columbia undergraduate and a University of Idaho graduate to do an important job, you honestly wouldn’t see a distinction?
Assuming they had the same grades, I’d hire the Columbia grad. That’s why students from all over the world compete to gain admission at Columbia.
Comment by Ian — August 30, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
A follow up: I agree that graduating from Columbia isn’t a qualification to be president: My point is that Barack Obama is MORE qualified than Palin.
If you listen to the right-wing spin machine, they will say Obama is “no more qualified” than Palin. That’s false.
I also don’t believe it’s a small point: How much mileage did George Bush Jr. get out of the fact that he went to Yale. Maybe it didn’t mean much to you, an Ivy Leaguer, but to ordinary Americans who associate Yale with the summit of scholarly acheivement, Bush’s degree made him seem like he wasn’t just some dumb jock whose dad got him a job in the oil biz.
But do you honestly think your Columbia degree is worth no more than a degree from the University of Idaho? That’s pretty weird.
Comment by Ian — August 30, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
Another follow up: If the Presidency of the United States were a summer internship or a regular job — or if the woman in question wasn’t only 44 years old — or if she’d acheived in school beyond college — then I agree her ungraduate degree wouldn’t matter. But this is the presidency of the United States. To say “There a plenty of state school graduates that have achieved greatness and plenty of Ivy Leaguers who have done absolutely nothing with their lives” makes it sound like we should take a chance on her, that it would be sort of prejudiced and unfair to discredit her.
But this job is a big deal, and I want to know for certain she can hack it intellectually before I give her the codes to the nuclear weapons. This isn’t about being fair to state school kids, this is about the future of the planet.
Comment by Ian — August 30, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
I wouldn’t hire an acting major from Emerson to do my taxes, and I wouldn’t vote for a journalism major from Idaho state to be the President. Maybe I’m crazy.
Comment by Ross — August 30, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
I have no problem with the fact that Palin doesn’t have an Ivy League degree, and I’m not *necessarily* impressed that Obama does.
What is more damning is that Palin has clearly not thought very much about national politics, about US foreign policy, or about anything else a person who would want to be president ought to think long and hard about. Not too long ago Palin admitted she didn’t even know what the VP DID.
Palin’s nomination has the air of improvisation–and stupid improvisation–by the McCain camp whereas Obama, when he vetted his VP candidates, had a literal MACHINE around him. Moreover, on foreign policy, as with everything else, Obama has interlocking networks of advisers who vet and cull everything that comes out of his mouth, though he also clearly has demonstrated his understanding again and again.
If Palin had written something brilliant showing her superior understanding of foreign policy it wouldn’t bother me what her credentials were. She could have graduated from clown college for all I care.
Most importantly the spontaneity and improvisational character of this decision isn’t so important because it damns Palin, but because it damns McCain. It’s John McCain who made this stupid decision. We should never forget that.
Let us not talk about the woman who is one heartbeat away from the presidency. Let us speak instead–with a justified sense of fear–of the 72-year-old President who might invade a country or press that big red button on his desk on a whim, in just the same way he selected his VP.
Comment by Lee — August 30, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
I think Lee is right. While for rhetorical purposed I still think it’s not tactically wise to highlight which school they got into almost thirty years ago. Many people would just stop reading at that point without reading the other seven points
Back to Lee: What is more important is that you have a 72 year old cancer survivor who has left his successor as nonchalantly as one may order the steak over the chicken at a wedding. More importantly this isn’t some sort of decision you can change like National Security Adviser but you would have to wait until 2012 or convince the VP to resign. Neither option speaks to a well thought out decision.
Comment by John — August 31, 2008 @ 9:54 am
To John: You’re probably right that it was a mistake to lead my point-by-point comparison by seeming to say that Idaho State graduates shouldn’t be taken seriously.
We know so little about Palin that it seems like the few shreds of info we do have — like where she went to college — have to be taken very seriously. Ideally, we wouldn’t be considering where someone went to college when evaluating their qualifications to be president.
Comment by Ian — August 31, 2008 @ 11:32 am
[...] Like Ian, I was overjoyed to learn that Sarah Palin was McCain’s pick to be his running mate. [...]
Pingback by Transcending Issues and Details — August 31, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
Though I’m no fan of Palin and I think the choice is a fairly bizarre one, I completely disagree that having an undergraduate degree from the University of Idaho makes Palin less qualified to be the president. As a matter of fact, of recent presidents, there’s a pretty good bipartisan split between ivy and non-ivy leaguers.
Here’s a handy list of non-ivies for your enjoyment!
1. Richard Nixon–Whittier College
2. Jimmy Carter–Georgia Tech, Georgia Southwestern
3. Ronald Reagan–Eureka College
4. LBJ–Southwestern Texas State Teacher’s College
5. Harry Truman–no college
You’ll note that there are some real heavy hitters here president-wise and that the Harvard and Yale educated presidents weren’t necessarily better as a lot than these guys. I mean, George Bush is much better credentialed than every one on this list combined, but we all know that this hasn’t helped him be a great president or a great leader.
Of course, I can already hear Ian saying “But Julie, what about experience! These guys with non-ivy league education had experience beyond college!” Sure. For most, but not all of these presidents, that’s true. (I’m looking at you, Truman) But the point is, their intelligence and capability as leaders in fact had very little correlation to what they did in school or where they went, and to say that a Columbia grad is necessarily more impressive than a University of Idaho grad is not a given by any means.
