SOWELL: Foreign policy 'experience'

Gov Palin arranged to send Alaska National Guard aircraft to Louisiana to help with relief work. She sent one C-130 cargo plane, two helicopters and 30 National Guard personel. Gov Jindal of Louisiana requested aid and Alaska Gov Palin sent it. This happened while she was taking care of her family and working at the convention. That is experience and action we can count trust.

Trust is as serious an issue as any. There is no way of knowing what may happen tomorrow. We know McCain has lived a life of duty and responsibility. To him, concepts like accountability and personal humility are not stage devices, they are part of the way he was raised. Obama is obviously a talented orator. If he actually had something original to communicate, I could take him more seriously. I don't hold it against him, he's just young and inexperienced. I blame his handlers for knowing better but chosing to use him as a Trojan horse anyway. Some day he'll be a grown up senator, and we'll talk then about bigger things. Meanwhile, gimme a break, we have enough variables to deal with. Put someone with experience at the helm. Simple as that.

I support John McCain because he is a candidate I “know”. We can see what he has done in the Senate and when he was in the Navy. We can look at his family. We can see his past and present. He has hundreds of people who have known him and worked with him. McCain has a history that we can verify. John McCain has few secrets. Obama wrote his own history with his books. Other than that, Obama's background is a blank. We have no knowledge of his life in Indonesia. We have virtually no independent information about his life in Hawaii. We have vague stories about his community organizer career and his work as a law school adjunct lecturer. The story line from Obama is " a fairy tale" in President Bill Clinton's words. There is no clear documentation for Obama all the way up to his life in the US Senate. He has campaigned continuously for higher office for virtually his whole career, but he’s never built a documented record. He professes that he CAN"T produce any papers about his work in the Illinois legislature, yet he is a Harvard lawyer who is reported to be organized and brilliant. Politicians and celebrities are the ones who step up to recommend Obama. He is a man who has zero testimonials from “ordinary” people who had contact with him over the years. That doesn’t give me a feeling of confidence. Obama looks like a man created by the media with a paper trail based on his own writings. He reminds me of the fictional, computer-generated actress in the movie SIMONE.

The issue in this election is very simple. Voting for Sen. Obama is a repudiation of Bush's foreign and domestic policy. His administrations activity will be investigated and held liable for criminal or unconstitutional actions. If you don't approve of his policies over the last year years, vote Obama Voting for Sen. McCain is an endorsement of Bush's foreign and domestic policies. They will be tinkered with at the edges to be made more efficient or smooth our rough edges but essentially they are to be left intact. If you think the country is headed in the right direction but only needs a little nudge here and there, vote McCain. It is really that simple. The rest is window dressing.

Palin and Obama are pretty much equivalent with regard to foreign policy experience. Palin may be a heartbeat away, but Obama would be the heartbeat. I don't care much for McCain, but this is no time for having a novice in the oval office.

"If you don't approve of his policies over the last year years [sic], vote Obama" Democrats can be counted on to find innovative ways to lose elections, and this is how they're going to lose this one. They're still trying to win the 2004 election.

Here's the truth: Sarah Palin is not the absolute commander of the Alaska National Guard. Sarah Palin does not get daily briefings everyday on the Russian government. Sarah Palin has only been to three foreign countries in her life and she can't count Canada or a stopover in Ireland. Sarah Palin was not actually the chief administrative officer of Wasilla when she was mayor. Palin has been governor for just 19 months. Sarah Palin called the Iraq war a mission from God, but at another point once talked about her desire to see all the troops come home - which goes against McCain's 100 year war plans. Now let's look at Obama and Biden. Obama was in the Senate two years before Palin ever became governor. Palin lied. Obama did bring about reform. He brought about ethics reform both in Illinois and in Washington. He also reached across the aisle in securing loose nuclear weapons - that alone is more foreign policy experience than Palin. Obama has met with and talked to many world leaders in that time and has been to Iraq. How many times has Palin been there? Biden? He forgot more foreign policy than Palin will ever know...and McCain keeps getting the factions in Iraq mixed up. Biden was instrumental in working out a final solution in Yugoslavia and he called Milosevic a war criminal to his face. Biden has a plan for Iraq. McCain and Palin don't. Their answer is more war, more tax cuts for the wealthy, and more of the same policies that have led to our great national nightmare. We elected a governor in 2000. We tried that and it didn't work. Been there. Done that. Next.

