Palin vs Hillary

Anyone who thinks that Hillary Clinton was simply "another First Lady", and that she was elected to the Senate on her husband's coattails, must obviously know nothing about the woman and her long record of accomplishment.

She is a most remarkable woman, who was most remarkable in her own right, long before she even met Bill Clinton.

If anything, her marriage and her husband's career probably prevented her from running for national office sooner. This woman would never have been closeted away in some law office. She has always been very active and involved, with high visibility, in many different spheres, based on her own merits and accomplishments.

Hillary Clinton is most definitely a self-made woman.

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In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science. During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans;with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group, she supported the elections of John Lindsay and Edward Brooke. She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal." In contrast to the 1960s current that believed in radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it. In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the anti-war presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969; she was instrumental in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges. A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first woman President of the United States. So she could better understand her changing political views, Professor Alan Schechter assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference, and she attended the "Wellesley in Washington" summer program.Rodham was invited by moderate New York Republican Representative Charles Goodell to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination. Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami. However, she was upset by how Richard Nixon's campaign portrayed Rockefeller and by what she perceived as the convention's "veiled" racist messages, and left the Republican Party for good.

In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, with departmental honors in political science. Following pressure from some fellow students, she became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver their commencement address. Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.

She was featured in an article published in Life magazine,due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before her at the commencement. She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers. That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).


Law school

Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor. In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.Edelman later became a significant mentor.

In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.The firm was well-known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes. Rodham worked on child custody and other cases. Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973, having stayed on an extra year in order to be with Clinton. She began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center. Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973. Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals" and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that rather courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.The article became frequently cited in the field.


Law career and First Lady of Arkansas

From the East Coast to Arkansas
During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. During 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal. Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum, Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment. The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.

By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future; Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide her career; Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president.[ Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she had continued to demur. However, after failing the District of Columbia bar examand passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head". She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. Clinton was at the time teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where Bill Clinton also taught. She still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else's.


Early Arkansas years

Bill Clinton had lost the Congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock. There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence.She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law, while also working pro bono in child advocacy; she rarely performed litigation work in court.

Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979. The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances, and that serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted. An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate." Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades".

Also in 1977, Rodham co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund. And later that same year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had done 1976 campaign coordination work in Indiana) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981. From mid-1978 to mid-1980 she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so. During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.

Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for a total of twelve years (1979"1981, 1983"1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she successfully secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.

In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband.

Later Arkansas years

Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters; she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law in order to campaign for him full-time. As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was named chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system. In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association, to establish mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size. In 1985, she also introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy. She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours, but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there. She seldom did trial work, but the firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections.

From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation, which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it.

She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991. When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running herself, but private polls were unfavorable and in the end he ran and was reelected for the final time.

Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988"1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986"1992). In addition to her positions with non-profit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985"1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986"1992) and Lafarge (1990"1992). TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board. Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, but was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management.

First Lady of the United States

Role as First Lady
When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name. She was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House. She was also the first to take up an office in the West Wing of the White House: the First Lady usually stays in the East Wing. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history, save for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Health care and other policy initiatives

In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head and be the chairwoman of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform. The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. The plan was quickly derided as "Hillarycare" by its opponents; some protesters against it became vitriolic, and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, she was forced to wear a bulletproof vest at times. The plan did not receive enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate, although both chambers were controlled by Democrats, and proposal was abandoned in September 1994.

Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage, and conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law. She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare. She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome.Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice. In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady. In 1999, she was instrumental in passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care. As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997), on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997), and on Children and Adolescents (2000). She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000) and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).

Hillary Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time, breaking the mark for most-traveled First Lady held by Pat Nixon. In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself, declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights" and resisting Chinese pressure to soften her remarks. She was one of the most prominent international figures during the late 1990s to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban. She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has served as a United States Senator from New York from January 3, 2001 to the present. She won the United States Senate election in New York, 2000 and the United States Senate election in New York, 2006.

Clinton has served on five Senate committees with nine subcommittee assignments:

Committee on the Budget (2001-2003)
Committee on Armed Services (2003-present)
Subcommittee on Airland
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support
Committee on Environment and Public Works (2001-present)
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health (Chairwoman, 2007-present)
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (2001-present)
Subcommittee on Children and Families
Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
Special Committee on Aging.
She is also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe[ (since 2001).

She has also held two leadership positions in the Senate Democratic Caucus:

Chairwoman of Steering and Outreach Committee (2003"2006)
Vice Chairwoman of Committee Outreach (2007"present)

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in quickly securing $21.4 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment.

