Why Sarah Palin scares the heck out of me

This has been a strange election cycle for me. Being far away has its good and bad points- on the one hand, I am not being bombarded by election news 24 hours a day, on the other hand, it is a bit of a challenge for me to feel really informed about what is going on and I usually don’t hear the news for a few days after it has happened.

I was able to participate in the Colorado caucus (and cast my vote for Hillary Clinton) before I left. Even though I supported Hillary, I was only a little bit disappointed when Obama was chosen as the nominee and quickly changed camps (I don’t really have that whole Hillary-anger that I heard about). I think that Barak has proven himself as a good candidate and has the potential to be a great president.

The convention in which Obama was officially chosen was, of course, in Denver, my hometown. It was strange to see the attention given to my city when I am so far away. Because of my limited internet access (so much to download, so little time!), I didn’t watch the speech, but did hear about it and read about it online. Annoyingly, I lost CNN right before the Olympics and it has not come back for the election, so I have to piece news together from what I can get online, Newsweek (free delivery of which has now been stopped- anyone want to buy me a subscription of Newsweek for Christmas?), and the internet. Here is what I know:

Sarah Palin scares the hell out me and not in that cute pit-bull wearing lipstick kind of way.

Or at least what her nomination for Vice-President represents to the country scares the hell out of me. I’ll be honest, in the past, I have expressed some amount of admiration for John McCain. Not enough admiration to actually vote for him, but in the 2000 election, I considered him the least repugnant of the Republican candidates; he was more independent, more center leaning and not such a dumbass as W. Bush. In 2008, this is no longer the case and his selection of Mrs. Palin epitomizes his shift in my mind from “not so bad” to “very, very scary.”

One thing about McCain that I liked, was that he seemed to not really get along with the evangelical far right of his party. He has been known to speak critically of people like Pat Robertson and Colorado’s own James Dobson. He seemed to be a conservative in the old sense of the word- small government, low taxes, get out of my business- and his own religious beliefs (unlike the attention given to Obama’s Christianity and the fear that he might actually be Muslim, oh the humanity!) have pretty much been out of the spotlight. But in this election, he has worked harder and harder to try to court the terrifying right and convince them that he is a worthy follow up to the born again president they helped elect twice.

And Sarah Palin is a big part of that. She is young, inexperienced and a woman. These things can be seen as plus or minus for her depending on your perspective, but what is clear: she is a Christian. And not just a Christian, but an evangelical, the end is coming, speak in tongues type of Christian. I don’t personally have anything against Christians (even crazy fundamentalist ones) as long as they don’t have a problem with me and let me live my life. The problem is, of course, that many of these types of Christians are not happy to let me live my life and instead want to impose their values on me. So putting Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the presidency scares the shit out of me.

Ok, so that’s my gut reaction. Rationally, I also don’t like Sarah Palin because I don’t think that she is the best person for the job. I honestly think that I might be a more qualified candidate for national office than she is. I am also young (ok, too young to be president yet), inexperienced and a woman. I at least have had a passport since I was 12. Sure, I’ve never been governor of a very sparsely populated state, but I have met some actual Israelis and Palestinians (in Israel even). I honestly don’t know if the rumors about her low SAT score are true, but if they are- I got a 1300. Not that I want to be vice-president, I’m just saying.

Luckily, I was in Tirana last week when my absentee ballot arrived, so I was able to vote and send it back quickly and you better believe that I didn’t send back a vote for the hockey mom.