How many senators could you name when you were in the second grade?

[Calvin]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:38pm

I'll be honest. I probably couldn't even name my own senators when I was in the second grade. I certainly couldn't have named Joe Biden. But Palin--who has a good 14 years or so on me age-wise--was so ahead that she was hearing about speeches from senators in tiny states who hadn't even taken office yet! Now that's experience you can trust.

Of course, I can name newspapers and Supreme Court cases today, so I'd call it about even.
Link

[madbrian]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:41pm

Right...she can't name the newspaper and magazines she reads, she can't speak about Supreme Court cases, and she has no working knowledge of her candidate's positions. But when she was eight years-old in Alaska she listened to speeches from a Delaware senator.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:44pm

Well, you know she didn't mean anything by that comment. That's pretty much par for the course with her, though, right?

She just lies. She can't help herself. She has a serious psychological problem: making stuff up, imagining things happened when they didn't, saying one thing in one interview and then directly contradicting herself in the next. She makes Stephen Glass look like George Washington. It's pathological.

Sullivan is so right there. Alas, I'm still not sure it matters.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:45pm

I agree. To be honest, I think most children that age probably don't even care about that sort of stuff.

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:45pm

And the crowd was eating that **** up. If Obama made a crack like that at McCain, who is and looks much older than Biden, they would say he was ageist.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:48pm

Maybe she's not condescending and smug. Maybe it's just that everything that comes out of her mouth sounds condescending and smug.

Posted: 10/1/08 at 1:49pm

I could have- I was a very politically aware kid. BUT... Joe Biden? 1972? I had no awareness of him till probably the presidential campaign of 1988. She was just trying to stress the "He's Old, he's been in Washington almost all my life, I am the one with youth and new ideas!"

And you know what? The Republican crowd ate it up! Did you hear them whoop when she said that?

[lildogs]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:01pm

Please, she could read from MEIN KAMPF and they'd whoop...and probably not know the difference!

[supportivemom]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:12pm

Well, I saw the CNN reporter last night go to the island on Alaska where you could see Russia right across the way. Not only did the residents not know who Palin was or that she is a VP candidate, but the mayor said she had never even visited there before. There's no way she has heard Biden speak when she was in 2nd grade- we didn't have the Internet or cable back then! Where did she hear it?

[javero]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:29pm

That was easy for me growing up in NC. I could name two in 1972. One, an asshole named Jesse Helms and another just south of the border, a certain Strom Thurmond. It would take years for me to fully understand why my parents spoke so harshly of them back then.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:47pm

I hardly even remember anything about 2nd grade.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:48pm

At P.S. 86 in the Bronx, Senator Jacob Javitz was a cultural hero.

[Calvin]

Posted: 10/1/08 at 2:57pm

Well, one of my senators when I was in the second grade did go on to be a vice presidential nominee.

The other, who had just started his term in the senate, will now be forever attached to the phrase "nation of whiners."