Andy Rowell, 22 September 2008

Since being chosen as Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain’s running mate last month, Sarah Palin, the current Alaskan Governor, has galvanized the race for the White House.

So here are ten reasons why you should be worried about Palin, who could be the most dangerous potential Vice-President in America’s history. The more you examine Palin’s policies, persona, political and economic record, the more reason we all have real to be deeply worried. Palin makes both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney look moderate.

Reason number one. Her lack of domestic experience. Palin’s political rise has been nothing short of meteoric, but all her political experience is based in Alaska, hundreds of miles from Washington. Her political experience consists of being the Mayor of a small Alaskan town of 6,000 people from 1996-2002 and then she was elected governor of Alaska in November 2006. So has held that job for less than two years.

Reason number two. Her economic experience. Palin has tried to portray herself as a “fiscal conservative”, who is prudent with her finances. However one Alaskan paper who investigated her claims found the opposite to be true. “State general fund spending has risen sharply in the 21 months since Palin took office”, reported the Fairbanks News Miner. “The budget she signed earlier this year for fiscal 2009 spent $5 billion from the state’s general fund — a 34 percent increase over the budget she proposed for fiscal 2008 not long after taking office.”

When Palin ran for the job of Mayor of Wasilla, she stood on a deeply conservative religious platform of gun rights and opposition to abortion. She is opposed to abortion even after women are raped. Whilst she was Mayor, Palin’s police department required women who said they had been raped to pay for examination kits themselves, a policy Palin now tries to distance herself from. Palin is also is a long proponent of “creationism”, believing it should be taught in schools. 

This brings us to reason number four. Palin is vehemently pro-gun in a country already awash with guns. There are an estimated 200 million guns in America, with nearly half all households owning a gun. The “right to keep and bear arms” is the second amendment of the Constitution. Palin is a life-long member of the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobby groups in America that exists to defend Americans right to “keep and bear” arms.

The NRA’s chief lobbyist Chris Cox says “Governor Palin doesn't just talk about supporting the Second Amendment, it's part of her life”. An article on the NRA website says “To put it simply, Governor Sarah Palin would be one of the most pro-gun vice-presidents in American history”.

Reason number five is her political record as Governor of Alaska, which is being seen as promoting friends at the expense of others. Palin is currently being investigated for “Troopergate” – whereby state legislators are investigating accusations that Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister. If convicted it would fit into a pattern.

Last week-end the New York Times published an insight into Palin’s time as Governor. “Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance.”

Reason number six is her environmental record as Governor and her views on climate change. Palin has a history of trying to portray herself a green candidate who was “Pro-Environment.” Despite saying she cares passionately about Alaska’s wildlife (as a keen hunter) earlier this year Palin made sure Alaska was one of the American states that sued the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species.

Until she became McCain’s running mate, Palin’s views on climate change were staggering. “I'm not one though who would attribute it [climate change] to being man-made”, Palin said last year. Obviously under pressure from the Republican higher echelons, Palin has now changed her tune, saying that “some of man's activities” could be “potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now”. But this position is more skeptical than George Bush’s.

Reason number seven is her hawkishness. If you merge Palin’s fundamentalist Christian philosophy with her “gun-loving -go shoot them” attitude, this does not bode well for international diplomacy and the understanding of other religions and faiths. In her only television interview since being named as Vice President, Palin talked tough on Iran and said that if Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, she would not intervene.

Reason number eight is her lack of foreign experience. In the TV appearance, Palin clearly struggled with international affairs. When asked about whether she followed the “Bush Doctrine” foreign policy of pre-emptive military action, Palin did not know what it was. She also went much further than Bush in arguing that she would effectively commit US troops to Georgia and Ukraine if they were attacked by the Russians.

Her television interview exposed other flaws. The McCain campaign has made much of her experience dealing with Russia and Canada, the two neighbouring countries to Alaska. But those who know her, dispute this. “So far as I know, Sarah has not been involved in international affairs whatsoever," argues Victor Fischer, a professor emeritus at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and former state senator. In the ABC interview Palin let slip that her knowledge of Russia was being able to see it from Alaska. “They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska”, she said.

Her take on foreign policy is just not credible. On the Anniversary of the September 11^th attacks this month, Palin tried to link the Iraq war to the attacks. Speaking to a contingent of troops just about to deploy to Iraq, Palin argued that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The more people scrutinize her, the less credible Palin becomes. She had tried to bolster her credentials by saying that last year she made a trip to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait and Iraq, the first time ever she had traveled outside North America. Firstly it soon became apparent that the Ireland visit was only to refuel her plane, and that Palin had not been to Iraq at all, but only gone to Kuwait.

Reason number nine is her ability to try and and twist the facts. Whether it is her political or economic record, the policies of Barack Obama, or her new stance on climate change, Palin just twists the truth. The most famous example of her saying one thing but actually doing another is the “bridge to nowhere”. This was a development in Alaska to a sparsely populated island. Seen as a waste of tax-payers money, the bridge was scrapped, but not before Palin campaigned for it. However now she says: "I told Congress, ‘thanks but no thanks’ about that Bridge to Nowhere."

Reason number ten is Palin is essentially George Bush but more dangerous. One media commentator on the New York Times wrote, after watching Palin and observing the “Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.”

The truth is that Sarah Palin is highly inexperienced with a deeply worrying world view. She is more socially conservative than Bush, more hawkish and neo-conservative than Dick Cheney. Just when we thought the world could get a little bit safer, it looks like things can only get worse. If the 73 year-old John McCain becomes President, Palin could be one heartbeat from being the most powerful person on the planet. Now you have ten reasons why that is truly scary indeed.