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Caring About Readiness Is Absurd

This is getting pretty absurd. Would Conor somehow feel safe if Barack Obama were president under those circumstances?  What if the Silver Surfer came to Earth and said Galactus was going to consume the planet? Who would make him feel safe then? ~Philip Klein Klein is responding to Conor’s post-debate post in which he imagines a scenario that […]

This is getting pretty absurd. Would Conor somehow feel safe if Barack Obama were president under those circumstances?  What if the Silver Surfer came to Earth and said Galactus was going to consume the planet? Who would make him feel safe then? ~Philip Klein

Klein is responding to Conor’s post-debate post in which he imagines a scenario that would put a President Palin to the test:

To put a finer point on this, I ask the following of everyone who watched tonight’s debate — were John McCain assassinated at his inauguration by terrorists, even as two American cities saw buildings partially blown up by truck bombs, and Vladimir Putin used the opportunity to move troops into a former Soviet Repulic, would you trust that Governor Palin would have the knowledge, credibility, bearing and calming influence on the country to handle the situation? Or would having her in the Oval Office freak you out in a deep way? I’d be frightened, and I expect a lot of people now supporting Governor Palin would think, “Oh God, what have I done.”

Of course, the honest answer that I think most people would have to give is clearly no.  In other words, if you try to imagine how she would handle such a scenario, you would have to acknowledge that she is not ready to be President.  Being unprepared and overwhelmed, she would probably overreact and make such a situation far worse than it had to be.  As it is, I don’t trust McCain’s “knowledge, credibility, bearing and calming influence” were the Russians to send forces into a neighboring state, because I already know that McCain responds very poorly when the Russians do this.  A President Palin would be even more pliable and susceptible to the worst impulses of her anti-Russian advisors.  It also seems obvious to me that Obama, who isn’t really fit to be President (but then neither is McCain), is certainly on balance more competent than McCain and the prospect of him responding to these events is slightly less horrifying.  It is a measure of how profoundly unsuited he is to the office McCain is seeking that even Obama inspires more confidence in most people in this country.

P.S.  This is all increasingly irrelevant, since there is no realistic way that McCain is going to be elected one month from now.

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