http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/oreilly-palin-pelosi-fox/2010/03/29/id/354120?s=al&promo_code=9A8E-1

The headline, “O’Reilly:  Palin as Smart as Pelosi” implies they are equals.  They are not. 

O’Reilly tends to equate who is smart with who will and who will not come in and sit before him in the No Spin Zone.   Where there is merit in the argument I do not measure my opinion of political personalities solely upon who does well with O’Reilly and who does not.  

The question I would ask O’Reilly and others is just how do we measure someone’s intelligence and make the comparison to opposing candidates?  How also do we ascertain whether the person with the higher IQ is always the better leader?   I think back to my days in high school and college and I can name a number of people who used their high IQ’s to become research scientists but who you would never want to lead you anyplace.  Leadership characteristics can be found in the C student as easily as the A student and the person with the higher IQ may not have the social skills to understand how to motivate people. 

Nancy Pelosi insulates herself from people who might be critical of her.  Is this lack of courage evidence of an intelligent woman or a woman who is scared she might be asked a difficult question?  She is certainly politically savvy and she knows how to count votes as well as any Speaker that I can recall but she is certainly not the quality of a Tip O’Neill.   O’Neill knew how to do all those things but he was also willing to mix it up with Ronald Reagan and I cannot recall a situation in which he forced something through the Congress at the cost of the wholesale division that is now present in this country.  

Nancy Pelosi may be smart but her judgment was bad in the way she circumvented process and drove through healthcare legislation.  I would label her as the most corrupt Speaker of the House in my lifetime.  She motivates through threat and intimidation.  We have no idea what kinds of deals were made to enact healthcare legislation but I believe it safe to say that there were deals made.  How else for example did she get Bart Stupak to change his vote to yes when he so staunchly insisted on language that would protect the rights of the unborn?  There had to be a deal there because no one would accept a simple Executive Order except the truly uninformed and Stupak is not uninformed.  He simply needed cover and it is his hope that his constituents are uninformed enough that they will believe the Executive Order sufficiently met their needs.  I regard Nancy Pelosi as an ideologue.  Not only did she drink the Kool-Aid but she insists that her members drink it too.  

Comparatively, Sarah Palin knows how to motivate people.   I would regard her as very smart.  I would not label her as an intellectual but she is certainly street smart and she understands people and their motivations better than Nancy Pelosi.  She doesn’t have to threaten or bribe people to achieve her ends.  She sells them by selling herself.  

There is no evidence that Sarah Palin ever used her position as Mayor of Wasilla or as Governor of Alaska for her own personal enrichment.  Yes, there were allegations about having her former brother-in-law fired but an examination of that process indicated that she was acting in the public interest, not her own and she appeared to have done everything properly and ethically.  People who attack Sarah Palin do so through innuendo and rumor.  They levy personal attacks and sling mud in the hope that something may stick.  On the other hand, a substantive examination of Sarah Palin will result in the recognition of her demonstrated understanding of energy policy and in particular, how it might affect Alaska.   Katie Couric asked her what she reads with a sarcasm that could only imply that someone in Wasilla, AS would not include what Katie might believe to be the major news media.  Sarah was obviously caught off guard and surprised by the question.  Sarah indicated in her book, Going Rogue that she found the question insulting as though she didn’t read or that her reading list might be regarded as trivial in comparison to periodicals like the NY Times.  As one of 5.9 billion that does not read the NY Times perhaps my perspective differs from Katie’s because the measure should not be what do you read but how do you formulate your opinions? 

I watched and I listened intently to Sarah Palin in interviews with Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Greta Van Susteren who would be described as friendly to her but which allowed her to expose herself personally as well as the opportunity to answer substantive questions that fully demonstrated that she had conquered the topic of the question.  I have also watched her interviewed by unfriendly, contemptuous interviewers like Charles Gibson.  When the interviewers intent is to capture someone in a gotcha moment rather than to ask the type of question whose answer would be informative about the individual we are all the worse off.   Gibson’s interview had its supposed gotcha moment when he asked Sarah about the Bush Doctrine.  Sarah was correct in asking him to clarify the aspect of the pronouncements of the Bush Administration that he might be referring to.  For example, was he referring to the stated position during his speech to the Congress in which he told the world that if you provide safe harbor or finance terrorists you are guilty of terrorism yourself and that the US would regard you as the enemy?  Did he refer to the Bush position on pre-emptive strikes?  What did Gibson intend to reference and how was Sarah Palin to answer such a broad based question?   The Gibson reaction and the reaction of the mainstream media subsequent to that interview demonstrated their ignorance, not hers.

I watched as television impersonalities like David Letterman behaved boorishly to ridicule not only Sarah Palin but her entire family.   It was Letterman who came out looking small when he made a joke about Sarah’s daughter being knocked up by Alex Rodriguez during her visit to Yankee Stadium.  I’m sure that Letterman didn’t realize that it was her 14 year old daughter, Willow and not her older daughter, Piper who had accompanied her to New York but does this make the joke any less distasteful? 

In 2008 at the Republican Convention her presentation was interrupted by the loss of her teleprompter.  Guess what?  She didn’t need it.  The listeners at home had no idea there was a problem.   She acquitted herself extremely well and she made the name Palin proud in Alaska and across the entire Republican Party. 

But, do I believe Sarah Palin was sufficiently accomplished and prepared to be elected President in 2008?   No, I do not.  Do I believe the Vice Presidency should be used as a training ground for someone to develop their credentials for a later candidacy?  No, I do not.  I believe the Vice President should be an accomplished individual who is able to step in on the first day and replace the President if so required.   But, I would also say this.  Of the four persons in the 2008 presidential election, Palin, McCain, Obama and Biden, I would regard Sarah Palin as having been the most accomplished and the most qualified to be President of all four.  She had developed and administered a budget.  She had negotiated solutions and formulated major energy policy on behalf of her state.  She had the experience of many direct reports to her as the Governor of the nation’s largest state as measured by land mass.   She had stood up to major ridicule from a media intent on destroying her and she had weathered this with a charming sense of humor that must infuriate her enemies.   Watch out America.  Sarah was the most accomplished in 2008 and she continues to grow as a force in American politics.  She will be a formidable candidate in 2012 if she decides to run.