Medical alert: Tory MP hit by Obamania

Verity

Well, Davies has shown that he has no loyalty to NATO or the Conservative cause, so the voters can let him go at the next election.

Gibson was truly stupid to tackle Governor Palin on Russia - which is probably, after Canada, that she knows the most about. It's 30 miles offshore Alaska. There are endless talks going on about all kinds of issues - fishing rights, shipping rights, airspace rights. My guess, there are Russian operatives in Alaska and my further guess, the Governor's office knows who they are.

Palin is far, far more seasoned in foreign policy and "nuances" than stupid little know-it-all David Davies. Pity he has shown such contempt for the next Vice President - and later, President - of the United States. As the Americans would say: "Dumb move."

David T

Oh, I thought it was Dave Davis, of the useless bye-election, for a moment there.

Bob Latchford

Again, one can only smile at Ms Phillips lambasting the 'smears' of Palin after reading 12 months of attacks on Obama....

....I would also be keen to see why Ms Phillips thinks that Cuba is "our enemy"

Ian C

According to Iain Dale it wass the David Davis of Monmouth not the one pictured...!

Herbert Atwell

I wouldn't have described David TC DavIEs as 'the heart of the Conservative Party'.

You wrote this about the other David DavIs didn't you? And then edited as if it still made sense when you'd corrected yourself, didn't you?

ndm

The sentiment is taking some time to cross the pond, but in his latest column David Brooks expresses a sentiment increasingly common among influential conservative columnists in the US:

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that "the people" will take on and destroy "the establishment" is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

I would have thought it would by now be obvious to the author of "All Must Have Prizes" that Sarah Palin is not ready for high national office.

Reid of America

Bill Clinton had zero foreign policy experience when he was elected president. Fortunately for Clinton he was a Democrat so the media ignored the issue.

ndm

The most important tell, missing from any transcript, that Sarah Palin was coached to "within an inch of her life" is the stunned multi-second silence which greeted the question about the Bush Doctrine.

ndm

Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post:

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

If conservative commentators keep falling off the McCain bandwagon at this rate Melanie Phillips might be sitting up there alone with McCain and Palin.

Hillblooger

It was not so much the technical admissibility of Georgia into NATO that was the issue here, it is the ever-simplistic analysis of Ms Palin, i.e., it's a member, heck we go to war if it's in trouble.

As you very well know, politics can not be codified in terms as simplistic as that.

In that sense, Ms Palin, with her so simplistic view of things complex is totally inelligible for the job she's applying for, in other words, she's just totally out of her depth.

David McAdam

Seems Davie's blind spot is perceiving the foreign policies of countries that invade neighbours with impunity, and of Islamic extremists whose foreign policy is to reject negotiations unless it involves the other party's total surrender to their rigid version of Islam, and until then to actively and persistently attack with threats and also mass murder with the aim of destroying emerging, developing and also long established democracies throughout the world. And to supplant these with the rule of Islam.

Adam B.

Bob, I would have thought that a tyrannical dictatorship, which recently underwent the "coronation" of Raul Castro, with political prisoners languishing in prison, which allies itself with other assorted tyrannies and nutjobs, was not considered an ally of a liberal democracy, a democracy of which you take full advantage.

ndm

Bill Reid mocks Bill Clinton's foreign policy experience.

Bill Clinton's two years studying Government at Oxford certainly counts for more than Palin's refuelling stop in Ireland and her view over the border into Iraq.

By the time he was elected President, Bill Clinton had been Attorney General of Arkansas for two years and Governor for ten years. Bill Clinton was vastly more experienced when he ran for office than Sarah Palin is now.

Frankly, the more we find out about her the more people recognize just how inexperienced and underqualified she is for the role of Vice-President.

Verity

ndm - remind me again, Obama's experience in foreign affairs is what, exactly? Speaking behind a lectern decorated with a fake (and illegal) Presidential seal to a bunch of students in Berlin who had turned up for the promised free beer and concert afterwards? The ace ability to read off the teleprompter and look puzzled and uneasy when answering questions without one?

This qualifies Obama to be chief executive in what way? Also, this "citizens' militia", which "will be as well-funded as the US Military" - what is that for, exactly? To fight who? Is he going to abolish the police forces? What is this citizens' militia as big as the Military going to do, actually? It certainly sounds sinister ...

