Memo to David Gergen
David:
Let me preface what I’m about to say by telling you that I am a fan.
Your knowledge of public issues is encyclopedic and your insights into the major challenges facing the United States today are fascinating.
Although partisan Republicans and Democrats may look askance at you for having served President Clinton after having served Presidents Reagan and Bush 1, I’ve always admired your willingness to use your considerable talents in service to country irrespective of an individual president’s party.
Last night though, you frankly perturbed me. You were talking about concerns you had about the Republicans’ nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for Vice President. There are, of course, legitimate concerns that can be raised about Palin. While her experience as an administrative decision maker surpass those of Senator Barack Obama, her resume admittedly has “thin” areas. And she has no experience in foreign policy.
But you expressed concern that Governor Palin hadn’t been to many other countries, stating that this, in effect, marked her as one lacking curiosity about the world. You went on to say that Harvard University and the University of Oklahoma, among other institutions, are today encouraging their undergraduate students to spend time living in other countries as a means of becoming well-rounded persons in a world dealing with globalization.
I’m glad that colleges and universities are doing that, David, and had I been able to afford going overseas back during my undergraduate days or for most of my life, I would have loved to have done just that.
But you see, David, while going to college full-time at The Ohio State University and later to Trinity Lutheran Seminary for graduate work leading to ordination as a pastor, I worked between twenty and thirty-five hours a week. When, during my sophomore year, the opportunity arrived for me to do a study tour of the former Soviet Union, I looked at my bank book and decided that, though I would have truly loved to have made the trip, I couldn’t afford it.
As the years have rolled on, though I have served three different congregations, I’m told capably, averaging working 60-hours a week, while my wife has worked roughly the same number of hours, foreign travel hasn’t fit in with our family budget.
I doubt that my experience is rare. It isn’t that I have ever lacked curiosity about the world or that I haven’t wanted to understand other cultures and peoples. In fact, I’ve always been deeply curious about the world. But as a member of the lower middle class, I knew that travels to other places would necessarily be in that category called “hopes deferred.”
I was forty-six before I had the chance to take my first trip abroad. The high school choir in which our two kids performed went to England for a ten-day concert tour. My wife and I went as chaperones. A year-and-a-half later, after a lot of scrimping and saving of the income my wife and I gained from my income as a pastor and her full-time job as a school librarian and part-time work as a Hallmark Store clerk, my daughter and I visited her pen pal in Germany. I had the privilege of preaching during worship in a Lutheran congregation in Schleswig-Holstein where I was able to tell folks, in December 2001, how grateful we Americans were for their prayers, support, encouragement, and love. While there, we also went briefly to Denmark.
That was the last foreign excursion I took and I dearly hope that one day, I can visit places like Namibia, for which I was an advocate–through the Free Namibia Emphasis of the former American Lutheran Church–when the apartheid regimes in South Africa held it by the throat. I hope to visit France, whose language I learned in high school and whose artwork, cathedrals, and countryside I want to see. I want to go to Japan, with its industrious people and fast-pace. I hope to go to Israel, where I believe Jesus lived, died, and rose. I want to see for myself what Palestinians, Zimbabweans, Russians, and others perceive about our world and see what they experience each day.
But all of those hopes will have to await more opportune times. For now, I strive to inform myself of the life of the world beyond US shores and interact with as many folks from other places as I can.
That may not pass muster with you, David. It may mark me as one lacking curiosity. But my circumstances will admit of no foreign travel for awhile.
From what I’ve learned of Sarah Palin over the past several months, I surmise that her background is a lot like mine and a lot like that of many Americans. Nose to the grindstone, living each day, working to educate themselves and later, to provide for their families, they can’t always hop on a jet to visit or spend a year in other places, much as they might want to do so.
Your comment, whether intentional or not, was elitist, David. It wasn’t worthy of you.
I’m still a fan, by the way. You can’t be right all the time. I know that from personal experience.
Mark Daniels
[I regularly and irregularly blog here.]
