Okay, so let’s just for a second forget the truthfully important aspects of Governor Sarah Palin. After all, she must be the only woman in the country with a pregnant, unmarried daughter and a wife with a husband who has a DUI on his record. As important as those things are, let’s just for a moment examine the trivial aspects of only the second woman to ever be nominated to the post of Vice President. She is governor of the geographically largest state in the Union. A state that has as its largest trading partner a foreign country, namely Japan with exports of over a billion dollars annually. In addition, Alaska has to negotiate frequently with Russia over fishing and drilling rights. I am not suggesting that Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda or President Putin have ever faced Governor Palin from the other side of a oak table with the balance of power at stake, but the nature of any state’s chief executive is to safeguard their state’s best interests. That Governor Palin has done. Okay, so that’s not National Security expertise, but it is more foreign policy experience than registering people to vote.
In addition, as trivial as it may be, Governor Palin is the Commander-in-Chief of the Alaskan National Guard; a guard unit which has deployed to varying degrees in the Global War on Terror. No, Governors do not equip, fund or oversee the battle plans of deployed troops, but they do have oversight on those that remain. State issues still arise and Governor Palin has deployed the troops in her charge to fight forest fires and in various support roles. The logistics of deploying troops anytime, yes even domestically, are daunting. Don’t think so? Ask the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco. My mistake Governor Blanco didn’t even deign to run for a second term after botching the troop response to Hurricane Katrina. President Bush and the feds were demonized for their tepid response, and rightly so. The President should have federalized the Louisiana Guard as soon as it was evident that Governor Blanco was not up to the job. I am from New Orleans and was in the hurricane-ravaged area three days after the levees broke. I saw Army National Guard troops awaiting orders from their commander, the Governor of Louisiana, and people suffered. She also recognizes the sacrifice of our brave warriors having traveled to Kuwait to visit her troops while they were deployed, and on the return trip found time to visit the wounded at Landstuhl. Ask any of our wounded warriors what it means to receive such a visit. Being Commander-in-Chief of a National Guard unit inside the confines of a state is not the same as putting those same men and women into a “hot zone,” but it is more command experience than editing the Harvard Law Review.
As trivial as energy concerns are Governor Palin responded to high gas and oil prices by taking the high budget surplus created by the influx of petroleum cash and gave every citizen of Alaska a $1,200 rebate, eliminated the state gas tax and proposed giving grants to electrical utility companies in order to lower customer’s energy bills. She has personally taken on big oil companies in Alaska, and has the approval ratings in Alaska to prove it. She governs a state with 24,000 employees and an annual budget of $11,000,000,000, which amazingly is not in the red. She has cut waste at every level of government, as trivial as that seems, even selling the state’s Westwind II private jet on eBay. Now those ideas may be too revolutionary to succeed on a national scale, but they are more creative than suggesting the way to combat $4.00 per gallon gasoline is to properly inflate our tires.
None of this truly matters though when choosing the person who will hold the second highest office in the land. What matters is that Governor Palin has five children who need their mother at home. After all, that is a woman’s place isn’t it? Of those five children, Track, the oldest is deploying to Iraq as an infantryman next week on September 11th. The Governor’s second oldest child, her 17 year old daughter, is knocked up and getting married. She and her soon to be 18 year old husband will be setting up their own home soon, so Governor Palin will have more time to donate to the other three. Whatever caused two teenagers to believe that both parents are more likely to raise a well-adjusted child has not been paying attention to this election cycle. Governor Palin has done an admirable job raising her children, regardless the mistakes one has made. She has not only made a home for her family, but also helped her husband on his commercial fishing boat. Pretty uppity of a woman to want to work outside the home, but she just wanted to make sure her bills got paid. After all, left to his own devices her husband probably would have squandered the family’s funds on another hunting rifle. Oh wait, the Governor hunts and eats caribou, moose and other wild game. I guess another rifle might not be such a bad thing for a gun toting, Lifetime Member of the N.R.A. Being able to literally bring home the bacon, and fry it up in the pan may not count for much when super markets will deliver foie gras and arugula to your house, provided you live in a civilized area of the country, but it is more honest work experience than voting “present” 160 times while in a state Senate.
So, what’s the end result here? Governor Sarah Palin is an independent woman who has chosen her own path in life. She has tackled both politically and personally tough issues head on whenever they have confronted her. She is a mother, wife, homemaker, career woman and a good role model. What she is not is a Democrat, and as we are all too well aware, no woman who really cares about women, the planet or children could ever be anything other than a Democrat. Real women are the likes of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Clinton, not bumpkins from the backwoods like Governor Palin. If Governor Palin is elected Vice President she will have risen higher than either of those two aforementioned paragons of femininity, some could even argue just being nominated elevates her above them. After all, neither Speaker Pelosi nor Senator Clinton has been nominated to a national position. Of course all these things are trivial when you really consider them because she has never published a best selling book. All she’s done is make her own way in the world in the best traditions of America. Now what could possibly make her think that something like that could prepare her for either Vice President, or God forbid should something happen to Senator McCain, President? Doesn’t she know that the only way to get ahead in this world is by having all your wants and needs met by those who know better than you? Of course not. How could she? After all, no graduate of the University of Idaho could ever expect to understand the real world. You would have to attend a prep school and at least one Ivy League school, if not two, before you could understand what those of us out here in the real world really need.