FinanceDoc

Bill Clinton's two years studying Government at Oxford

Ah, that British sense of comedy.

I watched a biopic of Palin over the weekend.

1) Former member of the Alaska Gas and Oil Regulatory Commission
2) Former city councilwoman
3) Former Mayor
4) Current Governor of the largest (geographically) and wealthiest (by natural resources) state in the union
5) Took an ethical stand against a corrupt official on the Alaska Gas and Oil Regulatory Commission with the extraordinary step of resigning her position
6) As Governor, went after corrupt legislators resulting in prison sentences or indictments for ten of them
7) Renegotiated a multi-billion dollar contract with the oil companies in what had been a lousy deal for the people of Alaska
8) Cut Alaska public spending by nearly half

Thank heaven the effete elite in London don't get to vote in our elections.

Wilfred

To ndm:

One thing that is now obvious is that your opinion on pretty much any topic you comment on is simply not worth the time required to read it.

Conservative Cabbie

ndm - congratulations on naming two conservatives unhappy at the Palin pick out of millions who are thrilled - thankyou so much for your compelling arguements.

Conservative Cabbie

Well said FinanceDoc.

I thought I'd try something similar with Barack Obama:

1.Voted 4 times to kill babies born alive.

2. Er, actually that about covers the totality of his political achievments.

Matthew Blott

I wonder how many of those posting on here would go marching to the Army recruitment office to defend the former Soviet satelites should they join NATO.

Adam B.

ndm, in case you hadn't noticed, the choice is between Obama (no experience) and McCain (tons of it.) Why are you going on about Clinton?

Verity

Conservative Cabbie - well said, but may I add one thing? The vote was on whether babies who clung onto life after being aborted should be killed.

Obama voted yes.

steve

Conservative Cabbie: Here are a few more conservatives who have expressed concern about the Palin selection: George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, and Ross Douthat.

Bill M

Cheney had all the foreign policy experience one could ask for in a vice-president. How thrilled are the liberals with what that experience has wrought?

Nick Kaplan

Bob Latchford reveals just how much of a troll he is when he states “I would also be keen to see why Ms Phillips thinks that Cuba is "our enemy".”
Let me give you just a few reasons why any free and rational nation should despise Cuba and condemn it as an enemy. Its government is a brutal dictatorship that took over the country in a coup, Castro and his buddies killed between 5,000 and 18,000 political opponents in summary executions, they use the education system to indoctrinate children, free speech and free assembly are both essentially banned, most citizens are forced to live on minimal rations and must queue for hours just to get them, there exists a sort of currency apartheid and several thousand citizens have been forced to migrate whilst those remaining are essentially unable to leave.

Nick Kaplan

ndm; firstly I can assure you that studying government and politics at oxford is in no way preparation for dealing with foreign affairs as President of the US. Secondly, I wonder if you are aware that Palin is not running for the Presidency as your post seems to imply (by comparing her to Clinton who was) she is running to be McCain’s VP and McCain has demonstrated his sound judgement on foreign affairs on numerous occasions. And don’t retort that McCain is old so we have to assume he will die at any minute, first Reagan was 73 (a year old then McCain) when he won his second term, Secondly he will be President so I would imagine he will have access to some fairly decent Doctors and finally he has good genes with his 96 year old mother still looking fairly perky.

colin powis

The coming Obama meltdown...the Republican War MACHINE is coming to town to DECONSTRUCT the IMPOSTER OBAMA...expect a Dukakis like Landslide of 15 states or less!

Verity

Andrew Sullivan's a conservative? Who knew? He used to be and then he got into gay marriage in a major, major way for two years and this obsession appears to have tilted him over to the left. As in far left. I haven't read anything by Charles Krauthammer that would indicate he has changed his mind on Governor Palin.

I do find it alarming how the one-worlder, far left press/tv in the United States are forming a massive fireblock around Obama, though.

ndm

Charles Krauthammer writes about Sarah Palin:

-- Nonetheless, the choice of Palin remains deeply problematic.

-- Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack. ... Palin is not ready.

-- And this was even before Palin's inevitable liabilities began to pile up -- inevitable because any previously unvetted neophyte has "issues." The kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

Whatever Verity may or may not have read this is not what I would call a ringing endorsement.

ndm

Nick Kaplan writes:

-- I can assure you that studying government and politics at oxford is in no way preparation for dealing with foreign affairs as President of the US.

