Incontrovertible Logic

In my last post, I said that tomorrow I would take apart the Sally Quinn article line by line. It turns out that tomorrow has come a little early today. 🙂

Instead of literally line-by-line, I’ll quote her a paragraph at a time, to make my cut-and-paste work slightly less tedious.

Palin’s Pregnancy Problem

That’s the title folks. OK, Quinn has framed the entire discussion of whether she’s fit to be the VP in terms of her teen-age daughter’s pregnancy. No hyperbole here.

My first reaction was shock. Then anger. John McCain chose a running mate simply because she is a woman and one who appealed to the Republican’s conservative evangelical base. Now, with news that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant, McCain’s pick may not even find support among “family values” voters.

OK, Quinn professes to know exactly why McCain picked Palin. After all, to quote her directly, it was simply because she is a woman. I’ll give her one piece of big credit, at least she didn’t say that he picked her simply because she is a woman, and would therefore win him the Clinton Democrats…

But, uh oh, he screwed it up, because evangelicals will punish Palin (and by extension, McCain) for being a real person, with real-life issues to deal with. Just because you believe in “family values”, doesn’t mean you believe you can (or want to!) control every aspect of your children’s lives. Show me an evangelical with children, and we won’t have to argue that point.

As an aside, one would hope (and should assume) that when evangelicals come to know Palin, even if they honestly believe that she personally erred in how she raised her children, they would forgive her her sins, for everything else that she believes in, which they do as well. Forgiveness is a pretty fundamental tenet, no?

It has happened before, of course. Geraldine Ferraro was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984 because she was a woman, but that was 24 years ago. I thought we were past this. Apparently not. McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is a cynical and calculated move. It is a choice made to try to win an election. It is a political gimmick. And it’s very high risk. I find it insulting to women, to the Republican party, and to the country.

Well, I don’t have anything new to say here. Clearly, she knows exactly why McCain chose Palin. No wiggle room here. It’s a gimmick. That said, why would he take such a risk on a gimmick? Why would he do it knowing the pregnancy issue would come out a few days later? Why would he do it when it might enrage pro-choice women? Why pick someone who would both turn off the base and the supposedly available Clinton women at the same time?

Answer, he wouldn’t. It’s a big risk, Quinn is certainly right about that, but she’s wrong about the reasons for the choice, or the risk. When Obama picked Biden, McCain no longer had to take any risks. He could have done one of two things, easily:

1. Choose someone with tremendous credentials in the financial world (Mitt Romney comes to mind), mirroring his supposed weakness on the economy with Obama’s on foreign policy
2. Pick someone who directly (and uncontroversially) plays to the base (perhaps Huckabee, but there are likely less controversial choices)

He couldn’t have been attacked for being weak in making an economic choice, or the argument would boomerang on Obama for needing Biden.

And yet, he chose boldly. Quinn disguises her contempt for Palin as a candidate by claiming that McCain was pandering to evangelicals, rather than to women (or more specifically, Clinton women!). And yet, the disguise is thinly veiled, as she leads the last sentence above with I find it insulting to women.

This is nothing against Palin. From what little we know about her, she seems to be a bright, attractive, impressive person. She certainly has been successful in her 44 years. But is she ready to be president?

Huh? Wait! Thankfully, it’s nothing against Palin. Whew. For a minute there, I thought Quinn had an axe to grind. Nope. Instead, there are only two things at play here:

1. Quinn knows exactly why McCain picked Palin, and she doesn’t like the reason. It doesn’t matter whether he picked the right person for the wrong reason. If he had the wrong reason (and there’s no doubt in Quinn’s mind that McCain is nefarious in his choice), then it simply doesn’t matter whether she would be a good choice or not.
2. But is she ready to be president? Whoa. What? Quinn isn’t as cock-sure that Palin isn’t ready to president? No need to slow down the attack until we at least have some evidence that she isn’t. Of course, there’s no doubt that Obama is ready. After all, he’s a man!

And now we learn the 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. She and the father of the child plan to marry. This may be a hard one for the Republican conservative family-values crowd to swallow. Of course, this can happen in any family. But it must certainly raise the question among the evangelical base about whether Sarah Palin has been enough of a hands-on mother.

Thankfully, she softened this horror of a situation, with Of course, this can happen in any family. Whew. For a second, I thought it could only happen in Alaska. It’s pretty cold up there in the winter, so there’s not much else to do ya know. A more vigilant mother would have nipped that in the bud, and evangelicals won’t let her get away with that kind of parenting. No need to check her credentials on how she’s governed, just see whether she’s turned out a bad apple or not.

It’s certainly good for Democrats that Presidents aren’t judged on how their brothers turn out, right? 😉

Sheesh. Is she running for mother-of-the-year or VP? Oh wait, Quinn thinks evangelicals can’t tell the difference. Dogma is dogma. Perhaps, if we whip them up a bit more, we can get them to burn Palin at the stake. What do you think? Are you with me?

McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well.

Wow. This would be better broken up into sentences, but let’s just go for the whole chunk. First, obviously, McCain is lying (he’s a well-known liar!). Using loaded words like claims he knew don’t even pretend to allow for the fact that, indeed, he knew.

One of her children is a special needs child. Can you believe that Trig survived the entire evening without his mother holding him? It was appalling that he was left alone in the corner all night, with no one to love him, but hey, McCain needs to win an election, and by golly, Palin will sacrifice Trig to the cause.

But wait, soon her 17-year-old daughter will need her even more. I wonder what her soon-to-be husband’s view of that will be? Everyone loves an in-your-face mother-in-law, no? You single moms out there without a support system, unable to count on your mother for full-time nurturing, better give up now. You simply can’t make it. Quinn has spoken!

Of course, under any circumstances, Sarah Palin needs to take direct day-to-day responsibility for raising the coming grandchild. What grandmother doesn’t have that responsibility?

Still, none of the above really matters. Quinn nails the real problem when she correctly notes that the media runs the country. After all, it will be an enormous distraction … from a media standpoint as well. Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that!

Quinn is certainly correct in one assumption. If Palin were to indeed become the VP, the elite media in this country would be more interested in asking her work-life balance questions, and how it is that she can live with herself being a derelict mom, rather than discussing all the global turmoil.

McCain’s cynical choice has created a dilemma for many women. For still-angry Hillary Clinton voters, they will have to decide if they want to vote against their concscience and political interests by voting to elect a Republican woman who’s even more conservative than McCain.

This is simply laugh-out-loud funny. First, he chose her to appeal to the evangelicals, but, he’s so cynical that he simultaneously chose her to appeal to still-angy Hillary Clinton voters. The answer is simple. They won’t, and McCain never thought they would. If his target audience was still-angy Clinton voters, he would have been better off choosing Lieberman. Who cares if his base would have stayed home. He’s cynical enough not to care…

Evangelical women also will have to decide if they will vote against their conscience by voting to put the mother of young children in a job outside the home that will demand so much of her time and energy.

This is the first point that isn’t completely nonsensical. It’s possible that some evangelicals (not just women) will prefer not to see a woman as VP. What is unlikely to matter is whether her daughter is pregnant or not, or whether she has a special needs child. Quinn purposely muddies the water with that argument. Still, it’s true that there are those (including a number of evangelicals) who simply believe a woman’s place is in the home, not at work, VP or otherwise. One has to wonder whether Quinn is among those people, given all of her arguments in support of Palin being a poor choice…

Southern Baptist leaders like Richard Land and Al Mohler have praised McCain’s choice. But these are the same men who support this statement from the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message:

“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”

Sorry for the two paragraph quote, they are obviously connected. This is a continuation of the previous point, and is not necessarily off base. That said, it’s wildly disingenuous of her to claim that Palin could have been a great choice to evangelicals, but for the pregnant daughter, and then trot out the above dogma, which would disqualify her whether her daughter was pregnant or not.

I’m agreeing that some evangelicals will have trouble voting for her (even though she’s not the top of the ticket), but Quinn frames it in a particularly egregious and disingenuous way, trying to inflame, not inform. I’d go so far as to say that her target for that quote is Independents, who she wants to scare by sharing the Southern Baptist dogma!

Palin’s lack of experience and her family situation are both valid and vital considerations here, especially when she will be running with a 72-year-old presidential candidate who has suffered four bouts of a deadly cancer.

Her family situation is now a vital consideration. If she were to become President, there’s little doubt that she would ignore the country’s immediate needs to wipe up that spill on the kitchen floor. Seriously, how would she choose between them?

I truly hate to stoop to the moral relativism that is the norm in today’s politics, so I use this as an example, not to equate the two, but wasn’t the country a little more at risk when Bill Clinton was playing hanky panky in the oval office? Perhaps that wasn’t a distraction. It certainly wasn’t vital.

And by the way, how can McCain call Barack Obama unqualified, inexperienced, not ready from Day One, not able to be commander in chief, and then put someone like Palin in a position that is a heartbeat away from the pesidency?

So, Obama is the President on day one, but she’s a hearbeat away, and it’s exactly the same thing. Still, since Quinn also said she doesn’t believe Palin is ready to be president (she doesn’t capitalize it, so I’ll respect her choice), does she therefore agree with McCain that Obama isn’t either?

Where would you rather have the inexperience in the ticket, on top, or bottom? At least Palin would have a heartbeat of time to learn on the job, without the arrogance of being the man (both literally, and figuratively) in the relationship between the Prez and the Veep.

