[silentcrs]

Funny that most of the same people  who don't think Palin has enough experience to be President don't seem to have that same concern about Obama (who has even less executive experience than the Alaska governor)…  makes me think the issue isn't experience at all…

No, I think that's a legitimate concern (Obama not having sufficient experience).  However, I'm hedging my bet that he'll pull a Clinton and bring in people that are experienced to deal with areas he doesn't understand.  Biden (even though I dislike him) I think is representative of that.

My main concern is that we've had a "nice, average guy" president for the last 8 years and it turned out to be a disaster.  I forget who said it, but I read a quote recently that was something to the effect "I don't want a person like me as president.  I want someone smarter than me."  Reading people talk about Palin and saying "I can relate to her" scares me.  McCain is a smart guy (both in terms of wit and being politically savvy).  Obama is intelligent and would likely be charismatic enough to sway foreign leaders.  Biden is experienced but swarmy.  Palin seems like a nice woman but outside reading off of cuecards she seems to be a dim bulb.  Out of the 4 of them, she seems the least likely to lead our country successfully.

Anyway, I digress.  🙂  What we ideally need is someone like Jessica Work running for president.  I'd vote for that political body.  🙂

[Lingster]

Seriously, Sir DCM, do not fear.  As a European, I can assure you that, however Marxist Obama may look to you, he really, truly, isn't. 

Umm, his father got kicked out of communist Kenya for being too much of a Marxist purist.  And Obama Jr. wrote one of his two auto-biographies mostly on the theme that he aspired to live up to his father's ideals.  Plus he pals around with the likes of Bill Ayers, an anti-American Marxist bomber. 

Far as I'm concerned, he might as well be wearing a hammer and sickle pin.

[Lingster]

Dave, do you seriously think Obama can do a WORSE job than the current president? Just getting rid of Bush, Cheney, and Rove will do wonders for the country and economy.

It is worth noting that despite media portrayals, the Bush Administration managed to overthrow dictatorial regimes in two large countries and install democratic regimes with the loss of fewer than 6000 American lives.  Regardless of what Keith Olbermann has to say about it, these are among the most impressive and effective American military victories in our history. 

Down the road twenty or thirty years, Bush is going to have a monument on the National Mall.

[Muscle Growth Nut]

My main concern is that we've had a "nice, average guy" president for the last 8 years and it turned out to be a disaster.

Sixteen years.

I forget who said it, but I read a quote recently that was something to the effect "I don't want a person like me as president.  I want someone smarter than me."

I've heard stuff like that from Jon Stewart a few times over the past few months. I remember the first major "Obama's elitist!" flareup, he commented that Obama's running for a job where, if you're "elite", you get your face carved in a mountain.

Anyway. Palin? Scares me.

[Lingster]

Brief look into my real life: I worked in a Congressional position for a number of years when I was younger.  In that role I never met anybody smarter than me.  I met a meager few people AS smart, but nobody clearly smarter.  In my experience, most congressmen barely have the brains to remember how to find their way around the Rayburn Bldg., and Senators come in only slightly above average in IQ.  Bill Bradley was held out as the fucking genius of the Senate and the guy is a friggin' mouth breather.  These are not particularly bright individuals.

Smart Americans don't go into politics.  Politics attracts our third-raters.

[khuddle]

    Good point Lingster. Last smart president we had was Richard Nixon — a nasty, deceitful man, but you couldn't accuse him of not being smart. Since then — Ford (laughable), Carter (pedestrian), Reagan (laughable), Bush I (pedestrian), Clinton I (pedestrian), and Bush II (benath contempt).
      Funny that in other countries polcitics seems to attract some of the best and brightest. Take the UK — Gordon Brown (ok he has no charisma whatsoever but even Tony Blair acknowledged he was the smartest man in his cabinet) Tony Blair (whip smart) John Major (pedestrian) Margaret Thathcer (very smart), Edward Heath (no charisma but very smart), and so on.

[cpbell0033944]

Umm, his father got kicked out of communist Kenya for being too much of a Marxist purist.  And Obama Jr. wrote one of his two auto-biographies mostly on the theme that he aspired to live up to his father's ideals.  Plus he pals around with the likes of Bill Ayers, an anti-American Marxist bomber. 

