Monday, November 17, 2008

Sarah! Take Dr. Krauthammer's advice.

"Mrs. Palin needs to go back to Alaska for two years and read everything she can (paraphrased)." Charles Krauthammer on Fox News--last week.


Dr. Krauthammer brings up a point which bears her attention, if Governor Sarah Palin wants to be president of the United States. I believe she needs to do as he suggests, and give herself over to the scholarship of international policy and leadership. Leaders are indeed born, but most success depends on knowledge of the subject matter, not luck and personality.

It may take three or four hours a day of nothing but reading think tank white papers and gobbledygook about Persian history or about the background of Poland and Russia's relationship over the past few years. She needs to know where the Fifth Fleet hangs out. She has to read Janes; she's got to see the German and French papers, Financial Times, Russia Herald everyday; Cato, AEI, American Heritage, Al Jazeera, Mhimi and so many who can give her every morsel she needs.

(How I'd love to be on the readings selections committee.)

Sometimes, just having enough knowledge, even a generalist's one, is enough to spur important questions of her subject matter experts on staff. I know this as an ex technical writer. Every interview I had with a subject matter expert was better facilitated as a result of my own prior research and knowledge of the topic. Its efficiency and success depended upon my preparation.

Her obvious abilities--her intellect, her ability to respond without being defensive, and her confidence will be enhanced and so would her image--especially to women. Sarah should have received more votes from women. I wonder if it really was the abortion issue that stood in their way...or the fact that they just didn't trust her.

It takes one to know one. I'll risk letting out a secret, but most women know that many of us fake life until the day we die. We're just good at it, as a gender, as procreators; thus, our feelings, instincts and actions come from our gut, not always from our cerebral cortexes.

Who else but a woman with five children, including a special needs one, who has worked all her life, raised her children, has run a city, then a state, changed the direction from down to up in an impossibly difficult campaign with John McCain, turned on MSM when she got out of her commitment to McCain--and has recently sent a son off to war--who else could learn the ins and outs of what used to be INACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE?

Palin's power is on the increase; it would behoove her to arm herself, using her best asset--her political skill and instinct--and add to that a body of knowledge that will take her to the top. Her sophistication and knowledge of policy issues will only help her in the long run. We all know she's smart. Now we want her to show it.

One of the reasons Obama won over so many of the elite, which is important--sorry, but it is to a certain degree--is by his acquaintance with varying subjects which came from reading, reading and more reading. Sarah can do this with one kid on her hip, another pulling on her to take her to her cheerleading class, and cooking dinner all at the same time.

Not to mention, she is one great looking women, which never, ever hurts.

Thanks for the read.

2 comments:

Osher Doctorow said...

Great article, Andrea!

I don't quite understand, however, how she rose to be Governor of Alaska and to be selected as V.P. Nominee by McCain if she is as lacking in Good answers as you indicate (and now that I think of it, you're correct, though even quite a few Geniuses would do horribly in televised debates in my opinion).

I think, though, that neither McCain nor Sarah really believed that the USA Public would be Dumb enough to elect an almost totally Inexperienced, Strategy-less, Idea-less Oaf, simply because he had fast answers and put on a good show. He certainly didn't learn anything regarding Strategy or General Relationships between things or ideas from his memorization of details.

I have to repeat my "diagnosis", which really is just my opinion, that the USA Public is exceptionally Dumb - possibly the Dumbest Public in history, and the Public certainly has made us the Dumbest Nation in History via the Election of Obama-Biden.

Osher Doctorow

Osher Doctorow said...

After typing my previous reply, I had some time to think further about the situation, and I have also begun to realize that the McCain-Palin team had a "loaded gun" to their heads in this Election because almost the whole flock of billionaires from Soros to Spielberg to Lucas to Buffett supported Obama, with Soros doing it so actively that he formed many organizations of extremely effective Propagandists.

The Public was trained or conditioned or taught to respond to the word "change" positively and to hate the word "Bush" and to associate McCain and Palin with Bush and with lack of change regardless of what they did or said or their histories.

So I don't think that sending Sarah Palin to school to learn the technicalities of Politics would change the results much in 2012. Soros "proved" something beyond his wildest dreams, that clever-Propaganda money buys votes in a really Dumb nation, period, end of the USA story.

Osher Doctorow