Republican Senator Chuck Hagel is a friend of Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, and the independent-minded Hagel is highly-regarded by some independent voters. Hagel has now made some blistering comments about McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate — comments that are likely to add to the growing negative image of Palin taking hold among many voters:
Senior Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has voiced doubts about Sarah Palin’s qualifications for the vice-presidency.
John McCain’s running mate “doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials”, Mr Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald.
Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, enthusiastically supported McCain in 2000 but broke with the 2007-2008 incarnation of McCain on the war issue. So he declined to support Democratic Sen. Barack Obama or McCain in the presidential campaign. He has been a staunch war critic who joined Obama on the Illinois Senator’s highly-touted post-Democratic convention Middle East trip.
But he reportedly remains on good terms with McCain — which didn’t keep him from mincing words on Palin:
“I think it’s a stretch to, in any way, to say that she’s got the experience to be president of the United States,” Mr Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald newspaper.
And he was dismissive of the fact that Mrs Palin, the governor of Alaska, has made few trips abroad.
“You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.”
Mr Hagel also criticised the McCain campaign for its suggestion that the proximity of Alaska to Russia gave Mrs Palin foreign policy experience.
“I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, ‘I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia’,” he said.
“That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.”
PERSONAL NOTE: I don’t find it insulting at all.
I rather like it. This post is written in my office in San Diego. I can drive 10 minutes from my office, down the I-5 south, and see Tijuana. It’s cool that this makes me an expert on Tijuana and Mexico, Latin America and foreign affairs.
I can also see the 7-Eleven two blocks away, which should increase my writing credibility and resume since it makes me an expert on businesses.
And I assume I have special expertise in another area — since I can see the topless nightclub on nearby El Cajon Blvd.
Impact of Hagel’s comments: The original post-GOP-convention media narrative was that Palin was a potent choice to bring in women voters and rally the GOP base. She has indeed rallied the GOP base. But there are signs that she’s not attracting women voters the way McCain hoped. The new media narrative is that she is being kept under wraps and not allowed to talk freely to the press because she is (according to the narrative) a light-weight on issues who needs a crash course from McCain advisers, many of whom are associated with the less-than-successful Bush administration.
Hagel’s comments add one more “me, too” to the less-than-stellar opinions on Palin (Fox News’ Sean Hannity does not count as an outside opinion and his interview of Palin did not qualify as a true, tough journalistic interview).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.