Barack & Sarah
Jan 31 facebook status: Amy dislikes Sarah Palin and Barack Obama for the same reason: they both represent philosophies of government that have been tried and found wanting.
Explain.
Obviously Gov. Palin and President Obama have conflicting policy positions on almost every major issue of import. And I am, honestly, more at odds with Obama's stances than Palin's. That being said, both of them leave a bad taste in my mouth. I chalk that up to one thing they do share: recycling ideas that haven't worked.
Both democratic populist opportunism and republican "let's just undo it"-ism are equally dangerous and neither has a particularly beautiful track record (Great Society failures (there are many), no major movements on abortion (judicially), lack of federal budget discipline (on defense spending and social policy spending; earmarks)).
For me, both Obama and Palin are representative of old guards, neither of whose ideas have guided American politics in a innovative directions. Alternatively, their equal and opposite pulls (and terms in office) have prevented the other pole from achieving too many permanently effective policy changes.
Though Obama's mantra is "Change" - he is less different than many of his party who have run on the national ticket in the past 50 years. And though Palin aims to be the fresh new face of the GOP, she is cut from the same anti-intellectual-ish easily-stereotyped solutions-from-a-box Republican cloth that her partymates have been since the end of the Cold War.
Thoughts?
Explain.
Obviously Gov. Palin and President Obama have conflicting policy positions on almost every major issue of import. And I am, honestly, more at odds with Obama's stances than Palin's. That being said, both of them leave a bad taste in my mouth. I chalk that up to one thing they do share: recycling ideas that haven't worked.
- Obama likes to make favorable comparisons with himself and FDR or JFK. Granted, there are some similarities but I think he's more similar to a Lyndon Johnson. They both favored conceptions of government that were politically expedient and were generally rather confident of government's abilities.
- Palin is sticking to what has been the conservative mantra for the last 20+ years: pro life/tax cuts/defense. Since that time, the Cold War has ended and the Republican upstarts became the entrenched interest in DC. The pro-life movement has not repositioned its messaging to shine a spotlight on the most pressing points of its convictions.
Both democratic populist opportunism and republican "let's just undo it"-ism are equally dangerous and neither has a particularly beautiful track record (Great Society failures (there are many), no major movements on abortion (judicially), lack of federal budget discipline (on defense spending and social policy spending; earmarks)).
For me, both Obama and Palin are representative of old guards, neither of whose ideas have guided American politics in a innovative directions. Alternatively, their equal and opposite pulls (and terms in office) have prevented the other pole from achieving too many permanently effective policy changes.
Though Obama's mantra is "Change" - he is less different than many of his party who have run on the national ticket in the past 50 years. And though Palin aims to be the fresh new face of the GOP, she is cut from the same anti-intellectual-ish easily-stereotyped solutions-from-a-box Republican cloth that her partymates have been since the end of the Cold War.
Thoughts?
posted by Amy M at 8:59 PM
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