I don’t blame Palin for accepting the position. How could she or anyone turn down such an opportunity? I was once in a similar position. After four years of reporting at the Washington Post, I was chosen by CBS to be the first network anchorwoman in America, to co-anchor their Morning News. I had never been on TV a day in my life. I was 32. There were women at CBS who were much more qualified than I was and certainly other men. They chose me because they wanted a woman. I didn’t even want the job, but I didn’t feel I could turn it down. Of course it was a disaster. I lasted four months. I wasn’t ready for Network TV. Palin isn’t ready to be leader of the free world.

Finally, the Truth. First, the lesser of the two. Up front, Quinn asks whether Palin is ready. Thankfully, by this point, she’s convinced herself that Palin isn’t ready to lead the free world. At least we don’t have to worry about that dilemma any longer.

What does this boil down to? Quinn failed miserably when she was called to higher service, and therefore, Palin (and quite possibly no other woman either) will ever be able to achieve more as a result. Poor little Quinn knew in heart that she wasn’t up to the task, but just couldn’t resist the fruit of the forbidden tree. She paid the penalty, and by golly, so will Palin.

Still, her logic defies reason. They wanted a woman, but there were women at CBS who were much more qualified than I was. So, once again, some cynical man at CBS had a nefarious reason for picking the underqualified Quinn to support his evil mission to achieve higher ratings. Why oh why, would they pass over a more qualified woman to snag Sally Quinn? I’m sincerely hoping that it wasn’t McCain who was running the News division at CBS at the time, or Quinn may indeed be correct about his judgment…

The calculation on the part of the McCain people is clear. Palin’s candidacy could draw some of the 18-million Hillary Clinton voters who are not happy she lost and who want to vote for a woman on a national ticket. Palin is not of Washington and that will be appealing to some. Most importantly for McCain, Palin is decidedly anti-abortion and that will keep the Republican base under control and appeal to some evangelicals who might be considering Obama. She has a son who is headed to Iraq.

Wow, the kitchen sink. Again mixing how she is the perfect person to appeal to everyone. Now Quinn takes it a step further. Palin will keep the Replublican base under control. Cool, Palin must indeed be super woman (small caps). She better start cracking the whip now. Oh yeah, she has a son headed to Iraq, pick her, quick, pick her, before he goes.

The fact that McCain served isn’t enough for him, he needs to lean on the fact that her son enlisted. But wait! You say that McCain himself has a son that served in Iraq, so he definitely doesn’t need Palin’s creds there, right? Apparently not. We need to sympathize that a mommy is worrying about her son in Iraq, to truly understand how committed these war mongers are…

Those are positives for a McCain-Palin ticket, but what about the negatives?

Haha. With positives like that, who needs negatives? I guess Quinn does, just for balance… 😉

She has no national political experience, especially in the area of foreign policy. That fact that she is not of Washington also will be difficult for her. Barbara Bush once told me that her husband had been a congressman, UN ambassador, ambassador to China, and head of the CIA and they thought they were prepared for the vice presidency (under President Reagan). But she said nothing can prepare you for the criticism and scrutiny of being in the White House. Sarah Palin is not prepared for that.

Yes, she seemed completely unprepared last night for all the criticism that’s being leveled against her…

Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job? She is the mother of five children, one of them a four-month-old with Down Syndrome. Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make? I’m the mother of only one child, a special needs child who is grown now. I know how much of my time and energy I devoted to his care. He always had to be my first priority. Of course women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I’ve done both. Yes, other women in public office have children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children, but she didn’t get heavily involved in politics until they were older. A mother’s role is different from a father’s.

I dealt with this issue squarely in my previous post. I’ll just repeat that it’s so nice that Quinn puts everyone else in her own shoes. She seems incapable of putting herself in others’ shoes. No wonder she didn’t last in her big break on TV… No one else gets credit for anything that Quinn couldn’t accomplish on her own.

Additionally, she closes the above with A mother’s role is different from a father’s. Indeed. However, what happens when there isn’t a mother in the picture? Joe Biden lived through a tragic ordeal when his wife and daughter died in a car accident. As a single parent, was he irresponsible for continuing his political career? Obviously not! I wonder whether Quinn understands that…

These are dangerous and trying times for the entire world. This is no time to to play gender politics. The stakes are too high. And given McCain’s age and history of health issues, the stakes for choosing a qualified vice presidential candidate have never been higher.

Agreed. So, stop playing gender politics. All of Quinn’s reasons (except for the experience one, which is a red herring because of Obama’s lack of experience) have to do with the fact that Palin is a woman. Don’t blame McCain for seeing beyond Palin’s gender, when Quinn, a woman, can’t, due to her own past failings…

Maybe this will work. Maybe McCain will win with Sarah Palin as his running mate. But if he does, it will be for all the wrong reasons.

And, let’s not forget, it won’t mean that his judgment was good. He will have gotten lucky. I predict that Sally Quinn will become the number one poker player in the world, since she can see into the mind and soul of men, and know exactly what they are thinking and why. It’s a very special talent, that could be better put to use at the poker tables, than in a respected newspaper…