After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to both Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there, such as the 10th Mountain Division based in Fort Drum, New York. In spring 2004, Clinton publicly castigated U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at a hearing, saying his credibility was gone due to false predictions he had made before the war's start. Noting that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain. In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it would give Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves." She criticized the administration for making poor decisions in the war, but added that it was more important to solve the problems in Iraq. Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for veterans, and lobbied against the closure of several military bases

Senator Clinton voted against the two major tax cuts packages introduced by President Bush, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003,[37] saying it was fiscally irresponsible to reopen the budget deficit. At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, Clinton had called for maintaining a budget surplus to pay down the national debt for future generations. At a fundraiser in 2004, she told a crowd of financial donors that "Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you" but that "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

In 2005, Clinton and Senator Lindsey Graham cosponsored the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, which provides incentives and rewards for completely domestic American manufacturing companies.

Senator Clinton led a bipartisan effort to bring broadband access to rural communities. She cosponsored the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which encourages research and development in the field of nanotechnology.She included language in an energy bill to provide tax exempt bonding authority for environmentally-conscious construction projects, and introduced an amendment that funds job creation to repair, renovate and modernize public schools.

In 2005, Clinton was joined by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who once led the Republican opposition to her husband's administration, in support of a proposal for incremental universal health care. She also worked with Bill Frist, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, in support of modernizing medical records with computer technology to reduce human errors, such as misreading prescriptions.

Clinton sought to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate the response to Hurricane Katrina by the federal, state and local governments, but could not obtain the two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate.

In 2005, Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. Similar bills have been filed in some states such as Michigan and Illinois, but were ruled to be unconstitutional.

She was reelected by a wide margin in 2006

Clinton has enjoyed high approval ratings for her job as Senator within New York, reaching an all-time high of 72 to 74 percent approving (including half of Republicans) over 23 to 24 percent disapproving in December 2006, before her presidential campaign became active;by August 2007, after a half year of campaigning, it was still 64 percent over 34 percent.

In the 2008 presidential nomination race, Clinton won more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
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No one could possibly compare Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin in terms of education, life experience, involvement in issues, and record of accomplishment. Clinton is a remarkable and unique woman, who would be more than qualified to be president of the United States. To say that she has not worked hard, and used her own initiative and abilities, to achieve the position of prominence she holds today, is simply absurd.

Palin went from a stint on the city council to serving as mayor of a tiny town of 6,700, and had to hire a city administrator to help her do the job. She was elected governor of a sparsely populated state two years ago, fired a lot of people and replaced them with her friends and cronies, seems to need her husband's help in governing, and appears to have done little to promote causes or changes in policy which would improve the welfare of women. And then she was simply picked to be on a national ticket as VP. She did not earn the nomination by campaigning and having people vote for her, she was impulsively plucked from relative obscurity by an elderly male benefactor, and dubbed his running mate.

Somehow I don't think it is difficult to see why most people would say that Hillary Clinton is far more qualified for high public office than Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin's inclusion on the Republican ticket as VP seems like affirmative action at it's worst, given her skimpy resume and scant experience for the job. Hillary earned those 18 million votes she received in the primaries.

The point is not just to have any woman on the ticket, or even elected as VP or president, just to prove it can be done. The point is to have a woman who has demonstrated she is fully capable of doing the job, by virtue of her record of experience and accomplishment, and her lifelong involvement with social and governmental issues, and not just a wannabe self-described "pitbull with lipstick", who wants to break through that highest glass ceiling simply to serve her own political ambitions, even though she is neither qualified nor ready for the job. And Palin's ambitions are far stronger than her qualifications. She has referred to McCain as her running mate, and urged people to vote for the Palin/McCain ticket. She may have delusions of being like Hillary, but Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.

These two women have nothing in common except an X chromosome.

What a joke, Firefly. Hillary went to one college for her degree. I'll have you know that Sarah Palin went to five colleges to get her degree. Think of the breadth and depth that that gave her, the expanded world view, as she ventured back and forth between Alaska, Idaho and Hawaii.

Sorry, but you can stop there...

Well, looks like some here can't put politics aside.

I'll agree if the dems had put a similar VP on their ticket - as they did with Mondale - the repubs would also be making hay of the situation. That's politics.

Again, I just don't understand some of the responses here.

Take Diane Feinstein, one of my senators. Although I don't agree with some of her views, I actually believe she's a pretty good senator with a pretty amazing story.

Would Hillary have become a DiFi without Bill? Doubtful.

So is it the Alaska part that has libs/progressives dismissing Palin so easily? A couple of you have addressed this; others have deflected the question by going into a McCain vs Obama rant...

