I may be biased but I think it is an unwarranted insult to compare anyone sane to Sarah Palin. Was Palin more qualified to be vice-president than Caroline Kennedy is to be a U.S. Senator? To assess that, it isn’t that useful to look at their political resumes. Yes, Palin has been elected as Mayor and Governor, while Kennedy has not. But, take any issue you want…finance, foreign relations, health, environmental regulation, education…and imagine that you have to turn in a 30-page term paper on that issue. Who would you rather write that paper for you, Palin or Kennedy?
This may be a rudimentary way of judging candidates for office, but it is pretty solid. Take any two candidates and ask the same question. In almost every case, the more qualified candidate is the one you intuitively know has a better grasp of the issues.
Now, sometimes the more qualified candidate espouses political views you find abhorrent. In those cases, up to a point, you may prefer the less qualified representative. In other cases, the more qualified candidate is so politically inept that they have no chance of winning (or holding) the seat. But, in the vast majority of cases, you’re better off judging qualifications and merit by an assessment of a candidate’s working knowledge of the issues. Caroline Kennedy doesn’t provide the same starbursts as Palin, but she is surely more qualified to be a legislator or an executive. That’s due to the fact that Kennedy is educated, understands basic science, and isn’t a ditz.
Palin is queen of the ditzers; I can’t imagine her writing a term paper on anything unless it was prepping for a beauty contest. Only the party of airheads (Republican) could nominate such a one for national office. Face it, The GOP is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Oh yah that Caroline Kennedy, let me tell ya she is one heckuva lady, but she, oh I don’t know, she doesn’t have that certain jen-aw-say-qua that you need in a real leader, nope, you betcha. What we need is a real maverick, an everyday Joe kinda person who just, oh ya know looks life in the eye and tells it to get busy with its own old self.
and her daughters’ mother-in-law is not a DRUG DEALER!
Not only educated, but an attorney. Getting through law school and passing the bar exam is no small thing.
Trust me when I tell you that getting through law school and passing the bar exam is no guarantee of non-ditzitude. I have worked with literally hundreds of attorneys, and believe me some of them have been unbelievably ditzy. You wonder how they managed to find their way to class and home again. Fortunately for clients, most of that sort do not end up, or at least do not last long in a courtroom and end up doing more routine, formulaic kinds of work.
I am an attorney, admitted in New York State, the same jurisdiction where Kennedy is admitted. By and large, the attorneys I encounter are a very shrewd lot. Law school is not an undertaking for the faint of heart.
I didn’t say they were faint of heart, I said some of them are way ditzy.
As I said, the ditzy ones don’t make it very far up the ladder, and they don’t end up doing things that require a lot of thinking.
And I have worked with lawyers whose personal judgment was beyond bad – like the junior associate who, during the anthrax scare, instructed her secretary that from then on she was to open all her mail for her to make sure there was no anthrax in it. And yes, she was dead serious and had absolutely no clue that anything was wrong with that request. And yes, she was in general a complete ditz. We often wondered how she had managed to successfully get through law school.
And some of the ditzy ones I have worked with are like idiot savants – very good at the lawyer-type stuff they do and virtually unable to tie their own shoes.
And of course I am talking about a small minority. Most lawyers are far from ditzy.
Regardless, your first point was correct. There is no comparison between Sarah Palin and Caroline Kennedy.
That part’s the ultimate no-brainer!
There are qualifications? Coulda fooled me.
Caroline Kennedy can put words together in a manner that expresses a clear and coherent thought. This alone puts her in a completely different league than Palin, who only sounds coherent when she is reading someone else’s words from a teleprompter.