PALIN RESIGNATION SHOULD BE a major warning to those who, in mind-numbingly unconservative fashion, denigrate the importance of government experience -- those like Palin herself, who write that "government experience doesn't necessarily count for much."
Frankly, this deification of government inexperience is nutty. An old Latin saying holds much truth: Discimus agere agendo, which means "we learn to do by doing." Nobody would argue that a 22-year-old right out of engineering school should be the lead designer on a major urban bridge. Nobody would ask a Peyton Manning right out of high school to lead an NFL team into a Super Bowl, the way the experienced Manning twice has done. Nobody would ask a junior member of the diplomatic corps to negotiate directly with Vladimir Putin. So why should anybody in his right mind believe that the mind-bogglingly multi-faceted job of president of the United States -- a job involving economics; a massive administrative state; and war, peace, and survival of the very planet in the face of weapons of frightening power -- should be handled by somebody whose primary asset is an attitudinal anti-establishmentarianism combined with a virtue uncorrupted but also completely untested by the fires of national politics?
When Palin was hoisted on her own petard of Alaska's new ethics system, it should have taught all conservatives that inexperience is no virtue. As George Will wrote just days after John McCain chose Palin as his running mate, the selection flew in the face of the single philosophical document probably most revered by American modern conservatives, the Federalist Papers. Wrote Will: "The word ‘experience' appears 91 times in the Federalist Papers....[According to the Federalist,] ‘Accumulating' experience is ‘the parent of wisdom' and a ‘guide' that ‘justifies,' ‘confirms,' and can ‘admonish.' America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted ‘that best oracle of wisdom, experience,' which is humanity's ‘least fallible guide.'" And so on, with James Madison particularly insistent that attitude and goodwill alone are hardly substitutes for wisdom accumulated in the cauldron of statesmanship -- a wisdom that understands human nature well enough that it casts a skeptical eye on even the noblest intentions.
The term "government experience" is a general term, it doesn't describe any specific skill.
What specific skill is Sarah missing because she resigned from her office 14 months early?
Oooh-Weee. You think you found a real nugget there.
Sorry. Life experience and experience in self-governence.
Far different from what we have today.