Letter to the Editor
As philosopher George Santayana warned, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This could not be truer than in the upcoming election.
During the vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin repeatedly commented, "There ya go again, Joe, talkin' about the past," in a weak attempt to shift focus away from the eerie similarities of McCain's "plan" with the last eight years of the Bush administration.
Even the most neutral of observers would admit that Palin did not once offer up any concrete details of what their administration plans to do to fix the economic crisis, to restore America's broken foreign policies, or to reverse the effects global warming is having on our planet.
Her rehearsed, "folksy but no facts" recitation, filled with catch words like "reformer" or "maverick" or "fresh ideas" was unmistakable when she told Gwen Ifill that she was "not going to answer the questions" asked and began her oft-repeated mantra of "They'll raise your taxes."
When you cram for an exam, you can't be bothered with questions you haven't studied for; just change the subject and march on!
There is no doubt that Palin is a talented debater; a command of one's talking points is paramount to doing well. Palin's "down-home, Joe Six-Pack, soccer mom persona" and the insertion of a lot of "darn rights" and "you betchas" into the dialogue helped her come across as being "just like us!"
But I don't find that at all comforting. I, too, was a soccer mom, a Girl Scout leader, a beer-drinking resident of a small Midwestern town. So what? I want the people running our country to be smarter, wiser, more judicious and more knowledgeable than I am.
"Folksy" is cute in a country-western song, but I demand our country's leaders to be more than a refrain.
Laurel Sherwood
Aiken, S.C.
