McCain's Horrible Judgment
by
Arkady
09/24/2008, 11:57 AM #
I won't post about yet another bold-faced John McCain lie. There are nearly enough people on this forum monitoring and publicizing his daily dishonesties to keep up with them, at this point. Instead, I want to point out his terrible judgment. McCain said, of Palin, "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."
Now, it's possible that McCain was just lying, as usual. Maybe he recognizes that statement as utterly ludicrous but said it anyway, in the hopes of deceiving some particularly credulous audience member. But that's the less disconcerting of the options. If he merely lied, yet again, to try to fake his ticket's way into office, at least we could hope that those lies were covering up a shrewd understanding of the real world. If, instead, he was being forthright and honest, then the man's judgment is so poor as to be downright delusional.
First, it's worth pointing out that McCain is no expert on energy, nor does he claim to be. So, he's doesn't have the tools to make an independent judgment about the relative expertise of those who might be experts. It would be like asking you or me to judge who is the best violinist in the country, if we're not musically inclined ourselves. We might know enough to spot who ISN'T a very good violinist (the person who keeps hitting obvious bad notes), but other than that we'd defer to the musical experts. If someone is first chair in what's generally regarded as the world's best orchestra or someone is the best-selling soloist in the world, we might take that as a sign that he might be the best violinist in the country, but that wouldn't be an independent judgment.
So, on what basis does McCain make the claim? Are there lots of experts in the energy industry who claim she knows more about energy than anyone else in the country? Is that what McCain's relying on? No. Is she in some position, analogous to first chair in an elite orchestra, where we could assume other experts had deemed her the most knowledgable in the country? No. She was once picked as an ethics head for a small-state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but that's about it.
Not only does McCain have no sane reason to think she could possibly be the most knowledgable person in the country on the subject of energy, even non-experts have plenty of reason to think she isn't. For starters, she doesn't have the pedigree. She has an unrelated undergraduate degree from a non-competitive school, followed by years as a sports reporter and small-town politician. At most, she's got about five years of professional experience that would have educated her about energy, and most of that would be indirect education, at best. There are people in this country who have multiple PhDs from the world's best universities, dealing with energy-related subjects -- truly brilliant people who have spent literally decades focusing very closely on energy issues.
If McCain really thinks Palin accelerated past them with a few years of occassional experience with energy and gas politics, he's a lunatic. It's especially bizarre when you look at her obvious "wrong notes" when discussing the subject, such as repeatedly making false claims about Alaska's proportional energy contribution:
<link>
None of this is to insult Palin. As far as I know, she never claimed to be an expert on energy, much less one of the most knowledgable people in the country. Her limited, oil-centered, and sophomoric understanding of the subject is the kind of amateurish inkling we expect from politicians. It's hard to be a successful politician and one of the country's most knowledgable people about ANY subject, because they're both full-time jobs. It's an insult of McCain, for having worse judgment "than probably anyone else in the United States of America."
