There was a time, way back before innocence died, when George W. Bush looked into Vlad Putin's eyes and saw his soul, somewhere down there along with the yellowcake he saw in Niger and the mobile biological weapons factories he saw in Iraq. We judge the character of presidents, after all, by the way they judge the character of others. Whether they pal around with terrorists, for example.
And so it is that we look similarly at presidential contenders, and their choices of pallsers-around. John McCain, in that context, comes to mind not only because he was the choice of a once-credible and still-major political party to assume the reins of power, but also because he remains the most sought-after voice by our media in their never-ending commitment to providing our citizens with the information they need from the best sources possible. So should we also consider the significance of the fact that that same fount of foreign policy wisdom sought to perpetrate upon us the least qualified, most poorly informed, most diseducated and dishonest charlatan and conperson ever to receive a vice-presidential nod. Convinced himself that she was just the ticket; or shamelessly shed what little remained of his honor, in the pursuit of power and ego. Dan Quayle? Thomas Jefferson Winston Churchill by comparison.
... “There’s some sort of unofficial birthday/Iron Dog-type/snowmachine party in Anchorage. A nice, mellow party, until the Palins show up,” Coyne wrote. “There’s beer, of course, and maybe other things. Which is all fine, but just about the time when some people might have had one too many, a Track Palin stumbles out of a stretch Hummer, and immediately spots an ex-boyfriend of Willow’s. Track isn’t happy with this guy, the story goes. There’s words, and more.”
“The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he hadn’t,” Coyne continued. “At this point, he’s up against nearly the whole Palin tribe: Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah screams, ‘Don’t you know who I am!’ And it was particularly wonderful when someone in the crowd screamed back, ‘This isn’t some damned Hillbilly reality show!’”
“No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska comes knocking. As people were leaving in a cab, Track was seen on the street, shirtless, flipping people off, with Sarah right behind him, and Todd somewhere in the foreground, tending to his bloody nose,” she concluded...I'm not so naive as to think this incident would do anything but enhance Ms Palin's (any and all of the Ms-s Palin) cred with the baggiest of our teabagging Americans. But to those remaining conservatives able to recall -- and long for -- the days of intellectual rigor, one would hope that -- assuming they swallowed hard and pulled the lever or punched the chad anyway -- they might shudder in some mortifying combination of relief and shame. And work to bring their party back to one that valued people who knew what they were talking about and who considered open-hearted discourse a part of the process. Instead of whatever it is that Palin and McCain have come to be. Or, at least regarding the moose-huntress, always were.
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