Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Dana Goldstein thinks we should stop the personal attacks on Palin (including her inexperience) and just go after her on the issues:

The Obama campaign and its supporters won’t win very many hearts and minds attacking Palin for her personal life or even lack of political experience — she’s simply too compelling of a figure. So let’s stick to the issues when discussing Palin: her denial of human causes of global warming, her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and evidence of her possible corruption. There’s more than enough there without descending into the attacks that are only all too common when it comes to female politicians.

This approach is appealing in a high minded way, but seems to fail when confronted with the specific person of Sarah Palin. For one, it’s pretty hard to go after her on “the issues” because it’s not clear if she’s put much thought into issues that aren’t strictly relevant to being governor of Alaska. But pointing that out would be going after her for inexperience, which would then be the kind of personal attack that Goldstein counsels against.

Sure, we can go after her on abortion, but she’s the same as McCain on that issue, what makes her distinct from your standard conservative politician is the insane lack of experience and expertise or interest in national issues. Historians say that she’s the least experienced vice presidential pick in recent memory, the McCain campaign admits that she doesn’t know anything about foreign affairs and no one can make the credible argument that she’s ready to be president. So clearly these “personal” charges are substantive, even if they aren’t, right now, politically wise to make.

So maybe we should hold off on Palin’s inexperience and lack of expertise until she makes the inevitable crippling gaffe? Then can we start?