By By Tray Smith
Over a week since Sarah Palin’s superb performance at the Republican National Convention sent shock waves through the political establishment and turned conventional wisdom on its head, Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign is struggling to find an adequate response.
The Obama campaign’s first reaction was to attack Palin as too inexperienced to be placed a “heartbeat away from the Presidency.” But once the Obama campaign realized Palin’s resume can fill up multiple lines on a standard job application, Obama’s forces pulled back, concluding that a battle over experience is not in their best interest.
Throughout the Republican Convention, Obama avoided directly attacking Palin, and in the convention’s immediate aftermath he tried to refocus the nation’s attention on the Democrats. After that strategy failed, Obama planned to send female Democrats - such as Hillary Clinton - on the campaign trail against Palin. However, Hillary has yet to level an effective strike against Senator McCain’s runningmate, and other prominent Democratic women have avoided the national scene since Palin’s announcement.
Therefore, Obama has been forced to do his own dirty work, and he has leveled a number of blistering criticisms against Palin this week. Such tactics are unprecedented in modern campaign history: the Presidential nominees of both parties typically stick to running against one another and avoid attacking their opponent’s runningmates.
Worse, many of Obama’s criticism’s have been hypocritical, if not blatantly untrue. Obama has repeatedly mocked Palin’s image as a reformer and accused her of misleading the public about terminating Alaska’s infamous “bridge to nowhere.” Several different agencies, including Alaska’s Democratic Party, dispute that assertion and give Palin credit for being an anti-earmark advocate. While Alaska has received many earmarks since Palin became Governor, those earmarks were secured by Alaska’s powerful and corrupt congressional delegation. Alaska’s earmarks pale in comparison to the earmarks Senators Obama and Biden have requested for their states, and most of the earmarks Palin herself has requested have been spent on maintaining programs implemented before she was ever elected.
Now, the Obama campaign is openly depending on the media to discredit Palin’s image, because the media and Obama’s campaign jointly recognize Palin as a charismatic threat to their liberal agenda and Obama’s election. Obama’s campaign has sent a team of 30 lawyers and support personnel to Alaska to dig up smears on Palin, and liberal elements in the media have been questioning Palin’s former church because some of its members occasionally speak in tongues. Ironically, those same liberals refused to question Barack Obama’s relationship with his pastor, who substituted tongues with anti-American and anti-Semitic hate.
By latching on to anything in Palin’s past with the potential to hurt her campaign, liberals have embarked on a disgraceful campaign to deceive the American people. Their goal is to sling enough mud at Palin that some of it will stick, even if the mud they are slinging is a gross mischaracterization. The Obama campaign, specifically, is hoping that Americans well say, “Well, she may have indeed stopped those earmarks. But there are so many questions about her she just cannot be trusted with the Vice Presidency.”
Yet, she can be trusted with the Vice Presidency. Sarah Palin has spent two years as Governor of Alaska, running the government of our country’s largest state. Alaska also has more energy resources than most other states combined, giving Governor Palin a unique insight into the most important issue of this election. Governor Palin may not have spent her entire public career running for President, but she has had experience in small business, in the fishing industry, and in local government. That experience gives her insight into the needs of our country; insight that cannot be gained from community organizing and Presidential campaigns.
In fact, Palin is more qualified to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency than Barack Obama is to be inaugurated to the Presidency. In time, Obama’s chauvinistic assault on Palin will cost him. It might cost him the election.
That’s the bottom line.
Tray Smith is a political columnist for the Atmore Advance. He is a student at Escambia County High School and can be reached at tsmith_90@ hotmail.com.