Chuck Hagel on Palin: "I Don't Think She Is Qualified to be the President of the United States"
Great new article up in the New Yorker today: "Odd Man Out: Chuck Hagel's Republican Exile", by Connie Bruck. Let's cut tho the chase:
Hagel may be the only senior Republican elected official who has publicly criticized McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. "I don't believe she's qualified to be President of the United States," Hagel told me. "The first judgment a potential President makes is who their running mate is--and I don't think John made a very good selection." He scoffed at McCain's attempts to portray her as an experienced politician. "To try to make the excuse that she looks out her window and sees Russia--and that she's commander of the Alaska National Guard." He added, "There is no question that this candidate is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America."
******
For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin's lack of experience is her willingness--in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden's long Senate career, for example--to belittle the notion that experience is important. "There's no question, she knows her market," Hagel said. "She knows her audience, and she's going right after them. And I'll tell you why that's dangerous. It's dangerous because you don't want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life. You want to always strive to define standards up. If you start defining standards down--'Well, I don't have a big education, I don't have experience'--yes, there's a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard. But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don't count in a complicated, dangerous world--that's dangerous in itself.
Will we be seeing a Hagel endorsement of Obama this week?
I don't think he'll come right out and endorse because he's still got to work with the party. This is as close as he's going to get - and it's pretty clear where he stands.
I've been listening to MSNBC the last couple of hours. McCain's reps are actually starting to make sense. Instead of going off on their usual insane rants about social issues, they're sticking to the economy, focusing on the difference between Republicans and Democrats on those issues.
Tim Pawlenty was one of them. He sounded so sensible that I think we might've been in trouble if McCain had picked him for VP.
October 27, 2008 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chuch Hagel has decided to retire and leave the senate. He realized the almost total corruption that infests the republican party. But he also realized that he couldn't get elected as a Democrat in his home state of Nebraska.
Sen Hagel has always been a good man, whether you did or didn't agree with him politically. As Sen Biden said in his recent book, in the past BB (before Bush) the Repubs and Dems on the hill generally liked each other, and more often then not worked together for the good of the nation. They were friends despite their political differences.
All that ended with George Bush in particular. He has almost destroyed the spirit of cooperation on the hill, acting along with his party as if they are some sort of king and courtiers. Stealing our nation blind, and giving us an illegal war, while failing because of Iraq to have the resources to kill bin laden when we had him trapped in the tora bora mountains back about 2003.
The republican party has become some sort of (pardon me if you are Italian/Sicilian ) Mafioso like MOB, stealing everything they can through their super-rich and corporate buddies. The Bush Administration and what happened to the once Grand Old Party party should become required reading in our colleges and high schools.
So, while we can hope Sen Hagel will support Sen Obama - I'm certain they are talking about it, the key point that Sen Hagel felt that he morally had to retire to leave his party speaks volumes about the nightmare of the last 8 years.
Have a wonderful retirement, Sen Hagel, from someone who was a republican all my life until I understood what Bush and his party had become. You earned it
Sen McCain, with his totally negative campaign of desperation, deceit and yes using racial hatred as well as lies, deserves a smashing defeat.
But at least with his SECOND wife Cindy's hundreds of millions of $$, he wont have to worry about making the mortgage payments on his 7 homes, or the $4000 or more cost to fill up the fuel tanks on his private jet.
October 27, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are really a life-long republican and didn't fight the neoconservative takeover that began 40 years ago with Nixon's imperial presidency (complete with imperial uniforms) then you are just as responsible for what our country has suffered through as anyone who supported Bush these eight years.
It is the duty of any republican with a conscience and an ounce of common sense to rebuild the party by participating in primaries and electing a new breed of conservative politician and kicking the neocons out. It was only in allowing the the crazy right fringe to take over the GOP that the party lost its way. We can't leave one of the country's two major parties in the hands of zealots. A conservative voice is needed in our policy-making to develop sustainable solutions for a bi-polar country.
Obama is popular with the huge, silent majority in the middle, both right and left, because he is more classically conservative than any democrat since Johnson yet describes a progressive and sustainable future for our kids that is more equal and more free.
