Sarah In this section, MFP explains why Sarah Palin is the best choice to lead our nation right now, and for the future.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Sarah Palin:  Experience that Matters BEFORE Day One

by Garret A. Hobart

Sarah Palin has experience that will matter before Inauguration Day.  Once the election is won, the winning team starts the all-important transition period, working with the administration in power so that the new administration can hit the ground running on Inauguration Day.  As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has already presided over a successful transition of executive power.  Her experience in that successful transition will prove invaluable as the McCain-Pain team begin to put the new administration in place starting, believe it or not, on November 5, 2008.

As we speak, thousands of department heads and managers in the federal government are preparing for a little-discussed facet of our system of governance:  The Transition.  The Transition takes place between Election Day and Inauguration Day.  During the Transition, the administration holding power peacefully and lawfully hands over the reins of the federal government to his successor.  The voluntary and peaceful transfer of power was an American invention.  It distinguishes us from those governments that came before us, and from many that exist on the planet today.

The Transition is especially important now because we are in a state of war both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  Our national security risk remains heightened.  A transition has to proceed in a timely manner and an effective manner in order to protect the homeland.

Sarah Palin brings a lot to the table.  She has already overseen an effective transition of power in Alaska.  Gov. Palin moved quickly and decisively after her 2006 election.  By the end of November 2006, she had chosen her top cabinet nominees.  And she did something unusual for an Alaska governor-elect:  She did not place a prominent member of the oil industry on the transition team.  Gov. Palin successfully moved from Governor-elect to Governor, and has been reforming Alaska ever since.

Governor Palin and Big Mac have chosen Walter Timmons, the chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company and a Washington icon.  Timmons has experience - He assisted the successful Reagan and Bush 43 transitions.  Mr. Timmons knows that a successful transition means more than ambitious supporters measuring the windows for new drapes in their fancy offices.

The transition team runs very deep.  Two key McCain-Palin supporters authored the bi-partisan 2000 Presidential Transition Act.  Former Senator Fred D. Thomspson (R-Tenn) and current Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) saw and acted on the need to create a more firm legal foundation for a presidential transition.  Senator Thompson observed:  “There are only 73 days from election day to inauguration day.  Transition planning should begin prior to election day.  The President-elect should have the ability to move immediately to put a new team in place.” Senator Liebermann was concerned that due to new and updated security concerns, an effective transition would take ten months past Inauguration Day.  (Note:  Ten months is approximately 21% of a full term)

In a post-9/11 world, security concerns are paramount.  Without an effective transition, the nation is vulnerable in the weeks and months after Inauguration Day unless there is an effective transition.  You may recall that the early days of the Clinton Adminstration were a disaster.  The administration was rudderless and disorganized.  When an early foreign policy crisis appeared in Haiti, the administration acted like a multi-headed deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.  Jimmy Carter had to bail the Clinton Administration out in Haiti.  Jimmy Carter!

The McCain-Palin team is the transition team we can rely on to protect us.  With Big Mac’s foreign policy expertise and proven leadership in fighting terrorism, the nation can rest assured that the McCain-Plain team will place the proper priority on security.  With Gov. Palin’s proven success in leading her own gubernatorial transition, you have a bonus:  A Vice President with actual executive experience!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Fred:  Sarah is Qualified!

by Charles W. Fairbanks

Senator Fred Thompson is the leading voice of the less government conservative movement.  He is revered by Republicans from sea to shining sea.  Fred lent his full-throated support to Big Mac and Sarah at the Republican convention, and has recently penned a very strong opinion piece arguing that Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President TODAY.  The full text of the message follows:

The words of Hon. Fred Dalton Thomspon:

“When John McCain selected Governor Sarah Palin, as his running mate, the Democrats and their far-left constituency let out a primal scream that could be heard from sea to shining sea. How dare he choose someone that they and their pals in the media had not had a chance to vet (i.e. libel, slander, and otherwise and otherwise eviscerate). Ah, but it was not too late. These seekers of “a new kind of politics” poured torrents of malicious abuse upon her and her family.