This is hokum. Studying government and politics at Oxford is certainly useful preparation for the US Presidency and it is dishnonest to claim otherwise. It is certainly not sufficient preparation but it is vastly more than Sarah Palin has. Indeed, I would not be surprised if the average high schooler in a New York or Los Angeles public school has more personal experience dealing with non-Americans than does Sarah Palin.

John McCain's judgment has failed him on many occasions. He made the wrong judgment in 2001 when he said the US should attack an Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11. He made the wrong judgment in 2003 when he supported abandoning the war in Afghanistan in favor of attacking Iraq. He made the wrong judgment in 2008, in his first major decision as putative President, when he selected the untested, underqualified and unvetted Sarah Palin as his running mate. John McCain has bad judgment.

Roy

How often have we found that very astute statesmen have made profound mistakes, and also been found wanting in their global understanding? Didn’t the Tibetan’s have a scheme of selecting their leader by chance in a lottery type pick when only a child? Since the Tibetan elders are known to be very wise indeed, why then should we be over concerned by the possibility of Sarah Palin getting a ticket to the White House? My humble opinion is that she would make an excellent job as second mate or president if called upon, than any in the near vicinity, or trying to be, at the present moment.

Conservative Cabbie

I don't understand why Sarah Palin needs bundles of foreign Policy experience.
Barack Obama was seen as not having any, so to get round that he appointed Joe Biden as his VP.
Palin isn't running for President. She can take the time to learn at the feet of John McCain and should the worst happen, she can do as Obama did and appoint people with FP experience should she need it.

Of course, her lack of FP experience is just a smokescreen, peoples dislike of Palin is all about intellectual snobbery.

E S Blofeld

"The Newsbusters blog has provided the evidence of how ABC News edited the transcript of its interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson to create the misleading impression that she was an ignorant warmonger ..."

Where's the electoral downside in this?

Ted Tedford

David Davies needs to read a bit more, and then get a new spine. There are *already* former Soviet states in NATO, so we are already bound to defend them in the event of a Russian attack. What would he say to a Russia that sought to 'protect' 'ethnic Russians' in Estonia, or conducted another massive computer-network attack? Or conducts energy bullying of Poland? If I were Putin, I'd infer from the hoo-ha that the collective response from Europe's chancellories would be "Just a little local difficulty."

Besides, whether or not you intend to deliver, ruling out military action when it is specifically provided in the treaty articles of a military alliance is just bad diplomacy. The collective cringe by European governments over Georgia's accession is typical of the abnegation of responsibility, and further evidence of their fundamental lack of seriousness about global security issues. When you *cannot* act, it is easy to dress up your inpotence as a moral principle; but, once the habit of equivocating is acquired, it is hard to relinquish - even in the cannon's mouth. What's the point of a military alliance when the member governments are pledged never to use military force?

If I were Georgia or the Ukraine, I'd forget the eunuchs in NATO and seek bilateral ties with the US, or membership of an alliance of democracies, for which a precondition of membership would be a decent and useable military.

Sergey

ndm, Charles Krauthammer is in no position to judge Palin objectively. He is self-proclamed atheist; worse, in reality he is anti-theist, who rationalise his inability to believe in God as a demonstrable truth; no wonder, he sees Palin, openly religious woman, as a poor pick. All these rants about "unpreparedness" are silly: nobody can be "prepared" to this job. We can judge only character, fortitude, moral virtues and principles. In these departments, Palin is OK.

Nick Kaplan

ndm; I would love to know on what basis you believe that studying government and politics at oxford is of any practical use for an aspiring President, at the moment what you have said is just an assertion?

Also you mean that you believe McCain made the wrong decision about invading Iraq in 2001 not that he did. I think that it was a wise decision to bring down a murdering tyrant which was however poorly executed. However, McCain has been advising different tactics practically since the beginning (the same tactics that have proven recently successful). In fact if the government had listened to McCain earlier it is very likely that the war would have gone far better and, judging by its initial popularity (it used to have majority support) I doubt it would still be such an electoral liability.

To say McCain made the wrong judgement with the Palin pick is just wilfully delusional. Since the pick McCain has won a lead in the polls, he has a 15 point lead with independents (who will decide the election), large numbers of so called conservative democrats have switched their allegiance to McCain and he has a +20 lead in electoral college votes according to RCP, this decision was an act of political genius. Palin is committed, experienced (more so than any other candidate anyway), honourable, effective and popular with the electorate.

