Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took questions with her running mate Wednesday night, offering at one point to play "stump the candidate" with a mostly friendly Michigan crowd.
Asked for "specific skills" she could cite to rebut critics who question her grasp of international affairs, she replied, "I am prepared."
"I have that confidence. I have that readiness," Palin said. "And if you want specifics with specific policies or countries, you can go ahead and ask me. You can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to. But we are ready to serve."
GOP presidential nominee John McCain stepped in, pointing out that as governor of a state that is oil and gas plentiful, Palin was familiar with energy. She knows it to be "one of our great national security challenges," he said.
You know, I've done a fair number of job interviews over the last few weeks; interviews for jobs that are a lot less important than being one melanoma away from the presidency. And if I had answered questions about my specific skills with the response "I am prepared...I have that confidence, I have that readiness...you can play 'stump the candidate' if you want to...but [I] am ready to serve," I would have been laughed right out of every office in which I presented that as my qualification for the job.
It's not that I believe you need every qualification in a laundry list of hard skills in order to be able to do a job. What I ran into while plowing through ads for Web development jobs was lists of 20 or so skills all of which were mandatory and all of which are virtually impossible to find in one person. Many of these jobs, I believe, didn't actually exist but were posted for the sole purpose of not finding anyone qualified so the function could be outsourced. Because very few people are ace C# and J2EE programmers AND have a vast portfolio of creative web and print and logo designs.
But the two highest offices in the country aren't like that. Of course no one has experience in being President, and the "Executive" branch is different from the "executive" experience one has running a corporation, or even as governor.
But what IS required of a President or Vice-President, is the ability to think, to evaluate options and choose the best ones based on the available factual information. The mere fact that Sarah Palin is a Biblical literalist who thinks she knows the mind of God would disqualify her as far as I'm concerned.
But what's coming across the longer she is in the public eye is a ferociously ambitious person who doesn't care who she steps on as long as she gets what she wants. She's prepared to reward richly those who are loyal to her, who defer to her and who help her on that road -- and she's prepared to administer the tortures of the damned to those who don't. She's just like George W. Bush that way. But even more frightening is her casual dismissal of concerns about her ignorance and her incuriosity, so evident in her sneer and sigh when asked about the Bush Doctrine, before biting off the words, "In what respect, Charlie?" -- as if Charlie Gibson were the ignorant student and SHE was the all-wise teacher. It's the arrogance of the entitled -- of the football team captain, the head cheerleader, the beauty queen, the high school Mean Girl Alpha Dogs who believe it their right to torment those less blessed than they.
In the real world, when you're interviewing for a job, you have to provide answers to questions about things you've done, and the interviewers evaluate how well they translate to the position for which they're looking to hire. In the interview for the job I start later this month, I was asked a number of "Have you done...." questions where the true answer is "No." Where there was something I had done that was related, I would say "But in this situation, I did...." That's a far cry from claiming that you're a Russia expert because there are places in your home state where you can see Russia, or that you're prepared to handle Middle East policy becuase you're "confident" and that tough questions are simply an attempt to play "stump the candidate" instead of trying to get a handle on just how qualified the person is for the job.
I'm going to be just one person in a large company. Sarah Palin, if elected, is going to be one melanoma away from being the most powerful person in the world. Isn't she obligated to provide intelligent answers to some questions as she is interviewed for that job?
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