Palin's politics smack of failure
Watching Sarah Palin's speech last night was validation that John McCain plans to run his campaign with the same approach used by George W. Bush. He plans to stoke our fears and misrepresent the truth. All the while, they plan to exaggerate the accomplishments of the McCain/Palin ticket. Governor Palin says that she is against congressional earmarks, but she hired a lobbyist to secure them when she was mayor of Wasilla. Governor Palin suggested that she ended the flow of money from Washington to build the Bridge to Nowhere, but she didn't return that money to Washington when the project was cancelled. She was delighted to keep the $300 million in federal money. Governor Palin wants us to believe that she has the executive experience to be vice president, yet as mayor she tried to get books banned from the library and she has used her office in such a way that she is now under investigation for abuse of power. She said that children of special-needs children will have an advocate in the White House, yet she used her power as governor to reduce funding for teenage mothers. I'm not sure that's the advocate with executive experience we want.
And Governor Palin's attacks on Senator Obama were, at best, wild exaggerations, and at worst, lies. To suggest that Senator Obama is more concerned about reading terrorists their rights instead of apprehending them is simply cheap mudslinging. To suggest that Senator Obama is not concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons is a lie as Senator Obama has worked across the aisle on this very issue. Let there be no mistake, Governor Palin's speech tried to drag this election into the sewer.
Finally, for the McCain campaign to suggest that the media is unfairly skewering Sarah Palin is a cheap tactic meant to undermine the critical importance of the press to uncover the truth and sift through the lies and misrepresentations. The accusations that the press is on some liberal agenda is a pathetic trick to try to prevent them from doing their job and exposing her for what she is, a highly inexperienced vice presidential choice.
Governor Palin's speech was more of the same politics of failure that Senator Obama is attempting to change.
Robert M. Sargis
Aurora