Rant: Gov. Sarah Palin

The more that I read about Gov. Sarah Palin, the more annoyed and disturbed I am about the vetting process and her own personality, which is doing much, much more to push me over to the Democratic side of the ticket than anything else this year. One of the clinchers is an article published yesterday on the New York Times: Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes. The article goes on to look at how Palin has hired people once elected into office, with a number of friends and classmates filling top-tier positions. That doesn't bother me so much as much as this segment:

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

The blog entry in questions seems to be this one.

Honestly, I think she's a bit of a twit, and I'm more than a little worried about the fact that being a "Hockey Mom" is being considered far more qualifying than any sort of foreign policy or legislative expertise. Granted, while Sen. Barack Obama is certainly not as experienced as other candidates, he's backing himself up with a lot in his choice of Sen. Joe Biden. Although, as someone that I know said a couple weeks ago: "Experience apparently doesn't matter. We've had two fairly experienced politicians in the White House for the past eight years, and look what that's gotten us." The extreme mudslinging on both sides over this issue doesn't seem to really help things.

What is really bothering me is that Gov. Palin is supposed to fill in the gap left behind by Sen. Hillary Clinton's failure to get the top and second slots on the democratic ticket, as well as sooth many of the ruffled feathers that Sen. McCain has left with some of the more dedicated Republican supporters, which will make this race even closer than before.

The hubbub over Gov. Palin's child, or grandchild, as it turns out, doesn't bother me in the slightest. What is really frightening is that the people vetting her for the postition didn't know, which makes me question their judgement and motivations for selecting her for the VP slot. To me, this seems like a rush descision - with Clinton out, they saw a slot that needed to be filled, and as such, Palin is only in play to fill the void. This suggests that a McCain administration would be very, very reactionary, without thinking things through. While the VP honestly doesn't do much, and she's clearly here only to gain that chunk of people that the Democrats have isolated, putting a person in that postition for a limited and narrow purpose is downright frightening, especially given McCain's advanced age (72).

Guh!