I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that has to be me.
That's from a Bill O'Reilly interview.
I am confused not just by the "fact resume," but also by the notion that being as much as possible like the majority of Americans is a special qualification for leadership. She has "common sense" (a quality defined by its commonality); she has values reflective of those that other Americans have; she had a non-elite education and, like most Americans, has worked in the private sector; therefore I should hold "the most powerful job in the world."
ReplyDeleteI can think of 100 women I know who fall into that category: no Ivy education, common sense, traditional values, have worked predominately in the private sector. Indeed, who have spent a great deal more of their lives in the private sector than Palin, who has been in government since 1992, when she was 28, and so far as I can tell has never held any managerial position nor actually started a business. All of her vaunted "private sector" work experience appears to have been as a sportscaster and on her husband's fishing boat.
My mother has loads of common sense, is very traditional, has a junior college education (in business, not in something flakey like journalism), helped my father start a small business and has managed it for him for 25 years. She dealt with payroll, calculated whether capital investments in new equipment were worthwhile, did the accounting before the business got large enough to justify hiring a professional accountant, and she raised three kids almost on her own. (For most of my childhood, I only saw my dad for 10 minutes in the morning when he dropped us at school, and the three or four nights a week he got home in time for dinner.) She's been a registered Republican ever since she started voting, based mostly on economic issues as the co-owner of a small business. Does that mean she's qualified to be president? (Despite Palin's claim that motherhood is also a qualification, I'm not going to be so rude as to compare the results of my mother's child-rearing to Palin's.)
It's a good thing I picked Chicago over Columbia for law school -- otherwise, I could never be President!
ReplyDeleteThat does point out my mom's having what I had thought was a traditional value, but apparently no longer is one: wanting your children to go to what are generally thought the best schools, even if you personally have no experience with any of them. So it goes for the difficulties of assimilation; as soon as you think you're living the American Dream, the "Real Americans" change what that is supposed to be.
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