I understand the argument, and it has some validity. However, this argument cannot be made using the sort of sweeping generalisations or misrepresentations that have plagued this campaign since its inception. Joe Biden did not and does not simply 'listen to all sorts of people testify on all sorts of policy issues.' To make a statement like that really betrays the ignorance of the author as to the purpose, responsibility and scope of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, this committee is responsible for vetting all foreign policy legislation proposed by either Congress, OR the President. If it does not pass this committee, then it does not go to the Senate floor for a vote to become law, and therefore, the members of the Committee must be fully knowledgeable as to what the legislation is about, what it is for, where it came from, etc, etc, etc. Many of the members of this particular committee are in fact the same Senators that have proposed the legislation in the first place! As far as Ms Palin making 'executive decisions and living with the consequences,' She has been a Governor for less than two years with an essentially unlimited budget. Just what sort of 'consequences' do you suppose she might have to deal with at this point? As Mayor, most of her issues and 'consequences' appear to have been self-generated, and it is important to remember that she is under an investigation now, and has been several other times as Mayor of Wasilla. Perhaps it might be wise to look at thos issues a bit more closely before passing judgement on her 'executive experience.' In contrast, Senator Obama has personally led a nation-wide campaign with tens of thousands of workers, hundreds of millions of dollars in funds and assets, raised not only by himself, but by those many workers, all of which he is responsible for. He has had to pick his many staffers, aides and advisers, plan strategy, work with the media, and any number of venues. And he has had to do this for virtually the same time period as Sarah Palin has been Governor, but he started from scratch. You don't think that might count for 'executive experience?' Reference 'taking military action against Pakistan,' again, this is not what he said, or suggested. He has suggested taking military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda IN Pakistan, and that is a very different question (and the US military has in fact been conducting just such operations for the past six months...Hmmmm!). All this said, perhaps the real question that should be discussed here is not the relative 'experience' of the political candidates, but the 'experience' of the author of this article, and the judgement of the editors who allow this sort of article to be published without checking the facts......

To the editor: So please be a little more articulate when you say "more grown up response" to Russian aggression, because otherwise all I hear is: "The United States and our allies should continue efforts to bring a resolution before the UN Security Council condemning Russian aggression, noting the withdrawal of Georgian troops from South Ossetia, and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory." --John McCain, Aug 11, 2008 Do you guys really believe the stuff that you're writing?

To "kc" and anyone else---"Voting for Sen. Obama is a repudiation of Bush's foreign and domestic policy. His administrations activity will be investigated and held liable for criminal or unconstitutional actions." My God,well--if you want to throw your vote down the toilet as a "protest vote" go ahead! That's really smart--and helpful to America.Why not just write "present" on it? BUSH IS NOT RUNNING THIS YEAR. HE ALREADY WON---TWICE! Yeah, protest him by putting into the Oval Office the most bought-and-paid-for-by-special-interests candidate out there except for maybe Old Joe "Hair Plug" Biden, linchpin of the Do Nothing Congress---and the least experienced. And the idea of spending the next four years going on a fishing expedition to try to dig up some dirt on Bush or others in his administration is a total waste of time and our money. Get to work! Cut spending, balance the budget, cut out earmarks, cut pork, cut corruption. Only one candidate has the nerve and the record to get it done---McCain, and definitely not that Marxist O'Same-a.

The idea that Obama "running his campaign" and not his Campaign Manager somehow qualifies as leadership is ludicrous. By the end of this thing he will have squandered close to a billion dollars of people's money on his losing effort. Is that what you call leadership? I call it waste, incompetence and stupidiity, and his campaign manager should get the bulk of the criticism. Obama is not the CEO of the campaign, he's the "Product" it is selling, like a box of cereal or a shampoo. When has O'Same-a put America First? Never. He has a record of Putting Obama First, that's all.

Experience is only good to have if such experience leads to sound decisions. Joe Biden has many years of listening to and then asking inane, stupid questions to hearing participants. I have listened to politicians for 40 years, therefore, I must have a lot of experience in politics. What foreign policy experience did JFK have? How much foreign policy did Kerry have? Tom Sowell is right on the money here and you liberal socialists can't stand the truth. Sarah would certainly be a better president than the messiah. The One can't even deliver a speech without a teleprompter scrolling his marxist drivel for him. Check out his horrible performance in the Bristol, VA town meeting. Snobama isn't leading anything, he is being led by handlers, sycophants, and bitter as hell Saul Alinsky followers.

Obama is looking tired, deflated, and out of steam. He HAS NO MESSAGE ANYMORE. "Change"? No one is buying it, especially since he moved into out-of-date Democrat policies from 2004 and picked old, entrenched politics-as-usual Joe "Hair Plug" Biden as his VP. McCain now owns the "Change" message. The economy? Obama's policies would destroy an already fragile economy---most likely putting us into a full-blown depression. Foreign Policy? Everyone knows McCain has that over both Obama and Biden (who can't be counted on, make too many mistakes, and have poor judgment), as well as national security. Obama is losing and it all started with Sarah Palin. She pulled the rug out.

The missing part of this puzzle is that Obama also feels that foreign policy is also decision experience advisor for Commander in Chief. The two are related but the reponsibility to put our men and women's lives in harms way involves more than listening to testimony, a theory on princpled diplomacy and a paradox of supporting the troops but not the war.

I guess being a mayor of a small town is kind of like being a community organizer, except that as a community organizer, you actually help people in need. McCain, Palin, and the Republicans have offered nothing but utter failure. It's time we put THEM on EBay.