Now I'm always lovin' me some Charles Krauthammer -- he's witty, insightful, articulate, well informed to a freekish degree, and of course, a conservative. I also enjoy his self depricating sense of humor where he gleefully admits he's an effite beltway elitist. He has said he wears Sarah Palin's crack about him being hoity toity as a badge of honor.
But Chuck has a palpable disdain for the afore mentioned Governor of Alaska that is . . . well, palpable. The Hammer commands great respect among conservatives and lefties know it. And when they get him on their shows, they know all they have to do is mention Sarah Palin and they'll get enough dismissive rejoinders about her to fill a YouTube site.
And the intelligent commentator falls for it every time. The left plays him like a fiddle on Sarah.
The other night, I caught The Hammer on Bill O'Reilly's show. Now I rarely watch The Factor because I find O'Reilly to be tedious and a bit of a fake. He's no where near the conservative idealist firebrand liberals would have you believe.
But in a convesation about Sarah Palin, Chuck talked about how intelligent Sarah is, how her views fit perfectly with the Republican party and the new fiscal conservative Tea Party. He went on and on about how great she was. Then the "but" moment.
Charles said Sarah wasn't "schooled" enough in foreign policy. And if that wasn't bad enough, he said she seems to have no desire to school herself on those topics.
?!?
Where is that coming from? Since the campaign ended in the '08 election, Sarah has spoken out often and with informed certitude on everything from domestic policy to foreign policy. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to find op-eds and articles and speeches she has given on everything from Libya to Israel to Afghanistan to the START treaty.
And she's spoken out with enough credibility and often prescience on these topics that even lefty newspapers have been forced to admit she's been ahead of the curve on many situations.
Plus you have everything she's written/spoken about here at home -- border security, fiscal crisis, energy production, etc., she's given more intelligent and informed speeches on these topics than the President himself.
So . . . what up Chuck?!
The problem is beltway insiders like Charles, George Will, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich and the rest would rather run a loser like flip-flop Mitt for President because he went to the right schools, comes from the right part of the country, he just looks so darn Presidential, and so on.
Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a little hint of mysogyny at work here. I don't think any of these "old boys" are comfortable with the idea of a woman in charge of the country. Oddly, these guys always wet their pants when they talk about Margaret Thatcher, or Golda Meir. Now those were real leaders who just happened to be women according to these experts. But a charming hockey mom former Governor who fought corruption within her own state and won, who ran her state with such fiscal astuteness that they have billions in surplus and who is savvy enough to run rings around the bloodthirsty press, well, she isn't properly schooled on the ways of the world. Not enough gavitas they say.
Whatever, I say.
Here's my thing -- she won't kiss these guy's asses. And they don't like it. She's showing she doesn't need them, and they hate it. They make their incomes as influence peddlers, and she isn't buying. And they can't stand it.
So, sorry Charles, not with ya on this one.
Update:
Here's the exact quote from Charles about Sarah's lack of "schooling:"
"The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don’t mean she didn’t go to the right schools. I mean when you get into policy, beyond instincts — I like her political instincts, I like her political overall view of the world — but when it comes to policy, she had two-and-a-half years to school herself and she hasn’t and that’s a problem. … It’s not only the lack of schooling; it’s the lack of effort to school herself and the lack of insight to see that she needs it."
My mistake was to mis-remember this as a critique of her foreign policy decisions when in fact he's bemoaning any policy thoughts she's had . . . which sort of makes my points above even more valid.
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