What of Powell’s judgment?
Mike Allan and Jon Martin of The Politico wrote that former Sec. of State Colin Powell’s decision to endorse Barack Obama “stunned both parties.” If that’s true, it just goes to show you how naive both parties are.
Frankly, I think it’s just typical journalist hyperbole, where every exaggerated headline underscores how we the public should be “stunned,” or “outraged,” or “shocked,” et cetera, and this is, but of course, especially true when the story is deemed harmful to Republicans.
In any event, I take issue with Colin Powell’s curious definition of the role of the vice president:
Powell said that he is “troubled” by the direction of the Republican Party, and said he began to doubt McCain when he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
“Not just small towns have values,” he said, responding to one of Palin’s signature lines.
“She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired,” he said. “But at the same, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made.”
The endorsement is likely to help Obama convince skeptical centrists that he is ready to handle the challenges of commander in chief, and it undercuts McCain’s argument that he is better qualified on national security issues.
On the contrary, what it undercuts, or at least should undercut, is Colin Powell’s judgment, not John McCain’s.
The job of the vice president is not ‘to be ready to be president.’
It is rather this (according Article 1, section 3, of our US Constitution): “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”
That’s it folks. If we redefine the job of the vice president as being ready to be president because they are one heartbeat away, it means we must likewise redefine the role of the speaker of the House of Representatives, who is just two heartbeats away from the presidency. Who believes that Nancy Pelosi, who cannot even lead her own House — what with an historically-low 12 percent approval rating — could do any better?
Sarah Palin is running for vice president, but even so has as much, and perhaps more, foreign policy experience than Barack Obama. Worse, Obama knows this, else why would he have picked as his running mate Joe “foot-in-mouth” Biden, who just this weekend acknowledged that an Obama presidency would immediately be aggressively challenged by foreign powers looking to exploit his inexperience?
The person looking bitter in all of this is Powell. And speaking of “transformational figures,” I think it speaks volumes that Powell appears to defend the Obama relationship with William Ayers, a guy who bombed the Pentagon, where within Powell used to work.
“They’re trying to connect [Obama] to some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that’s inappropriate,” Powell said. “Now I understand what politics is all about — I know how you can go after one another. And that’s good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Gov. Palin has indicated a further rightward shift.”
Powell said he has “heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion [that Obama's] a Muslim and might be associated with terrorists.
“This is not the way we should be doing it in America. I feel strongly about this particular point,” Powell said. “We have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.”
Well, here’s an idea. If you don’t want to be polarizing, you shouldn’t play political footsie with someone as controversial as William Ayers, an unapologetic self-sworn enemy of the United States.
And as far as the suggestion that Powell “heard senior members” of the Republican Party suggest Obama is Muslim, this is, until Powell bothers to name names, just the typical kind of race/religion baiting that we’ve come to expect from the Obama campaign.
It’s a tactic of playing the preemptive race card — people don’t actually have to say anything that sounds racist anymore. Instead, they can just be predetermined to be racist once Democrats accuse them of something they might say in the future.