We'll never know but one thing we can all agree on, and we might as well cut out the theoretical stuff, Palin just isn't anywhere near close to what any rational person would want for such a job. The same for McCain. The same for Bush.

Why on earth would anyone put politics aside? It's not as if we're voting for Miss Fruit Fly - 2008. It's a presidential campaign, for gosh sake!

There goes that darn group think stuff again. You guys need to get out more.

One of the dangers of the American media is an ignorant public buying into the ready made myth. Life isn't the Daily Show or a Satuday Night Live skit.

Anyway, maybe Palin should have hooked up with Bush. This would have qualified her to run for senator, correct?

And, if Obama does win the election, Michelle is obviously qualified to be our senator from Chicago in 2018 or so?

That's how these things work, right? See how silly it gets?

Why would you dismiss a woman's accomplishments during her marriage?
Hillary was quite accomplished prior to her marriage and continued to pursue her own interests after her marriage. The Clintons have always had a two career marriage, and there has been nothing second rate about Hillary's career. Her interests, and her accomplishments, are actually quite different than her husband's. Certainly, when he became president, she had to curtail her own political ambitions until he left office. But Hillary Clinton was on a fast track to high political office long before she ever met Bill. She had to leave Washington, D.C. and move to Arkansas when she married him--she was already moving in the circles of power and gave it up for him.

She was not elected to the Senate based on her husband's accomplishments--she fought a hard campaign and earned those votes. She was re-elected to her Senate seat by a wide majority--based on her record in the Senate.

You are not interested in an answer to the question you asked in your first post, A Lone Voice. You dismissed the rather lengthy answer I gave you because it doesn't fit in with your preconceived ideas about Hillary Clinton. She is definitely a self-made woman. She has worked hard for everything she's gotten. She is also a mother--but she never said that qualified her to be in public office.

There are lots of women like Sarah Palin in public office--women who went from being rather ordinary housewives to holding elected office. My congresswoman is one--and she represents more people than live in the state of Alaska. There is nothing that unusual about Palin's rise in Alaska, and she had help from the Republican National Committee to get elected governor, she didn't do this all on her own. And she did nothing to get herself on the ticket as VP.

A Lone Voice, your idea of "self-made" is very strange. It seems to exclude professional women who spend many years pursuing advanced degrees and working at real jobs in their profession before entering public life. That's quite a bias you have, A Lone Voice. Perhaps what really appeals to you about Palin is that she's so mediocre. Well, if you want mediocrity running our country, then Palin is your perfect candidate.

Hi

First, I think that US politics is way way too incestuous. You might as well bring back royalty.

But please, you're not really serious on this group think nonsense, are you, ALV? How you could say that with a straight face is unbelievable. 'group think' describes electing an idiot, not once but twice. 'group think' describes virtually a whole nation that won't deal with this horrendous mess it has created.

No, I actually used Diane Feinstein as an example in an earlier post as a self-made politician. Someone who didn't use her husband's name to get elected.

Simply, answer me this: would Hillary have been elected as a senator from New York the first time if she hadn't been married to Bill?

I'm not saying she wasn't accomplished. But I don't believe she would have been one of the two final dems running for their party's nomination if she wasn't married to Bill, if she hadn't been able to use that name recognition as First Lady to gain that initial senate seat.

Has she earned it since then? Sure. But she would have never been there if she hadn't been First Lady.

Honestly, do you think she would have been elected as Hillary Rodham, unknown? And this is why I can't understand why so many lib/progressive women are holding her up as their champion. I don't believe she earned it on her own as so many self-accomplished women have. She rode her husband's coattails into office. Or do we just ignore that?

Palin has earned the governship in Alaska on her own. If McCain is elected, will her four years as VP be any less important as Hillary's years as a senator?
Or First Lady?

Or will the same libs/progressives who support Hillary claim she didn't earn it?

While I don't like to describe myself with labels, I do lean right. That said, you won't find any argument here. Dude was a disaster. Created the biggest federal deficit of any administration ever. Destroyed capitalism. More money on social programs then any recent dem with that ridiculous prescription bill and other earmarks he didn't veto.

I just raise up when someone here says 'everybody knows,' cause it's a wide world out there. Some of us are in the minority here at A2K, but that's why I like it...

I used to be registered republican, but they no longer resemble anything conservative. I believe in small government, less government intrusion into our lives, and believe in a good defense.

Bush is no conservative, and McCain is now a flip-flopper who doesn't know what he wants.

I'm an extreme liberal when it comes to universal health care for our country, but I also believe is self-sufficiency except for those folks who need our help and assistance.

Our government has been broken for too long, and I'm not sure we will recover from this current crisis called the $700 billion dollar bailout.

