The rather genial Democrats on the discussion site on which I normally post are having a lot of fun sneering at Sarah Palin. She can't name the newspapers she reads, she can't cite more than one Supreme Court case. (For what it's worth, I can't name a newspaper I read, either, since the Internet began to flourish - I check various sites.) But it seems to me this is the wrong time for various credentialed types to be jibing in this way, what with the nation and world in a furor over the threat to the financial system brought on by the Best and Brightest, following five years of uproar over a war based on the reasoning and values of a different set of Best and Brightest. Condescension just doesn't feel right.
This suspicion of credentialism leads me to a thought experiment. What would the last eight years of the Presidency have looked like if Sarah Palin had been in office? Let's take the financial crisis first.
(1) Wall Street. I am not going to suggest that Sarah Palin would have brought some magical insight into the coming storm. But it is the fact that storm warnings were issued constantly. The problem was not that Congress or the White House was not aware of potential problems in the home morgage industry. The difficulty was point of emphasis. Moreover, it is difficult for anyone, no matter what the bacjground, to stand up against the sheer weight of supposedly informed opinion when so much money is at stake.
But how could she have done worse? Sarah Palin has a good record of resisting intimidation, whether from pipeline consortiums or the Republican establishment. It is more than a little possible that a mother of four, with her varied, middle class experience, and no stake at all in the Establishment might just have brought Trumanesque insight to the situation. She might have looked at the towering pyramid of debt, and the bewildering array of debt instruments, and thought, something is wrong here. I don't know what it is, but something is wrong. She might have given some thought to the people at the base of the pyramid, the nurses, firefighters/policemen, grocery clerks, paramedics, and so on, who want nothing more than to buy a home. She might have been more interested in their ambitions than those of hedge fund managers.
Just as a reminder, these issues were before the three other candidates on the ticket. Let's throw in Hillary Clinton for good measure. McCain at least cosponsored a reform bill in 2005, though it was not a major item. The others did nothing. It is not unreasonable to wonder if President Palin wouldn't have done a little better. Obama from Harvard, Clinton from Yale, Biden a member of the bar amd four-term Senator - it is not like any of them burned up the track here.
(2) Iraq. This one is a little 'iffier'. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have a lot more sympathy for this decision than most. However, I am not debating the rights and wrongs of the Iraq War here. I do think it is safe to assume that, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 any President - and I am including Clinton and Carter - would have considered some use of American force to alter the status quo in the Middle East. Other terrorist acts were considered inevitable. If you think about the position of the Chief Executive, he or she would be haunted by that possibility - of having to face the American people after another atrocity, when something could have been done, and nothing had been. So it is a fair bet that President Palin would have done something - just what I don't know.
Maybe it would not have been Iraq. Maybe President Palin would have been just dumb enough, unlike the Yalie in the White House, to wonder about the collective wisdom of all that intelligence that showed weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps she would not have been as impressed with the thinking of all those Ph D's from Chicago, who definitely read a lot of newspapers and know Supreme Court cases. Perhaps she would have made her own down-and-dirty calculation of risks and rewards, and demanded a different calculation of options. Or, if she did decide on Iraq, she might have assigned reasons that were a little more far reaching than simply the search for weapons.
This last is the main point. Whatever her decisions, I am next to certain that President Palin would have done an infinitely better job of explaining them to the American people and the world than the present, Andover-and-Yale educated incumbent. Almost for sure, she would articulate the reasons for whatever action she chose, in terms that the public could understand, if not completely accept. I doubt very much she would retreat into the White House and leave the public debate to go on without her. The presidency of George Bush is going to take a long time to assess - but one conclusion I think can be fairly reached right now, is that his inability and/or unwillingness to explain himself has resulted in a truly, dismal, one-sided public dialog. It is a failing that might even rise to the level of a tragic fault.
So the disdain of the Best and Brightest seems to me completely misplaced, given the issues that face the nation. (By the way, one of my constant readers took me to task for the Kleptocrats piece, claiming I was exhibiting class prejudice. Well, I did not mean that in a moral sense. I intended to make the same point that David Halberstam did when he entitled his classic book on the Vietnam War 'The Best and the Brightest', meaning that this calamity has been visited on us BY the Establishment, the most privileged and credentialed persons in our society - who have also been hugely enriched as a result.)
I don't know whether President Palin would have done better. But it is doubtful she would have done much worse. This is hardly the appropriate moment to be contemptuous of what is clearly a lively and active intelligence.
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