The Palin Divide (and what I can't wait for in 2012)

I'd venture to guess that the divide over Palin in the GOP is related to education. The Nascar Dads want to nail her and the hockey/football/bull riding moms want to be her, while the think-tank and journalist elitists don't think she is qualified. I'd hate to be another elitist, but Fareed Zakaria hit the nail on the head with Palin: 

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

I think that sounds about right. Admittedly my standards have dropped drastically over the last 8 years, but I don't think Palin is necessarily mentally uncapable of being president (per the job description of vice-president). If she had grown up in normalish area and been surrounded by some kind of intellectual establishment (even without participating in it), I think that she would have enough of a grasp of what was going on in the world for the elitists to feel more comfortable. Consider this: how would Bush's grasp of the world been if he had grown up in the backwoods of Mississippi and didn't have the family resume to land himself spots at Yale and Harvard Business School? I mean, Bush in 2000 was still pretty bad, but it wasn't a total national embarrassment. Palin's problem is that she is a stubborn Alaskan and had (up until the nomination) no interest in concerns outside Alaska. And to throw her out in the national spotlight with a VP pick? What the hell was McCain thinking?

As for the social conservatives who idolize her: the Palin family is essentially redneck royalty. Sarah is a hot mom. They brave the Alaskan chills to go moose hunting, fishing. Todd Palin is some kind of snowmobile race champion. They have tons of kids.  One kid got knocked up, baby forthcoming. They hate abortions. They hate liberals. They love small towns. Todd had some kind of involvement in a successionist party, although an admitted downer that it didn't involve some kind of gratutious overuse of the confederate flag.

So in this sense it is natural for them to become fixated with her. And these people constitute the base of the Republican party. Which leads me to my next point: assuming Obama wins this election (which looks damn likely), who here can't wait for.....

THE 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES!!! Seriously, this will be amazing! I have a strong feeling she will make a run -- Palin has the arrogance to think she belongs in the top spot in conjunction with the strong support of the raw GOP base and her rabid Obama hatred. What other cast members can we assume will be there? Mitt Romney, of course. He wouldn't miss the chance to be president unless Obama ends up being too popular, in which case he will wait until 2016. Huckabee? You bet he will be there. Ron Paul of course (though is age an issue with this guy yet?). Guiliani? Most probably, again hinging on Obama's popularity.

The outcome? The top Republicans will be forced to take on Palin and finally admit, assert, and explain that they think she is unqualified. Easy you say? This will not be the same Palin. Oh no, she will be immersing herself in national politics, actually reading the papers to see what goes on in the world. She will have an opinion to articulate. 

Imagine that. Palin 2.0, the GOP's worse nightmare: a complete trainwreck as a candidate but carrying a false image of electability based on her fervent conservative following.

What exactly killed the economy?

Well? 

OBAMA: the economy has tanked because of a lack of a proper financial regulation framework. Bush and Co stripped the market of essential regulations in the 2000's, and everything spilled over into a chaotic unsustainable lending crisis. I heard something on NPR about the lifting of rules against depository banks (i.e., the ones typical Americans use to hold their checking accounts) operating in the securities markets; probably a part of the deregulation puzzle. Obama also vaguely states that we have a 20th Century regulatory framework for a 21st Century financial market. What this means beyond re-instituting the pre-Bush financial controls, I don't know.

McCAIN: the "greed and corruption on Wall Street" caused this mess. OK, I understand that this is just a sort of an obscure way of also saying regulation is needed, but he obviously used this form to obfuscate any connection between the deregulation he and Bush supported in the past few years. More importantly, it is just a stupid statement. Of course there is greed on Wall Street. It is fucking Wall Street for Christ's sake. Corruption? I guess if you mean the whole golden parachute thing, but these guys were given these golden parachutes by their board of directors or whomever. And even if the board was in cahoots with these CEOs, the god damn stockholders should have given them the boot if they deemed it so inappropriate -- am I to believe that they couldn't find their officers compensation packages? Corporate structure might mean that there is less need to monitor, but it doesn't mean that stockholders should cease monitoring their companies altogether. I agree that there are places where the market fails, but it doesn't strike me that CEO compensation packages is one of them.

Ron Paul: the government killed it. The crux of his argument is that the Federal Reserve (Fed) manipulates interest rates below what the market should be able to sustain:

When interest rates are lowered to below what the market rate would normally be, as the Federal Reserve has done numerous times throughout this decade, it becomes much cheaper to borrow money. Longer-term and more capital-intensive projects, projects that would be unprofitable at a high interest rate, suddenly become profitable.

Because the boom comes about from an increase in the supply of money and not from demand from consumers, the result is malinvestment, a misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand.

I know Ron Paul is supposed to be this character on the fringe, but his explanation makes so much more sense to me than either of the candidates. Obama just vaguely talks about regulations and the market having been let "run wild." McCain talks about greed, corruption, golden parachutes.

OK, look, this obviously hinges on your political ideology. And while I might not agree with Obama that regulation is always the answer, I do expect more from him to convince me that he is right (I get the feeling that it's just too damn easy for him to ride in to the presidency on the wave of sewage created by the Bushites). As for McCain...  I can't take his arguments seriously in this form, and nor should anyone. 

I don't have an expert's grasp on economics, but the simplicity, poignancy and transparency of Ron Paul's stance on the economy are hard to set aside. So what next? Do we grab our sledgehammers and head over to the Federal Reserve, smashing through block-by-block in a photo-friendly revolution?

Probably not. My feeling is that the size of the federal government is simply to large to have an unregulated, decentralized financial market. If we take Paul's free-market economics to heart, then we shouldn't care about market crashes -- they are simply correcting measures. But a machine the size of the government probably can't feed itself with that kind of instability. Regulations are here to stay as long as the government is this big. But it is some guidance when thinking where we should take the future.

Palin VP comments in debate

I noticed that a lot of commentators in the post-debate analysis were flaming Palin for stating that she would like to see a more expansive role for the VP in the government:

"I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are....

"Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. "

Ok. Ignore the fact that the only flexibility I've known the Constitution gives the the VP is that its job description is incredibly simple and vacant. 

I can see why this kind of statement on its face is scary when we are living in the shadow of Cheney. But I don't think that this is some kind of deliberate attempt to try to grab power for herself. I see it just as a way of communicating that she is ready for real executive experience. 

We all know that the VP position should primarily be a ceremonial position except where the President wants to include the VP on X-Y-Z policy. Palin just wants to show her "inner pitbull" determination and fluff her feathers. 

I wouldn't be worried about her as Cheney-esque VP. No one should think she has the capabilities to pull strings like Cheney. 

Welcome to my blog

Hi there.

 I created this blog to more or less act like a diary for my thoughts as they come through. It will mostly consist of political, legal and economic discussions. Feel free to enjoy or feel free to flame. 

-N