Plane loads of scandal mongers, lawyers and other truth seekers became more numerous in Alaska than the polar bear, as they rallied local Democrats and disgruntled Republicans to their cause.

Here was a woman who chose to have children and a career. Aging Washington socialites weighed in with newly discovered sensitivity for mothers with careers outside the home. Here was a woman who became upset because her ex-brother-in-law had tasered her nephew and threatened her father. The Democrats and their friends had to save the country from a woman like this.

Governor Palin’s every comment was scrutinized by the media and judged against what Jefferson or Lincoln might have said. Never mind that her counterpart, the 30-year-Washington-veteran Joe Biden, apparently is unaware that America relies upon coal for a lot of it’s electricity or that he recently referred to a top level U.S. official’s visit to Iran that never happened. That’s just Joe being Joe – protected by the sheer number of his gaffes and the fact that he is Barack Obama’s running mate.

For a while there it seems the fact that so many uninformed yahoos (average people) love her was going to drive the main stream media nuts. They had a hard time grasping the fact that people like her because she is precisely the kind of politician that everyone has been saying they’ve wanted: Independent, not a captive of the Beltway including a Congress with a 9% approval rating, who will take on hacks of either party; who has the tenacity to win and the courage to fight for the long-term benefit of those she represents.

Apparently what no one counted on was that a politician like this would actually show up on the national scene. The media was caught by surprise. The media doesn’t like surprises.

Naturally, there was a backlash to the treatment of Governor Palin and cooler-headed critics have largely concentrated on what they claim is her lack of qualifications. Of course much of the criticism of her qualifications reveals the application of the same old double standard. Less accomplished governors in times past have been considered to be perfectly “well-qualified” as VP picks.

However, it is a legitimate issue and should be taken seriously. I especially take seriously the criticism of people such as New York Times columnist David Brooks who I consider to be an insightful analyst of the political scene.

He recently wrote that governance is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all it requires prudence. What is prudence? Among other things, it is the ability to absorb information and discern the essential current of events – the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and to understand which arguments have the most weight. How is prudence acquired? Through experience. Experience allows a leader to judge what is important and what is not. He added, “Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter.”

One can hardly disagree with the desirability of our leaders having the qualities that Brooks describes (putting aside the question of how many of our leaders who are not Sarah Palin have demonstrated these qualities). But there are other important qualifications, such as will, courage, and determination. Frankly, an infusion of these qualities into our body politic is desperately needed – not just to raise hell with the establishment, but to speak the hard truth about unpleasant choices facing our country. To push for choices that will, in the long term, benefit our country, our children and our grandchildren. In other words, things which “prudent” leaders are all too often reluctant to do.

For many years we have failed to address looming problems that will prove catastrophic to our nation. It’s not because we are bereft of leaders with great experience. And it is not because they do not understand the “essential current of events.” They know these things all too well. It is because they do not have the political courage to do anything about it.

Recently, a Washington Post editorial pointed out that even before the recent financial crisis on Wall Street, the Government Accountability Office issued a report declaring the federal government on an “unsustainable long term fiscal path.” This was primarily due to the projected cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, brought on by an aging population. We will be spending $41 trillion dollars more on these entitlements in the next 75 years than we will receive in payroll taxes and premiums, although the crunch will actually begin much sooner than that. And we already owe Japan and China about $500 billion each.

David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States calls this problem much larger than the recent financial rescue plan. In fact he calls it the “super sub-prime crisis.” Which bring me to the current sub-prime crisis.

Wall Street and Washington were full of people who were “qualified and experienced” in the field of finance. Sen. Barack Obama, for one, has a great deal of experience in the housing field. So do many of his closest advisers. I would have traded some of that experience for a few more leaders with less experience and more courage to buck the establishment and tell the truth about what was happening.

This brings me back to Governor Sarah Palin, and why I say that courage and political will are at the very top of the “qualification” requirements for today’s leaders. So the question is, how does Sarah Palin compare on that score with Biden and Obama, for that matter? Very well, I’d say.”