Now, I personally think this particular Columbia grad is better, but if I were giving a job to someone, I hope I’d keep an open mind and pick the person best suited for the job, not the one with the fanciest and most expensive credentials.
Comment by Julie — August 31, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
I definitely agree that it’s not hard at all to believe that a Idaho State University grad could be an excellent president, fully capable of leading the nation and the world and doing so better than any Ivy League grad. I can see now how it sounded prejudiced for me to suggest that someone who attends Idaho State University should somehow be “tainted” by their school’s relative obscurity. It would be stupid to think less of someone for attending a school that isn’t famous for its positive reputation.
But do we believe that an undergraduate degree from the University of Idaho is equal to a degree from Columbia? Do we believe that Columbia isn’t a “better” school from an educational standpoint, but merely “fancier and more expensive”? If so, then we have to acknowledge that when we, as a society, encourage high school students to achieve academically (or in athletics or arts) in order to gain admission to more “competitive” colleges, which will in turn make these students more competitive in the labor market or the graduate school market straight out of college, we are supporting a system that is absurd and possibly corrupt. Every time a Columbia graduate is picked for a job ahead of an Idaho State graduate (assuming they have roughly equal resumes otherwise), this choice may reinforce and perpetuate the lie that Columbia better prepares its students to succeed after college. Speaking as someone who attended a fancy and expensive boarding school where a large number of the students competed fiercely for admission at top-ranked colleges, I’m disturbed by the notion that all that competition wasn’t to obtain a higher-quality education, but merely to obtain a more fancy and expensive education that would bestow an unfair advantage in the labor market post-college.
Should a Columbia graduate feel entitled to the advantages he or she receives in the labor market? Or are those advantages inherently unfair because they are based on class and social standing? Is it unjust that a company is more likely to hire you if you have an Ivy League degree? Are graduates of lower-ranked schools discriminated against, and should anything be done to prevent this discrimination?
This could be a significant question for the economy, since state schools are often larger, less expensive, and therefore more affordable and open to people with socio-economic disadvantages, when compared to more competitive schools. But if Ivy League grads all get an unfair leg-up, which then puts them in a stronger position to perpetuate the discrimination by hiring Ivy League grads, then we’re just perpetuating a caste system designed to insulate a group of rich, connected “elites” against having to compete fairly against their state school peers.
I’ve heard that Harvard, Yale and Stanford have all changed their admissions policies so that students from middle class families who gain admission can essentially attend college for free — a huge incentive for students to achieve in high school.
Comment by Ian — September 1, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Essentially, I’d say, yeah, that’s right to most of the rhetorical questions you’ve asked here. And I’d argue that it’s quite true that there is a certain absurdity inherent in the system and a marked tendency to perpetuate social class markers in education. It’s obviously a complex issue, but I’d point out that when you go to a school a big part of what you pay for is a credential.
The credential in this case is a piece of paper that identifies you as a certain type of person to the world. In the case of Columbia it marks you as “smart,” perhaps “cosmopolitan” from being in NYC, and maybe even “smart, but not Harvard material.” People don’t know you, but they think they know something about you because you have the credential. Idaho of course says different things to most people than Columbia does, but part of my point is that the credential itself says little about the quality of person or their actual capabilities. The crib sheet (read: stereotype) on a person that you get based on the reputation of their undergrad (or grad) institution just doesn’t always tell you much about the actual person in question. In a sense, it tells you more about your own value system than about a the student in question. And of course I’d add again that despite our cherished beliefs to the contrary, just as some really intelligent superstars go to lowly state schools, some real morons attend Ivies. Think Bush.
As for new admission policies at Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc. I think they’re better than nothing, but for a variety of reasons they don’t necessarily level the playing field as much as you’d think. But maybe that’s for another time.
Comment by Julie — September 2, 2008 @ 1:55 am
Another thing to consider that for many who are talented enough the Ivies are just out of reach. Or, perhaps, just too far from Wasilla, Alaska.
Comment by John — September 2, 2008 @ 7:45 am
Harriet Miers? Anyone? I’m surprised this comparison hasn’t come up here yet. Here’s a silly little attempt to differentiate the two.
It’s wrong in several ways but, here’s one:
Hm. Does it matter that the qualifications are different when neither one had them?
Kaye Bailey Hutchison? Olympia Snow? I just can’t stop scratching my head.
Comment by aaron — September 2, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Thanks to Aaron for bringing up the Miers-Palin comparison.
Ever since the Palin pick was announced, a friend of mine who just recently graduated from law school has been making that same point over and over: Palin isn’t qualified for her job, just as Myers wasn’t qualified to be a Supreme Court justice. But Palin, like Myers, was tapped for the job anyway for purely political reasons.
I heard another similar comparison today, of Palin to Monica Goodling, the young Justice Department official who was in charge of hiring U.S. attorneys and who later admitted in Congressional testimony that she “crossed the line,” in terms of politicizing these hires.
Goodling may have been smart, but she was put in a powerful position because she had a Christian right background and would follow orders. Palin is similarly hackish.
Comment by Ian — September 2, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
This Story does make me wonder about her education. Who transfers six times?
Comment by John — September 5, 2008 @ 8:05 am