10 thoughts on “Good Question”

  1. Edwards was more qualified because he projected more intelligence and job-related knowledge, in my opinion, but you probably won’t agree.

    I think the better approach to the question is to grant for the sake of the argument that Palin is more qualified than Edwards and then ask why Edwards was treated differently. You might say it is because the media has a leftward bias. Others will say it is because Palin is a woman. But the real difference (and I know this is the conventional wisdom of the pundits) is this: Edwards, by running for president, got vetted by the public and the press. Palin, as an unknown outside Alaska only a few weeks ago, is getting vetted now. And so far, she hasn’t made it past the vetters.

    Had Palin given a large number of interviews (at, say, the rate Biden gives, or Edwards gave) and she had come across in them as intelligent and knowledgeable to more people, as Edwards did and as Biden does, criticism of Palin would have focused on her ideology or character rather than on her qualifications.

    It really comes down to what strikes people as the most salient. Edwards struck many people as a slimeball right from the start, so even people who thought he was unqualified focused on his slick slimeball ways. Palin’s most salient feature for the majority of people is that she comes across as unprepared, at best, and so her critics (and Tina Fey) focus on her that. You wouldn’t be asking your question about Palin’s qualifications if she hadn’t brought attention to them.

  2. …the real difference (and I know this is the conventional wisdom of the pundits) is this: Edwards, by running for president, got vetted by the public and the press.

    Edwards was never vetted by anyone in the way Sarah Palin was in a month.

    Obama has been running for almost two years, and he still hasn’t been vetted by the press (and hence, can’t have been vetted by the public). Why do you think that is?

  3. Hmmm

    @ Bob

    “Edwards was more qualified because he projected more intelligence and job-related knowledge, in my opinion, but you probably won’t agree.”

    ROFLMAO!

    And less control over his pants.

    Oh yeah. I’ve been using this argument for weeks now and it really irritates my liberal friends.

    And then I point out that if Edwards had been elected VP he’d have to make do with a smaller house than his own one.

    ROFL!

  5. I’m going to try to be a good citizen here for once.

    This really is a case of the assumptions you start out with. The right has it as an article of faith that the MSM is left-biased. I’ll go so far as to say that might have been true 15 years ago, but I don’t think it’s true anymore.

    On the other hand, I can say that the MSM isn’t as left-leaning as I am, because I remember the heyday of run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and there was no critical debate in this country of THAT foreign adventure. I questioned the wisdom of creating our own “West Bank in Mesopotamia”, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with that assessment or not — the only real debate around this issue happened in the foreign press. Period.

    So when it comes to the question of vetting people, I don’t accept the media bias argument. You don’t think the press is right-enough, and I don’t think it’s left-enough. I think vetting has much more to do with the candidate’s time in the national spotlight, however you want to define that. Palin got very little attention until the last month because, we can all agree, Alaska is a backwater nationally, and in any case she wasn’t put on the national stage until she was picked as VP candidate. Edwards had more vetting because he was a presidential candidate before a VP candidate, and in any case senators have more limelight than governors.

    Obama has been vetted. We’ve all been through the Rev. Wright/Ayers/ACORN stuff for months now. There’s nothing more to learn here, folks. You can believe he’s a shady character or not, but there’s no new data upon which to make a decision.

  6. Edwards is prettier and has better hair than Palin. Also he is totally unprincipled, which gets him a media merit badge for nuance and sophistication. And don’t discount his ability to screw around for years and not get called on it publicly. A lot of our elites admire that kind of chutzpah.

  7. Edwards was more qualified because he projected more intelligence and job-related knowledge

    Heh, “That perttie man on t.v. talks better than me… i’ll vote fer him”. Nice qualifications there, Bob.

  8. On the other hand, I can say that the MSM isn’t as left-leaning as I am, because I remember the heyday of run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and there was no critical debate in this country of THAT foreign adventure.

    That’s just a lie. The run-up to Iraq included 16 UN resolutions, 30 UN statements, all over 12 years. That’s just the international debate. The US debate to actually respond to the UN resolutions began in October 1998 with the passage of the “Iraq Liberation Act”, then another vote in October 2002, another election after that, and then a final effort at the UN prior to an invasion in 2003. To believe there was no critical debate about the Iraq War just shows your own ignorance at best.

    Obama has been vetted.

    No. Obama mentioned the work he did with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge last night. Try this, go vet his claims. You can’t. You can’t because access to the CAC’s records are blocked. So you can’t vet him on that subject.

  10. That’s just a lie. The run-up to Iraq included 16 UN resolutions, 30 UN statements, all over 12 years… To believe there was no critical debate about the Iraq War just shows your own ignorance at best.

    Again, I’m going to be respectful of the fact that I’m someone else’s political turf, and just try to make useful conversation.

    But Leland — a UN resolution is not a critical debate. It’s an ultimatum. It doesn’t discuss the wisdom of doing something, it says “if x, then y”. There’s a world of difference between that and discussing whether, say, breaking up Baathist Iraq will cost a trillion dollars 10 years later. THAT discussion didn’t happen here, at least not on a national scale. But you COULD hear it discussed overseas.

    Try this, go vet his claims. You can’t. You can’t because access to the CAC’s records are blocked. So you can’t vet him on that subject.

    Which claims am I vetting? The claim (from the right, incidentally, not from Obama) is that he has some kind of “deep” connection with Ayers, a former terrorist turned college professor. But I don’t think we’ve heard anything new here in months. They served on a board together, with other people — some of them Republicans. What’s the point? Give me a more well-defined charge, and I’ll try to figure out if some record supports it. In the meantime I repeat, I don’t think there’s any new news to make a decision. In the end we — including you — fall back on ideology.

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