She Is Woman, Hear Her Roar

Tuesday, September 02, 2008
INVESTOR BUSINESS DAILY

Election '08: The attacks on John McCain's bold veep pick have begun. But if the critics think Sarah Palin is an easy target, they'd better think again. She can fire back. Working moms of the world, unite.
"There's a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and between me and I suspect my vice-presidential opponent," Joe Biden said while campaigning in Toledo Sunday. "She's good-looking." It's a dismissive put-down we would expect from Biden, one a Republican couldn't get away with.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton was more direct, saying that McCain had irresponsibly put "the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." This said while he's trying to elect a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" 135 times and who spent just 143 business days in the Senate before deciding he was ready to lead the free world.

This is a reminder of Obama's similarly dismissive remark about bitter, small town Pennsylvanians who cling to their guns and their Bibles. Well, Sarah Palin has a Bible she reads regularly and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who can fire a gun.

Her more than 12 years of executive experience actually making decisions that affect the lives of real people certainly stack up against the meager record of Geraldine Ferraro who in 1984 "made history" by bringing her six years in Congress nearly a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Sarah Palin has more executive experience actually running a government than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined. Those who dismiss her as an adviser to McCain forget she is a sitting governor of an energy-rich state in a world in which energy is both an economic and national security issue.

She knows her stuff on energy. Barack Obama makes incredibly dumb statements about inflating our tires saving an equivalent amount of oil as is to be found in the Outer Continental Shelf. Governor Palin builds a $40 billion pipeline to bring Alaskan natural gas to the lower 48 states. Her steelworker husband works in the North Slope oil fields and she is the only candidate on either ticket who has actually been to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times calls her "Vice In Go-Go Boots" and calls Governor Palin "a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on 'Meet the Press.' " We wonder if she makes MSNBC's Chris Matthews' legs tingle like he said Barack Obama does. Those boots were made for campaigning and they walked all over the corrupt good-ole-boy network in Alaska.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post says: "McCain runs the risk that Palin will turn out to be Dan Quayle with an up-do — except with less experience." She can not only spell "potato" but this union member can also fire an AK-15. Democrats run the risk of dismissing this working mother of five as a "Dan Quayle" with an up-do at their peril. Remember those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.

The Associated Press in a photo caption described her as "the so-called 'hockey mom' credited with reforms of her tiny, out-of-the-way state." This "tiny" state is 10 times the size of Obama's Illinois and over 250 times the size of Biden's Delaware. This "out-of-the-way" state produces 20% of our domestic energy, and could produce much more.

She actually runs her "tiny" state, unlike Delaware's Joe Biden, who rides the taxpayer-subsidized Amtrak to his job bloviating on the major issues of the day. Biden is said to have infinitely more foreign policy experience. Perhaps he can tell Obama that Iran is not a "tiny" country that poses no threat.

Governor Palin has been to Iraq. She is commander of the Alaska National Guard, units of which are serving in Iraq. Her son is going there to serve in an infantry brigade on Sept. 11.

For working moms across America, that may be the only experience she needs.