Author: Dan Kennedy

Obama, Palin and experience

For several days now, I’ve been thinking about the notion that Sarah Palin is just as experienced as Barack Obama — or, for that matter, more experienced, since she’s got executive experience and he doesn’t. I find it ludicrous, so it took me a while to wrap my arms around it.

Though “experience” and “qualifications” are being treated in this campaign as though they are the same thing, they are not. Experience is one of the things you look at — an important thing — in deciding whether someone is qualified. But there are other factors, too.

Let’s stipulate that Obama is less experienced than would be ideal, though I would argue that his years in the legislature of a large industrial state is vastly more relevant than Palin’s time running a tiny town, followed by her cup of coffee as governor. Despite Obama’s lack of experience at the national level, few people in public life today have done more serious reading, thinking and speaking about the wide array of national and international issues that will face the next president.

Thus the question with Obama is whether his deep knowledge of the issues, much of it theoretical and academic, will hold up once he gets slapped in the face by reality. It’s a legitimate concern. Ideally Obama would have run in 2012 or 2016. But politics is never ideal, and he took the risk — a smart risk, in my view — that it was better to run before he was as experienced as he ought to be than become just one of the Washington crowd.

Obama’s qualifications are his experience, his knowledge and his judgment. Voters have been probing those three elements for many months now and have gotten to know quite a lot about him.

Then there is Palin, who was thrust upon the nation less than a week ago. Most of Palin’s experience is virtually identical to chairing the board of selectmen in a small New England town. Sorry, but Obama’s years as a community organizer and as a state legislator, and his short time in the U.S. Senate, are vastly more relevant than Palin’s years as mayor and her brief stint as the governor of state with the population of Boston — a state awash in so much oil money that the only question is how to spend it.

So what about the rest of her qualifications? Her knowledge and her judgment? That’s what we’re all trying to find out now. I’ve made it clear that I think she comes up short on both fronts. There is no evidence that she’s ever given more than superficial thought to any national or international issue other than energy, and I’m not sure how her ideas differ from Obama’s except that she wants to drill, drill, drill. And why not? She thinks the views of the vast majority of the world’s atmospheric scientists — that humans are contributing to global warming — are mere opinions with which she is free to agree or disagree. And she disagrees.

Jon Keller, in his commentary on WBZ Radio (AM 1030) this morning, argued that experience is overrated, and that both Palin and Obama have enough. I don’t quite agree, but I agree with him that that’s not how voters will ultimately make up their minds.

People will vote for the Obama-Biden team or the McCain-Palin team on the basis of issues, values and party identification. In the end, experience is just something to talk about.

At newspapers, the slashing continues

Budget-slashing at newspapers continues, both locally and nationally.

At the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 36 positions are being cut and zoned local editions are being eliminated, according to the Daily Worcesteria, which adds: “This is the journalistic equivalent of bunkering in at the last, strongest point and abandoning the outposts.”

Ironically, the Daily Worcesteria is part of Worcester Magazine, which is shedding positions following an ownership change, reports the, uh, Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The T&G, as you probably know, is owned by the New York Times Co., whose New England Newspaper Group (the T&G, the Boston Globe and Boston.com) suffered a 24.5 percent loss in advertising revenue in July as compared to the same month in 2007.

Things are at least as grim on the North Shore and in the Merrimack Valley, as CNHI, the corporate owner of the Eagle-Tribune papers, announced this week that it is eliminating 52 jobs, writes Boston Herald media reporter Jessica Heslam. The chain comprises the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, the Daily News of Newburyport, the Salem News and the Gloucester Daily Times.

And it’s no better elsewhere. Alan Mutter, who writes the Newsosaur blog, tells us today that newspaper revenues are down $3 billion over the first six months of 2008, bringing revenues to their lowest level in a dozen years.

Even online revenues are slipping, Mutter says, which shows that what’s happening now has as much to do with the economic recession as it does with the stampede from print to the Web.

Private e-mails, public records

According to the Washington Post, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sent e-mails from her private Yahoo account to ask the state public-safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, why her brother-in-law was still working. Monegan, whom Palin fired, showed the e-mails to the Post, but wouldn’t provide copies.

Is it legal under whatever open-access law is in effect in Alaska for the governor to use her private e-mail account while conducting official business? An e-mail from the governor to the public-safety commission could be obtained under a freedom-of-information request in many states. How about Alaska?

I’ve sent an e-mail to the AP’s Larry Campbell, who’s listed as the contact for the Alaska FOI Coalition. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Sarah Palin’s debut

She projected strength but not authority. She made a reasonably good case for herself, but grossly exaggerated her reformist credentials on the “Bridge to Nowhere.” She was charming and well-spoken. Given that no one knows who she is, I suppose she had to go on about her family longer than most politicians would.

Surely Palin had a more difficult task than Joe Biden, who delivered a “B” speech last week. Biden’s been around forever, so no single speech was going to make or break him. Palin, too, turned in a “B” performance, or maybe a “B-plus,” under much more challenging circumstances.

I think Palin established herself as potentially an effective surrogate for John McCain, but she’s got a ways to go before she establishes herself as a credible potential vice president. Is she now going to do the Sunday shows? Hold a press conference? Given the McCain campaign’s blame-the-media strategy, maybe they’ve decided to skip all that.

The speech of the week so far, by the way, was Rudy Giuliani’s.

Exploiting Bristol Palin

Josh Marshall puts forth a provocative argument that I half-agree with: that it’s the McCain campaign, not the media, that has wallowed in Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, while the media have been drilling down on the investigation into Sarah Palin’s firing of the state-police commissioner, her hypocrisy over the “Bridge to Nowhere,” her and her husband’s ties to the wacky Alaskan Independence Party and the like.

I think Marshall is on to something, but it’s not as clear-cut as he makes it sound. I have seen a lot of coverage, nearly all of it stupid and irrelevant, about Bristol Palin, her pregnancy and her self-described “redneck” boyfriend. It’s not all coming from the McCain camp. But the campaign is clearly exploiting it.

Peggy Noonan’s hilarious lie

Read and then listen to Peggy Noonan’s open-mic exchange with Mike Murphy, in which she says the McCain campaign is “over,” and describes the choice of Sarah Palin as “political bullshit.” Then read her lies about what she really meant.

What’s fascinating is that Noonan clearly understands everyone knows she’s lying. So what’s important to her is that she demonstrates her loyalty by lying rather than confessing to the obvious truth.