AJ DiCintio

That Flatulent Thing Called Experience
November 13, 2008

When liberals, especially card-carrying members of that oxymoronicus maximus called the “liberal intelligentsia,” couldn’t contain their sarcastic guffaws while mocking Sarah Palin as “inexperienced,” I thought, “What the hell, why take those hypocritical Goliaths seriously when they will lie any lie, deny any principle, betray any friend, or sell out any (formerly beloved) grandmother if it means advancing the dogmas of the Liberal Church.”

But when some conservatives began criticizing Governor Palin as an unqualified vice-presidential candidate for lacking attributes observed only in “experienced” public servants, I realized that the current spell of atmospheric warming is responsible for a lot more than glacial subsidence.

Yes sir and ma’am, in a flash it dawned on me that the extra heat of earth’s atmosphere is enough to boil off a gigabyte of memory per second from the volatile brains of elitists whose office walls display very special domestic diplomas (or foreign ones, such as a diplôme Sorbonne).

Such a loss is frightening in itself. However, it becomes horrendously frightening when we realize that most prominent among the memories that have wafted into thin air are very important facts about the history of “experienced” leaders throughout the entirety of human history.

So, what to do about a boiling off of truth that has sent supercilious elitists looking down at an “inexperienced” Sarah Palin over half lens glasses? What else but play the Good Samaritan who refreshes desiccated brains with facts about the flatulent nature of that thing called experience.

First, however, this disclaimer about the body from which the facts are taken:

Cognizant of the arguments that will arise when one chooses a few examples of contributions made to society from the works of the astounding number of genetically deformed sun gods, kings, queens, dictators, ministers of state, troika members, participants in a gang of four, or other politicians who have ever lived, I limited myself to focusing upon the deeds of a few highly experienced public figures who have served the United States of America since the sixties.

That said, I begin by arguing that our contemporary elites would not demean Sarah Palin as “risky” if they could recall the accomplishments of the highly experienced leaders who planned and executed the Vietnam War.

I’m thinking of impressively experienced Americans epitomized by Dean Rusk, a Rhodes Scholar (Oxford University), colonel, assistant secretary of state (Korean War), president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Secretary of State (’61-’69).

The elites have also forgotten the stunningly experienced Robert McNamara (Cal Berkeley) and all the other highly experienced politicians, advisors, and bureaucrats who claimed they could perfect in Vietnam the idea of “limited war,” the innovation that President Harry Truman and other hugely experienced Democrats had invented for the Korean “Police Action.”

And gigabyte after lost gigabyte, the forgetting about experience goes on and on and on as the rest of this piece will show.

Of all the experienced leaders who brought America unimaginable suffering and humiliating defeat in Vietnam, none come close to matching the experience of President LBJ, the former congressman, Senator, and grab-fellow-Senators-by-the-collar Senate Majority Leader who raised the concept of limited war to its apotheosis as he ordered the bombing of ten thousand empty fields while keeping Ho Chi Minh’s collar meticulously unwrinkled.

(We should not forget that in addition to his military accomplishments, Johnson used his enormous experience to launch a war against poverty at home, a war that bombed because the billions of money-stuffed ordnance he dropped never landed within a mile of poor people, plopping, instead, into the pockets of politicians, bureaucratic administrators, and politically connected vendors.)

Of course, after Johnson, the Nixon/Kissinger team — exquisitely experienced in practical politics and political science (first runner-up for the title Oxymoronicus Maximus) — continued the limited Vietnam War for four more years before throwing in the surrender towel.

Then, with Vietnam off his mind, Nixon, an eight-year VP and four-year president, turned his experience loose on domestic affairs; and presto! the idea of covering up the Watergate break-in from the Oval Office was born.

Ah, so many experienced leaders, so little time.

So, we jump ahead to the savings and loan debacle of the eighties, a mess for which taxpayers picked up the dime — actually a couple hundred billion in today’s dollars.