We've lost capitalism under the republicans, and they're out to make sure we become a socialist republic in one month's time.

Scary.

ALV, why are you dismissing everything Hillary accomplished before she was ever First Lady?

Starting in college, this woman made a name for herself, and after college, she distinguished herself in every situation she was in, including at law school and afterward. Her husband may have been in public office, but Hillary was doing just fine in the private sphere and in non-elective public work. She was doing her own thing.

As First Lady she was clearly not a traditional First Lady--she was the first woman in that role to have a professional career and she continued to work while she was First Lady within the spheres of interest she had been involved in since law school.
Hillary wasn't an obscure or socialite or political wife before becoming First Lady, and as First Lady she didn't just host teas and receptions. She worked, and not just at fluff causes, she worked hard on major social issues, trying to implement changes.

Being First Lady gave Hillary name recognition when she initially ran for the Senate, but name recognition alone does not get one elected. She did have a record of achievement of her own that she ran on. She campaigned hard in Republican areas of NYS and she had to earn those votes. She had to fight the image of being a carpetbagger, which automatically caused many people to view her negatively at the outset of her campaign. She had to debate her Republican opponent and she was much better in the debates than he was. She convinced people, who might have been skeptical at first, to vote for her. Don't forget, she wasn't from NY, she had to build her own base. No one gave her a free pass because she had been First Lady. Hillary's fight for that Senate seat was considerably harder than anything Palin had to do to get elected governor of Alaska--do you know how many people live in NYS, and how many competing interests that represents? Hillary was not elected on the basis of her husband's name. If anything, she had to prove herself even more because of the name.

What do you mean that Palin earned the governorship "on her own"? No one becomes governor of any state "on their own", without help from some powerful political influences. Part of Palin's success was due to good timing--the FBI was closing in and other politicians were getting arrested and convicted.



Do you know of any other states where that much corruption is so wide-spread?

But Palin had gotten her hands in the mud at one point in her career too



Palin may have been the right person in the right place at the right time, but her rise to governor was not solely of her own making. The whole corruption business in Alaska was caving in and people were getting arrested and convicted--through nothing Palin did, she was not quite the great reformer she claims to be. But she was waiting in the wings to make her entrance.

You also can't compare Alaska to other states--it's economy is vastly different due to the oil industry. Eighty percent of Alaska's state revenue comes from oil.Because of this enormous oil wealth, Alaskans don't pay state-levied income or sales taxes, and have the lowest tax obligations in the country. When the state government needs more money, they just raise the taxes they charge the oil companies, and that's what Palin did. How many other governors would like to solve their budget problems that easily? 49? Palin doesn't need quite the executive skills that she would need to govern a state like California.

In time, Palin might prove herself to be a really good governor, and be really ready to move up onto that road to the White House. The problem is, she's not ready now. Her views on everything are rather confined to Alaska. Everything in her worldview revolves around Alaska. She may be doing a good job in Alaska. She understands Alaska. She should stay in Alaska, at least for now.

Many of Palin's alleged accomplishments are gross exaggerations, some were due to luck, and some may be due to her abilities. A lot of Palin's appeal seems based on her rather natural personality and her physical attractiveness, rather than more substantive attributes of intellect or ideas. When you put her record side by side with Hillary Clinton's, there is absolutely no comparison. Clinton has a solid 40 year record of accomplishment, and has demonstrated she has the personal abilities to lead--not to just act tough and fire people, but to lead, and she's been doing that since she was in college. There are many fine and accomplished women in public office, but I really don't think any of them really come near Clinton in terms of the combination of abilities she would have brought to the presidency. Clinton has great substance. Clinton is presidential material. Next to her, Palin looks and sounds like a "hockey mom" who is still running for president of the PTA.

There is just no comparison between the two women. Someone who wanted to see Clinton in office, for reasons other than gender, would not really embrace Sarah Palin or be happy to see her on a national ticket. She does not represent the best qualified candidate for the job. She does not come even close. She is a token--and that is an insult to the abilities of all women.

Could you elaborate on why you consider such views to be bullshit, dys?

Exactamundo.

Comparing Palin (a relative unknown who never sought national office but was selected to "generate excitement" in a floundering campaign) with Hillary (a talented political force who ran and received 18 million votes) is a silly comparison.

The better comparison is Palin vs. Geraldine.

So the question is... why do you support Palin so mindlessly when you opposed Geraldine as an unqualified political gimmick?

There's two reasons why libs/progressives dismiss Palin, and both are really rather straightforward:

1) Her politics are everything we fear and reject. That alone should be reason enough to understand our distaste of her candidature.
2) Her experience is skimpy: she was mayor of a tiny town, and governor of one of the states with the smallest population in the country - for a bare two years. Thats it.