Far as I'm concerned, he might as well be wearing a hammer and sickle pin.

Look, Americans simply don't know what Socialism is, because you really haven't experienced it within living memory.  You get a moderate Liberal, and suddenly he's Stalin to you.  Read up on the UK during the 1970s, and characters like Michael Foot and Derek Hatton, or the pre-London Mayoral iteration of Ken Livingstone.  Read about 3-day weeks, power shortages, workers constantly out on strike.  THAT'S extremeist Socialism.  Obama?  Liberal.  Seriously, the guy's policies are no further left than Gordon Brown's.  And don't start lecturing me on Bill Ayers.  I've read-up on him, including the newspapr article that Palin misquoted and misrepresented.  Ayers served on two committees with Obama, but, on one of those, the Mayor of Chicago was also present.  I challenge you here and now to state that the Mayor is a terrorist sympathiser.

Oh yeah, Ayers donated the political equivalent of pocket money to Obama's campaign for re-election to the Illinois senate, a;long with lots and lots of other people.  If anyone is a terrorist sympathiser, it's the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Chicago, bcause he's been a respected Professor there for years.  Go there and demonstrate if you're so upset about Ayers.

For every Ayers or Jeremiah Wright, I can give you a Hagee or the leader of the Nationalist Alaska party Palin's husband belonged to.  She recorded an address to their conference two years ago, for crying out loud; their leader says he hates the US and wants no part of it.  They advocate seccession.  The same thing that lead to Americans slaughtering each other in the 1860s.  I'm sorry, but, as much as I'd like to see a woman get to the top in US politics, Palin is, for most non-Americans (myself included) a joke.

Look, I'l do a deal with you.  I intend staying here for the next 4 years.  If Obama becomes President, I'll return to this topic in 4 years' time.  If the US has become a Marxist state, with official press and state TV only, people disappearing in the night for criticising the regime, and sectret police on every corner, then I'll beg for forgiveness and agree with anything you say on politics.  If, however, this doesn't happen, and all this scare stuff ends up being just scare stuff, then you have to apologise to me. 

(End of Part 1).

[cpbell0033944]

(Part 2.)

Anyway, I'm interested in your Congressional work, especially in the fact that you seem to idolise any Republican politician (especialy the outgoing President, and yet you called the brightest Senator "a mouth-breather" and stated that politics attracts third-rate people.  I can't square that, I'm afraid.

Mind you, I got a good laugh out of the war stuff.  The reason you consider Afghanistan to be a done deal is because the US left with unseemly haste and left it to us in the UK and those Canadians you hate so much to clear-up the pile of c*** left behind.  Had it not been for us, the Afghan President would have had his head on a spike by now, and the Taliban would be back in absolute control.  My local Army Regiment (Royal Anglians) recently returned from deployment in Helmand Province, which was their bloodiest and most taxing deployment since WW2.  The situation is still precarious indeed.  The Taliban are still strong and putting-up incredible resistance, let alone the area in the mountains on the Pakistan border, where Al-Quaida are in control along with the Taliban.  You haven't even finished the job in Iraq.  I'll grant you that the regime change bit was straightforward.  The world is a much better place without Saddam Hussain; the problem was that your Neocon leaders were so staggeringly arrogant that they didn't see the need to fill the power vacuum that resulted.  This led to a huge "surge" in troop numbers being needed to prevent Civil War, which was avoided by a hair's breadth.  As a Briton, I don't need or want lectures on the success and necessity of wars where we've stood shoulder-to-shoulder wit the US.  I think the British people are apable of making their own judgement.

[cpbell0033944]

Source for Britain in the 1970s stuff:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6721709.stm

[jimbo]

Heh.  I've been toying with doing a similar type of drawing myself.

Funny that most of the same people  who don't think Palin has enough experience to be President don't seem to have that same concern about Obama (who has even less executive experience than the Alaska governor)…  makes me think the issue isn't experience at all…

How come you ofter hear more executive experience than Obama, or Obama and Biden combined but you never hear more executive experience than Obama, Biden, and McCain combined?

I think there is a lot more to it. After 8 years of "home spun" it may not be fair but I'm sour on "folksey".

[Author]

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