My friend, an unabashed liberal, says she wants a button proclaiming: “I am exclusive, elitist and proud of it!” And she wants to walk into Rush Limbaugh’s radio program while he spews his vituperations against liberals to challenge him to a duel of words about Sarah Palin being a dangerous and cynical choice for vice president. Palin’s folksiness, accent, style, winks and her propensity to scrunch her nose while delivering verbal blows to opponents drive liberals insane.
After eight years of President Bush and Bushisms liberals want smart people at the helm. On the liberal smartness thermometer Sarah Palin registers a minus, close to Mr. Bush or perhaps even worse. Her one on one interview with CBS’s Katie Couric sent the liberal world into a tailspin about her digressions from the topic at hand, her appalling grammar, her incomplete sentences and her inability to expound on matters at which she should be adept, considering she seized the opportunity to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Even if one accepts the argument that Sarah Palin is incompetent, where are the people more competent than she either in government or in business? Am I missing something when I say I don’t see them?
Around us the world, as we know it, is falling apart and the catastrophes have been sown by the brilliant and condescending talents of this country for whom credit default swaps and other such cockamamie inventions are as sublime as art or poetry.
Wall Street’s men and women, accomplished and well-educated calculating machines, unflappable under pressure, the cream of the crop from the top schools in America, their mannerisms probably suave, their grammar in all likelihood impeccable, made huge commitments based on phantom money, then bet that money into oblivion and with it our retirement investments and savings.
We run into people like this every day: Articulate, clever, coherent and also dangerous. The neo-conservatives who took us into Iraq with nebulous ambitions were brilliant and well spoken. Colin Powell, who made the terrible mistake of telling the United Nations he held convincing evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, is an eloquent man not given to gibberish. The CIA spies who brought our leaders unreliable intelligence about Iraq, I am sure, were picked for their jobs because of their smartness. Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted on doing it his way in Iraq even as matters unraveled over there, thanks to his postwar policies, preened to the press and exuded confidence in his prime. He too is an intelligent man, experienced in the ways of government.
Look at members of Congress, the lawmakers who run this country, who just nationalized Wall Street, acting astounded about the financial fiasco that has come to pass, pretending as though these events were unanticipated, shedding crocodile tears for the wretched on Main Street, telling us they are our saviors when in actual fact their oversight committees slept at the wheel and failed us. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is always well-coifed and well-spoken, Rep. Barney Frank righteously indignant, Sen. Christopher Dodd clever. Words are the strength of these people, and many would call them intelligent.
Yet, as I watch the lives of so many Americans unravel in the vortex of this financial mess and I listen to the amazing excuses and empty promises from our dazed Congress and president, I feel like I am the denizen of a village where the idiots are in charge and Halloween is eternal.
If Sarah Palin is as stupid as the liberals paint her to be, then she should feel right at home in Washington surrounded by birds of a feather. Liberals should not question her readiness to serve. Maybe she bungles her grammar and mangles her sentences but she hasn’t brought Alaska to a state of insolvency. As vice president she couldn’t possibly do worse than the leaders we now have, in government or in business.
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected]