This country isn't any more "liberal" or less "conservative" than it was before Obama came along.
October 28, 2008 6:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
You should check out Freerepublic.com, where they are compiling lists of "Vichy Republicans" they will expel from the GOP after this election.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2116099/posts#comment
Oddly, many of them hate "neocons" as much as you appear to but their vision of the purged and purified GOP is rutheless conservativism. Good luck forging the post-neocon GOP with them.
Calling Nixon a neoconservative is pretty much a non sequitir. He was evil for different reasons.
October 28, 2008 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the future Sec of State folks. An ACTUAL Maverick, well recently at least.
October 27, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
It would be great if he would endorse! BTW, I agree about Tim Pawlenty. It would be a closer race now with him as VP.
I was glad he wasn't chosen because I'm in Minnesota and I didn't want all that hoopla going on here and I didn't want to fight harder to keep our state in the D column!
October 27, 2008 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chuch Hagel has decided to retire and leave the senate. He realized the almost total corruption that infests the republican party. But he also realized that he couldn't get elected as a Democrat in his home state of Nebraska.
Sen Hagel has always been a good man, whether you did or didn't agree with him politically. As Sen Biden said in his recent book, in the past BB (before Bush) the Repubs and Dems on the hill generally liked each other, and more often then not worked together for the good of the nation. They were friends despite their political differences.
All that ended with George Bush in particular. He has almost destroyed the spirit of cooperation on the hill, acting along with his party as if they are some sort of king and courtiers. Stealing our nation blind, and giving us an illegal war, while failing because of Iraq to have the resources to kill bin laden when we had him trapped in the tora bora mountains back about 2003.
The republican party has become some sort of (pardon me if you are Italian/Sicilian ) Mafioso like MOB, stealing everything they can through their super-rich and corporate buddies. The Bush Administration and what happened to the once Grand Old Party party should become required reading in our colleges and high schools.
So, while we can hope Sen Hagel will support Sen Obama - I'm certain they are talking about it, the key point that Sen Hagel felt that he morally had to retire to leave his party speaks volumes about the nightmare of the last 8 years.
Have a wonderful retirement, Sen Hagel, from someone who was a republican all my life until I understood what Bush and his party had become. You earned it
Sen McCain, with his totally negative campaign of desperation, deceit and yes using racial hatred as well as lies, deserves a smashing defeat.
But at least with his SECOND wife Cindy's hundreds of millions of $$, he wont have to worry about making the mortgage payments on his 7 homes, or the $4000 or more cost to fill up the fuel tanks on his private jet.
October 27, 2008 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
well put
October 28, 2008 5:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know how McCain could claim Obama as an alitist when he himself is the elite with his private jet, 7 homes and 13 cars who is he kidding? Obama has one home and one car and the only thing fancy is his graduation from Harvard which is a wonderful qualification for President.
During this election, Palin has been running against Obama, not Joe Biden. I sincerely question McCain's choice of VP when, in an interview, she couldn't name one newspaper or magazine she has read. The McCain campaign has done quite a job protecting her from the press and the interviews they have let her do, she has shown her ignorance of the issues of the country.
And if she is a proud American, an American of the people why is her husband a cessationalist who wants to separate from the USA who she supports. And McCain chose not to consider this in his appointment of Palin. How is she like all of us?
October 28, 2008 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually not only Todd Palin, but also Governor Palin attended the same group meetings together, One of my grandson's who live in Alaska mentioned to me that at the meetings of that group, they even stomp on the American flag
October 28, 2008 2:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read the New Yorker article last night and heartily recommend it. My favorite part, voiced by his wife, speaks volumes about the man's integrity and decency and who really values him:
October 28, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
she more executive background than all three of the other canidates heck obama has only benn in the for a couples of year and he has spent most of that time as a canidate. Sarah is more on the little man side than all of them you people need to do little researce and quit just listening to people
October 28, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you even know who Chuck Hagel is?
October 28, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you know how many Starbucks there are in Nebraska?
38.
That doesn't sound like Real America to me.
Of course those Pinko Freaks in Wasilla have Two Starbucks: TWO!
October 28, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
And now they are getting a Target!
October 28, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink