Anybody Can Be President?

It’s a beautiful message, that anyone can obtain the highest office in the country and become one of the most powerful and influential people in the world. What is often left off, and seemingly even blocked from admittance this campaign, is the part about earning the position and educating yourself in a way that would allow you to lead. Can anyone really say that when they really think about it that they want just anyone to have access to the Presidency of the United States of America? Can we really afford to have someone who can not even understand a relatively simple position like the Vice President’s, as Palin has demonstrated since she was chosen, reach the far more complex Presidency? Most Americans would agree that we have had a complete dolt in the White House the last eight years and have suffered greatly because of it, but at least President Bush demonstrated that he had a some what solid grasp on the role of the President during his campaign in 2000.

This is a frightening moment, and an insulting one as well. One of the fundamentals of the Republican campaign has been “real small town values.” Who could disagree with that, and if that’s really what they meant then it’d be a completely acceptable statement. The problem comes with the decrying of “elitists” with whom they always seem to identify with intelligence and an ability to carry one’s self as if they had a brain. Indeed the Republican party seems to take pride in its ignorance and lack of “big city learning.” What they fail to realize is that this country was founded by these so called and vilely painted “elitists.” The founding fathers were some of the most well educated people in the world, and very much the city folk that the Republican campaign has been speaking out against. There is a mixed bag of relief and complete terror that comes of this. On the one hand there has been an almost universal outrage at this, from people in cities and universities taking offense to this campaigning strategy to women all around the country feeling as if the choice of Governor Palin as Senator McCain’s Vice President was a personal insult. It’s a useful reaffirmation that the American people aren’t dullards. They are indeed an intelligent and thoughtful people and take exception to having the intelligence and schooling they pride themselves on being talked about like it’s a liability. The scary part comes from the other side, from the people that have blindly jumped upon the bandwagon of “anti-elitism” all the while not realizing that this whole strategy was formulated by incredibly well educated and intelligent people. The same segment of the populace that are willing to go to rallies where there are massive numbers of cameras waiting to pick up on any little sound byte or slip up and shout things like “Terrorist” or “Kill him” about their party’s opposition. One has to wonder what types of numbers these people really have and how dangerous it has been to rally them against intelligence in general. Even their chosen candidate in John McCain is a well educated and intelligent person who would be deemed an “elitist” if he were running for the Democrats. Of course, it’s not a stretch to say that Senator McCain isn’t their candidate.

The true candidate of these people is Governor Palin, who represents the essence of their “folksiness” which really comes off as mediocrity. The problem is that Palin is quickly showing that she will be a prime puppet for the Republican party, unable to think for herself and should she become president in the unfortunate event of Senator McCain being unable to fulfill his duty would give a lot of those people who work through Bush even greater power. Sure, she can deliver memorized campaign points, but every time she has been given difficult questions she has faltered and never recovered. Palin is just not ready for the understudy role the Vice President plays. There are some rumblings that she wasn’t even ready to be governor that may or may not be settled as the investigations against her are finished. The hope is that most people have had enough of drowning in the mediocrity of current leaders, but America over the past decade has slowly been forcefully shaped into a country of mediocrity much to the chagrin of the people. We may be able to once again rise above that with Obama, Biden, or even McCain as president, but Palin is just the anybody that makes the Vice Presidency to close to power for comfort.