Editor,
I am a Barack Obama supporter. I have read several letters in the Daily Lobo about Sarah Palin and agree with many of the points that have been made. Yet, there are some mistakes pundits and Democrats make when criticizing her.
What I believe is a poor argument of criticizing Palin is the issue of foreign policy experience. Most mayors and governors really do not grapple with foreign policy issues. They are elected to deal with mundane issues like highway repairs and extensions, school construction and repairs, public safety and law enforcement and zoning ordinances. I do not recall Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton having any foreign policy experience upon entering the White House, both men having been governors. Yet, both are recalled as being successful presidents, albeit controversial in certain circles. George W. Bush is a whole other matter in a category of his own.
George H.W. Bush utilized this line of attack against Clinton. Bush argued that in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War, foreign policy could not be entrusted to a neophyte.
When a citizenry elects a governor or mayor, they are not doing so because they expect that person to negotiate trade deals with our Latin American neighbors or arms control agreements with Russia. Rather, they are elected to deal with the aforementioned mundane day-to-day issues affecting the city or state.
What needs to be criticized is her record as mayor. She, for example, took a town that had no debt and left it with debts continuing to this day, including an ongoing property dispute involving a landowner whose land part of a sportsplex was built upon. It turns out the city did not have full legal title to all of the land beneath the arena. The town of Wasilla now has a $25 million debt to pay off the bonds issued to build the arena.
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She also shifted much of the tax burden onto working class and middle class citizens by reducing property taxes for corporations while increasing sales taxes on goods and services. Sales taxes end up hurting the poor and middle class because taxes are on goods such as clothes and food.
As governor, she has made some claims that are fast and loose with the facts. She claims she put the governor's private jet on eBay. Yet it only sold via a private broker at a loss.
Furthermore, she was for the Bridge to Nowhere before being against it.
We all know the reasons John McCain selected her were to shore up his right flank, attract some of the white, working-class Democrats that supported Hillary Clinton but have not warmed to Obama, and also because she shares his basic economic premise and has enacted it in some form at the state level by cutting corporate taxes on property and business inventory.
Rather than attacking her weakness - foreign policy - Democrats should attack her strengths, her record as mayor and as governor. By harping on foreign policy experience issues, Democrats and pundits demonstrate both a sheening ignorance and hubris. Governors and mayors don't deal with foreign policy. That's that.
Attack her performance to date to illustrate the types of policies she would promote at the federal level. If swing voters perceive harping on foreign policy as condescending and opt to pull the lever for McCain, it will have been the Democrats and the pundits who will have fumbled on the goal line and doomed this nation to four more years of Bush. Remember, it's only the final result that counts. The rest is just conversation.
Ron McPhee
UNM alumnus