Your problem with Palin is like the media’s i.e. it is based entirely on your sycophantic and irrational love for the fraud; Obama.

Conservative Cabbie

Ndm. In two significant instances, John McCain has shown excellent judgement.
1. He voted against reopening the embassy in Beirut because he feared terrorist attacks. He lost the vote but was proven to be right when hundreds of US Marines were killed by a terrorist bomb.
2. He was a lone voice calling for the surge in Iraq. When it finally happened, it was a massive success and has virtually won the war.

As far as I'm concerned, John McCain seems incredibly insightful when it comes to foreign affairs.

Verity

Conservative Cabbie - I'm glad you brought up the bombing in Beirut - not only because your point was apt, but because it reminds us of the diametrically different standards of honour between a civilised, developed West with its roots in the Jewish prophets and Christianity, and this particular cult of Islam. What kind of coward drives a flaming truck, laden with bombs into a building where there are over 100 fighting men sleeping?

Oh the brave revolutionaries for Allah!

Conservative Cabbie

Thankyou Verity.

With a weak EU and an impotent UN, all that the world has to rely on for protection is the US. It is shameful that that is the case but there you are.
The last person we need in the whitehouse is an inexperienced appearser, we need serious cojones to deal with radical islam, the growth of nuclear powers and a belligerant Russia.

Liberals will say that the world is a more dangerous place because of Bush's foray in Iraq. I disagree. There is no more Saddam, Libya stopped developing nuclear weapons and al-Qaeda is almost destroyed.

Thank god for George W Bush.

Conservative Cabbie

I thought this was hilarious. The Huffington Post contesting a book by David Freddoso speak to Barack Obama's experience in relation to previous Presidents.
According to them, Obama is more experienced than:
George W Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Dwight Eisenhower
Harry Truman
Herbert Hoover
Woodrow Wilson
William Howard Taft.

The measure they use is time spent in politics, not the type of experience. So they are comparing time spent as State Senator with for example winning the war in Europe (Eisenhower), running the 5th largest economy in the world (Reagan), rebuilding Europe following the 1st World War (Hoover), being vice-president (Truman) along with various gubernatorial positions.
Of all the ridiculous claims about Obama i've seen, this is probably the most ridiculous.

Robbit

ndm ...
Would you mind please reading what Palin _actually said_ in the Gibson interview, for example, and point out for us the signs of "brashness and sudden decisiveness". I am afraid I have missed it. Or do you just parrot what other people say without yourself actually analysing what Palin has ever said herself?

Robbit

Appart from the fact, as several have mentioned, that Palin is not running for president. What prey tell was Regan's "prior foreign ploicy ecperience"? and yet the USSR was soon wetting its pants and he helped win the Cold War and finally precipitate the collapse of soviet communism. How wicked and incompetent of him.

ndm

Robbit -

I would never use the phrase "brashness and sudden decisiveness" - I quoted David Brooks as should have been obvious if you knew how to read.

Before becoming President of the United States, Ronald Reagan had been governor of California for eight years. California has the fifth largest econonomy in the World. California is the most populous state in the United States. California has three cities with more people than there are in the whole of Alaska. In other words, governing California gave Ronald Reagan the actual experience of government Sarah Palin can only pretend to have from governing some rural backwater.

Ian Miller

"Apparently, 20/20 vision consists of talking to enemies such as Cuba Iran and Syria."

Ms. Phillips is excoriating Mr Davies for suggesting talking to these countries. Is she really unaware that Britain has full diplomatic relations will all of these countries, and as such has a continuous dialogue with all of them?

Unless and until serious consideration of terminating such diplomatic contact, criticising someone for suggesting discussions with them is really rather surreal.

Adam B.

ndm, what experience does Obama have?

Byron in Wahroonga

****David Brooks expresses a sentiment increasingly common among influential conservative columnists in the US****

That 'sentiment' means precisely nothing, NDM. Palin's freshness has got a lot of the conservative establishment quite rattled. Think 'A Star Is Born.' They don't understand her appeal and try to rationalise their discombobulation by claiming she hasn't earned preference. It's always thus with the older generation.

Byron in Wahroonga

***....the kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record....***

'The kid'? You're describing Governor Palin's son Trig as an 'inevitable liability', NDM?