Here, we find that a number of indescribably experienced Democratic controlled congresses employed their great corporate experience to legislate dangerous favors for the savings and loan industry.

Then, highly experienced members of the Reagan administration teamed up with highly experienced congressional Democrats and Republicans to make sure the only outcome for the S&L industry was disaster with the Garn-St. Germain Act of ’82.

(The duo of Senator Jake Garn, R-UT and Congressman Fernand St. Germain, D-RI were possessed of highly specialized experience regarding the S&L industry).

At this point, you may want to sit down before reading the names of two House co-sponsors of that bill.

Are you seated?

O.K. They are Congressman Charles Schumer, today Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Steny Hoyer, still a congressman from Maryland.

Yes, those two gigantically experienced politicians are still serving the nation as exemplified by their having joined with other deeply experienced colleagues such as Barney Frank (D-MA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) and fantastically experienced “conservative” intellects such as Alan Greenspan to make it possible for Fannie, Freddie, et al. to “spread the wealth” by “spreading the mortgage loans.”

At this point, we leap to the Clinton administration, when America or American interests were attacked almost annually by Islamist terrorists, beginning with the bombing of the World Trade Center in ’93 and ending with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

What was the collective response of experienced, “intellectually curious” President Bill Clinton (Georgetown, Oxford, Yale), co-president Hillary (Wellesley, Yale), and VP, former Senator, experienced-since-birth politico Al Gore (Harvard)?

Let’s answer that question with two other questions.

Can you recall a single national address (not to mention a series of addresses) Bill Clinton gave to warn and educate the American people about the threat of international Islamist terrorism?

Can you name one truly significant policy initiative Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton implemented in response to this profound threat to modern civilization?

“No” to both questions? Then, we’re off to the first decade of a new century of a new millennium (but the same old human nature) with more questions.

The Iraq War
Who sent the buck of limited war in Iraq to the White House if not impressively experienced, one-time bureaucratic wunderkind Donald Rumsfeld (Princeton) and other equally experienced and impressively educated bureaucrats throughout government?

Who, with regard to the initial Iraq strategy, sat behind the desk where every federal buck stops if not George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard), a man steeped in the traditions of one of the nation’s two most deeply experienced political families?

The Mortgage Mess/Financial Debacle
Who are the people responsible for the two disasters noted above if not the nation’s most experienced politicians, bureaucrats, and CEO’s?

Moreover, among the total population of that vastly experienced trio, there are surely some who recognized what was really going on. However, who thought it so enormously dangerous that he or she peeped not just a few peeps but laid it all on the line for country, repeatedly and loudly issuing warnings — even at the cost of being mocked as a mad voice shouting “repent ye” in the desert?

Sadly, the facts presented above represent only a very few among thousands of truths about experience forgotten by those who mock Sarah Palin.

As for me, I’ll try not to forget those truths because I want to remember it’s not exclusively experience (just as it isn’t the ability to speak a good show) that determines what kind of leader any man or woman will be.

Moreover, I don’t want any part of finding myself on the side of the obese, power sucking monarchists who mocked Jefferson as an inexperienced, idealistic buffoon who could never fill the shoes of a duke, much less a king.

— on the side of the cowardly, money sucking aristocrats who ridiculed Washington as an arrogant, inexperienced paper-starred general who never commanded a force of real fighting men.

— on the side of the elitist Americans who scorned Lincoln as a thoroughly uncouth, war mongering, inexperienced frontier log splitter.

— on the side of the elitist Americans who derided Teddy Roosevelt as an inexperienced, dangerous, bellicose “cowboy.”

Why?

— Because it wasn’t experience that got the faces of those truly great leaders on Mount Rushmore.

— And because it is precisely the experience of so many big shots that will cause them to be chiseled into the national memory . . . but in the image of the issue that always results when a rapaciously swilling sow copulates with a cowardly, feckless, arrogantly braying jackass.