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23 Responses to “Memo to David Gergen”
Mark, Having not yet gone overseas myself, I sympathize. But I guess as long as we only have rich folk to pick our presidents from, we might as well expect them to spend some of that money going overseas.
Thanks for the comment.
This is exactly my point. The unspoken assumption of what David Gergen said last evening–and it truly was unintentional, I believe–is that our President and Vice President have to have acquired or inherited millions or have spent many years on congressional committees traveling abroad. Not all capable, reasonably cosmopolitan people in this country have such opportunities.
Sarah Palin may in fact, not be qualified for the office to which she has been nominated. But she cannot be fairly accused of a lack of curiosity because she hasn't had the money to take foreign trips or to live abroad.
By the way, during the 2000 campaign, I remember people in the media being critical of George W. Bush for his failure to travel abroad, except to visit his father when George H.W. Bush served as special envoy to the People's Republic of China. That, I thought, was an entirely fair condemnation. Mr. Bush had the advantages of money and opportunity that Sarah Palin hasn't had for most of her life. He could have traveled extensively around the world. His failure to do so represented an apparent and disturbing lack of curiosity.
The point is that candidates for the presidency should only be held accountable for how they handled the opportunities they have had and you shouldn't have to be a millionaire to run for President.
David Gergen is one of about three pundits who are dialed in, thoughtful, sometimes controversial, quietly introspective and wise..
I'd like to see more of him and less of bimbos who have sold their souls to the party-line and sensationalistic mumbo-jumbo. Stewart nailed three of them last night (you know who you are.) That's what happens when you don't think about what comes out of your mouth night after night…you're going to trip up sometime.
Gergen doesn't do this. His brain is always switch in the “on” position before his mouth opens..
There is a web site called On the Issues. It provides summaries of any stands that a candidate/politician has taken on various categories of issues and provides the quotes to back it up. For Sarah Palin there is nothing under Foreign Policy, Immigration or Welfare and Poverty.
There is a web site called On the Issues. It provides summaries of any stands that a candidate/politician has taken on various categories of issues and provides the quotes to back it up. For Sarah Palin there is nothing under Foreign Policy, Immigration or Welfare and Poverty.
There is a web site called On the Issues. It provides summaries of any stands that a candidate/politician has taken on various categories of issues and provides the quotes to back it up. For Sarah Palin there is nothing under Foreign Policy, Immigration or Welfare and Poverty.
Jim spam!
Hey, Jim, is there a web site called 'On the Issues'? I'm just yanking your chain, man.
No doubt Palin is thin on foreign policy, as I said. That may be something we would expect of mayors and governors who haven't fun for federal office before. It may also incite genuine concern about her fitness for the vice presidency.
But it's illogical to conclude that simply because one hasn't had the financial wherewithal to go abroad that one lacks curiosity about the world.
That simply, was my point.
Sil:
As I mentioned several times in the piece, I like Gergen. I began by telling him that I'm a fan. I feel that he got this one wrong.
(I also admitted that I get things wrong. I will tell you that doing so is not an infrequent occurrence on my part.)
Mark
Hmm. The same thing happened to me as happened to you, Jim.
Well, Gergen is human…thankfully..
We all get things wrong now and then. But maybe he didn't on Palin? The jury is still out and will be for years to come..if and until she takes the Oval Office.
Gergen is just a pleasure to watch. I can feel my blood pressure dropping when lo and behold, out of a pundit's mouth comes wisdom..
Hmmm. I noticed that the same thing with the triple post happened to Chris in another thread. A hiccup in Disqus tonight?
Jim,
Yep… burping of da servers!
Mark,
The problem with your post is the limits of identity politics. So, you relate to her hardscrabble life. Fine. But you aren't running for VP. She is.
That she hasn't been abroad isn't bad in itself. It's that she has no position on anything of national or international significance. She simply never prepared for this job.
I agree very much that there's nothing wrong with an individual who has not traveled abroad. Sometimes it signals a lack of interest; sometimes it signals no opportunity. However, I believe it IS a serious lack of experience for a possible President of the United States. (Sorry, but I am thinking of her this way.) Foreign policy is an area that the executive branch has almost exclusive control over. So far there's no strong evidence that Palin has previously ever had any significant interest in what could end up being one of her most important tasks. It is a limitation. Of course, there might be tons of other exceptional things about Palin that make up for this.