On #2, of course, you can argue: what about Obama? And then others can argue about how he's been a law professor before being a state senator and US senator, etc. But all of that would be beyond the point, because you asked why we dismiss Palin. Obama has #1 going for him: we agree with him on most things. Palin has neither any major views we like, nor any experience to be impressed by. So we dismiss her. What's the big mystery?

I realise that it's more comforting for you to pretend that we dont like here because gosh darn it, we just dont like them strong Republican women. But it's really quite straightforward. As the last poster just said, it's like the Dems selecting Geraldine Ferraro. I dont know how old you were at the time or what views you had, but with your current views you'd have dismissed her for the same reasons we dismiss Palin, I'm sure.

Most of the folks I know are discussing her merits without reference to her gender, so you're kinda off the rails here at the very beginning.

They discuss her political views.
They discuss her experience.
They discuss her reputation.
They discuss whether she is trustworthy.

Any man selected as McCain's running mate would be undergoing the same scrutiny.

Partisan politics aside, there is also the matter of Palin's views on social issues, many of which are shaped by her religious views.

She does not support a woman's right to choose an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. The right to choose, and the protection offerred by Roe vs Wade, is a major issue for many women voters, and certainly for many socially liberal pro-choice men as well--regardless of party affiliation. Palin has said she would like to see Roe vs Wade overturned.

She advocates the teaching of Creationism, and the use of taxpayer's money to do so, even though this is a specifically religious educational topic.

She does not believe that global warming is related to human activity and the effects of human behavior on climate.


Her views on wildlife, drilling, and natural resources are at odds with many environmentalists and those voters concerned with environmental factors.

She does not support sex education programs in public schools unless abstinence-only programs are also included.

She opposes gay marriage, although she has supported giving some protections to domestic same sex partners.

She blurs the line of separation between church and state.
In October of 2007, she signed the "Christian Heritage Week" Proclamation which "reminds Alaskans of the role Christianity has played in our rich heritage." She also declared the week of November 18-25, 2007 as Bible Week in Alaska, stating that "the Bible has profoundly influenced art, literature, music, and codes of law."
This is active promotion of Christianity by the state, which would bother civil libertarians, and those who believe government must remain secular, and this issue crosses lines of political party affiliation.

Her religious views influence her perspective on policy decisions and how she sees her role in government.



Suffice to say that many do not see the Iraq War as being "a task that is from God", or that building a gas pipeline is "God's will". Palin's policy decisions may be heavily influenced by her religious beliefs, and this does not sit well with many people from both parties.

She strongly supports gun rights and the NRA. These positions are not popular in areas of the country where gun violence is a significant social problem--regardless of party affiliation.

Palin is very far to the right on social issues and her views on these matters would not be appealing to more moderate Democrats and Republicans, let alone those who are liberal. Many mainstream Republicans who are fiscal conservatives, might not share Palin's views on social issues and would not support her if such things were of paramount concern to them, nor would Democrats or Independents if these issues were significant in their thinking.

So, added to Palin's flimsy experience for the job of VP (considerably less than Geraldine Ferraro had when she ran for VP), her questionable record while in public office, and the ambivalent feelings she arrouses in many working women who see her as neglecting the needs of her own minor children (and, in that senses, not a good role model), her extreme views on social issues and her religious bias really turn many people off, particularly those who are socially liberal.

So, I think it is fair to conclude that different segments of the voting population might reject Palin for a number of different reasons--regardless of party affiliation or gender issues.

I truly understand the motivation to not support someone like Palin based simply on her politics.

In fact, that's how it should be, gender aside.

But as accomplished as Hillary might have been as a college and law school graduate, there are many such accomplished women in America.

Can any of you really, honestly say Hillary was elected to her senate seat without the name recognition provided to her by her husband? I guess this is why I'm puzzled by lib/progressive women claiming her as their champion. There are women politicians in this country who didn't need their husbands or dads to give them the boost up to start their political careers.

But I guess you bet on what you think is going to be the winning horse.

I try to stay honest in my responses here, although I guess sometimes in the heat of a writing a spanking response everyone likes to make their point.

With that, address this question A2Kers:

If McCain is elected, will Palin's four years as VP be any less important as Hillary's years as a senator?
Or First Lady?

Or will the same libs/progressives who support Hillary claim Palin didn't really earn VP, and it shouldn't count?

This is assuming a lot, of course. McCain gets elected, and doesn't run for a second term.

Which would make a Palin/Clinton matchup in 2012 likely.

Speculation? Sure, but isn't that what we do best here?