Response: Why Palin is a problem

    I was dismayed by Mr. Ladner's Sept. 8 op-ed. Because there is no substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is qualified to be on the national ticket for the vice presidency, he resorts to ad hominem attacks, labeling democrats as the "liberal elite" with "an ideology of victimization and anti-establishment self-pity." Yet, at the same time, Mr. Ladner seems to suggest that Palin is the victim who was ruthlessly attacked by the ‘liberal' media and Democrats. As any reasonable person might understand, I became a little perplexed as to why Mr. Ladner accuses Democrats of displaying "perverse hypocrisy" when he both issues personalized attacks and plays the victim.
    It would require a short book to respond to every statement that Ladner takes right out of Karl Rove's play book — from making a not-too-subtle insinuation that Michelle Obama is unpatriotic to somehow saying, by the end of the article, that only Republicans are patriotic because they chanted "USA! USA!" at their convention while democrats chanted "Obama!" (Although if he had watched the DNC, he would know that the Democrats chanted "USA!" plenty. Certainly, Ladner would agree, that saying three letters doesn't demonstrate one's patriotism; only one's actions do.)
    Mr. Ladner parodies the divisive attacks of the Republicans and attempts to rally American against American. Ladner  issues sweeping generalizations about who is more in touch with "ordinary Americans," and he completely avoids the issues and facts. Even though Ladner may not think so, Republicans and Democrats are patriots. However, that is irrelevant in terms of how one decides to cast his or her vote in the presidential election.
    As Sen. Obama said at the Democratic convention, "enough!" This country has had enough of presidential elections centered on superficial aspects of the candidates and their lives rather than the issues. Rather than make sweeping generalizations about how Gov. Palin is more "in touch with ordinary Americans," it would have been more useful for the student body if Mr. Ladner had argued that the McCain-Palin policies are stronger than those of Obama-Biden.
    What is really disturbing is the little time that Senator McCain spent on vetting Gov. Palin. What does it show about McCain's management style that he evidently chose Palin to woo potential disaffected Clinton supporters and to pull the attention of the media away from the DNC? It is clear that Sen. Joe Biden is ready to be president, and after Sen. Barack Obama served eight years as a state senator, three-and-a-half years in the U.S. Senate (more experience than Abraham Lincoln had when he was elected president) and a year-and-a-half of vetting by the national media, it is clear Sen. Obama has the necessary credentials to be president.
    The same cannot be said of Gov. Palin, who served less than two years as governor of Alaska and served two terms as mayor of Wasilla (1996-02). While she was mayor, the population of the town, according to the 2000 Census, was about 5,470, or in other words, the size of the undergraduate population at Tufts University. Because about a third of the population is under 18, it actually has a smaller voting population than Tufts.
    Sarah Palin has never dealt with national issues or foreign policy. Her entire speech at the RNC was written by George W. Bush's speech writer Matthew Scully. She certainly can read speeches with style, but there's no content, and Americans deserve something better than the last eight years of Bush politics flowing out of Sarah Palin's mouth. No solutions at the RNC were presented to solve people's problems; only venomous attacks on Obama were issued. What the McCain campaign should be discussing is how it is going to improve the economy, what foreign policy it plans to enforce and how a McCain administration would confront the healthcare crisis.
    Additionally, why did McCain choose a vice presidential candidate who, in July, responded to a question posed by Larry Kudlow from CNBC in this manner: "As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day."
    Recently, the McCain-Palin campaign has been trying to promote this phenomenon that he is in fact the "change candidate." One only needs to look at the McCain-Palin records and who runs their campaign (Washington lobbyists) to understand that this is completely false. McCain voted Republican more than 90 percent of the time over the last eight years ... a real "maverick." As mayor, Palin hired a lobbyist for $27 million and, according to Fox News' Chris Wallace, hardly a "liberal" newscaster, asked for $589 million in earmarks as governor. In fact, Alaska got "more federal money for pork-barrel projects per capita than any state in the country." McCain's campaign itself is run by lobbyists.
    One former lobbyist, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, said just a few days ago that "This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." Let's make sure that we do pay attention to the issues and not get drawn in by the Rick Davis or Matthew Ladner tactics. Let's make sure to talk about the issues of the day.


Ethan Hochheiser is a junior majoring in international relations. He is also the co-head of Tufts Students for Barack Obama.