Sarah Palin had the advantage of DIPA,( dept of international programs abroad) or the equivalent- which only add the extra living expense abroad. I had two friends who did that, who unfortunately became victims of terrorists over Locherbie and never got to graduate with us. She also, like myself was part of the burgeoning IT generation and most likely an early adopter.. So the excuse she couldn't see the world realistically or virtually is moot. She also bounced around a few schools, which is no easy financial thing to do. Most people make it to Europe at least once within their first two decades.
If its due to financial hardship, that's one thing. But if she's another “America Firster” that's a different can of peas. Will we be serving “Freedom toast” and “Freedom Fries” again in the US Senate cafeteria? There is a distinct advantage at having an internationalist like Biden as VP as opposed to someone who hasn't a clue about what other nations viewpoints' are. Our international image is damaged enough from W's Cowboy Diplomacy and Cheney's underhanded machinations.
With all due respect, I have to disagree, at least in part, with the premise that lack of funds is the primary reason for not travelling. I know from my own experiences in the last few years that it's possible to make a very inexpensive trip abroad if you really want to go. It's just a matter of priorities. I went to London for 10 days in 2004 with 5 of my friends and none of us spent more than $800 on airfare and accommodations. Last year we all went to Mexico and again spent less than $800/person on the basic expenses. None of us are wealthy. We have to save up all year to take these trips, but we take our time looking for the cheapest fares and best deals. A friend of mine who spent the first year after college as a bellhop for a fancy hotel in Philadelphia is now teaching English classes in Rome. He didn't have to get an advanced degree or anything – just apply for the program and pay for his plane ticket. I know another girl who's doing a similar program in Japan. If you don't mind staying in hostels, flying at odd times, and/or going during the off-peak season, just about any destination can be made reasonably affordable.
In passing, you admit her resume is thin and her foreign policy experience is non-existent.
But what really bothers you is a comment by a pundit that she hasn't seen the world.
And it bothers you because you couldn't afford to do the same.
It's all about you being just like her. It's all about you resenting criticism of her because of it.
This is identity politics.
Why should that pundit's comment bother you more than what you readily concede is her lack of qualification?
I skimmed the comments before I posted that. Going back more carefully, I see Elrod has already raised the same question.
George:
Read the post again please. I sense that Palin's experience as a middle class person raising a family, raised in a middle class family, prevented her from traveling abroad and that, through my experience, that isn't implausible. If that's “identity politics,” okay, I guess it is.
Yes, she hasn't had any foreign policy experience and that may be a legitimate reason for rejecting her as a candidate for Vice President.
You decide.
I don't do endorsements.
Mark
Gosh, my question was irrelevant!!
Mark is only talking about the plausibility of foreign travel.
All I can say in response is that this is a public thread.
Everyone can decide if I raised a valid question.
And everyone can decide if this was a good answer.
Don't forget that the media pundits, who are DC-and-related-centric, have been wrong before and will be wrong again, in addition to being annoying in that they value each other's time more than that of many speakers at the conventions. Even NPR, which should be better and isn't as bad as the networks, succumbed to this temptation. (PBS was less bad and I simply watched PBS rather than relying on the network and the commentators' self-centeredness and frequent out-of-touch remarks.)
I wonder to what extent criticism of Palin by the media, in addition to left-leanings (they support Obama), is already due to nervousness of a (non-liberal) outsider actually threatening to come to Washington. (Haven't they learned anything with the experiences of Bill Clinton, then Dubya? The establishment continues largely to have its way. Among other things, Biden is Obama's Great Facilitator.)
In her defense, its not like Palin planned on being asked to be the GOP's VP nominee. She was probably as shocked as anyone that her name was in contention. But, we had a president whose first term foreign policy was marred by jingoism, naivete, and a misunderstanding of the limits of American power in the world. Part of that at least was due to the fact that he never traveled. So it makes little sense to me that McCain would pick her.