Who is the best historical analog to Sarah Palin? Some want you to believe Dan Quayle. Maybe. If she flubs the debate we can start talking like that. I want to put another one forward: Harry Truman.
Truman was a farmer, businessman, county judge (an executive post, not judicial) for about ten years, then elected to the US Senate in 1934. He was selected for the role by Tom Pendergast, a political Boss of Kansas City. Pendergast was convicted for tax evasion in 1939. Truman had a tough reelection fight in 1940 but won when his opponents split the anti Pendergast vote.
The most interesting thing about his Senate career to me is his work with what came to be called the Truman Committee, a group tasked with identifying and eliminating waste and fraud in the war supply effort. The group was wildly popular and saved the war effort 15 billion dollars.
FDR picks Truman and has to convince him to take the job. FDR and his aides knew that he was ill before the election, which made the selection of Truman quite weighty. They win the election, and FDR perishes after 82 days in the term. Truman assumes the office of the president, and by most accounts does a brilliant job in the role, making unpopular choices that are born out by history. Interestingly it is revealed that Truman and FDR spoke exactly twice in the term. Truman came into the presidency totally uninformed about military secrets, including the Manhattan Project.
So here we have a plain spoken man from the heartland, who works as a farmer and a businessman, then enters politics on the local level. He serves 10 years in the Senate, and is plucked to the second highest office in the land.
Is this not similar to the situation Sarah Palin finds herself in? She lives a fairly normal life, gets involved as a local politician, runs for high office and wins (but without a political boss pulling strings), and her acomplishements center around attacking corruption. She is selected for high office by a candidate for the presidency on the eve of the convention. I think it's a remarkably similar story.
Now hopefully no calamity befalls McCain and he serves out his term in good health, leaving this a purely academic discussion.
I think what it underscores is that presidents deliver their value through their judgement. This is not correllated with their time served in other national offices. Let's examine the records of Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin and look for signs of good judgement. All this talk about time served in which office is pointless.
One other note. Apparently Americans are not that impressed by time served in the senate. Not only do the winners not have it, the losers usually do. No president has served in the senate since Nixon.
The losing candidates who were senators: Mondale, Dole, Gore, Kerry
The losing candidates who were not senators: Dukakis, Ford
2 days ago
3 comments:
While Truman is a good example I think her clearest link to a past "surprise" VP pick would be Teddy Roosevelt. He had been a State Leg. and a NYC police Comissioner as his elected offices before the Sp-Am War. He had been appointted an Ast.Sect. of the Navy. Immediately after the war he was elected Gov. of NY and was in his 2nd year in office when he ran on the ticket with McKinley as a little known 42 year old governor.
The only two presidents who were sitting senators at the time of their election were Kennedy and Harding. Nixon had been out of the senate for 16 years when he was elected. By definition that has to change this year.
I think your argument is logical, but Palin was chosen specifically because she has no record upon which to evaluate her judgment. If you uncover any decisions she has made during 17 months as governor of Alaska which provide a window into her insight, let me know. I haven't found any.
Let's not beat around the bush - she has no record and her selection was intended to highlight one and only one example of her judgment - the decision to have her 5th child. This pick was made with the expectation that we'd look at her skimpy record of public service, find nothing, and ultimately evaluate her judgment on the basis of that issue.
And while I agree that there is no real experience that qualifies one to be president, I reel in amazement at the 150 million republicans who didn't buy that for 9 months and suddenly changed their minds 3 days ago. Funny, that.
becky,
great post. when is your book coming out?.
ed,
You must not have examined her record very closely...Wikipedia has a bit of it here. I'm sure there are others.
While I agree that "experience" (what is that exactly?) is bandied about carelessly, Palin accentuates that Obama has little executive experience, because she has more executive experience than the three men (Obama,Biden,McCain) running put together!
I give credit to Obama for using his own background (single mother of 18 birthed and raised him) as grounds for calling off the stories on Palin's daughter. But he does not represent Palin accurately in this article, where he is on the defensive and can only refer to "Gov. Palin" as a small town mayor. How can he call her governor and small town mayor in the same sentence, without referring also to her gubernatorial accomplishments? Oh wait, you couldn't find any accomplishments, so there must not be any...
By the way, would you openly admit to being a political cynic? I find cynicism in all the posts I read from you.
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