Morning "No"

I've been watching Morning Joe on MSNBC for a while now. Joe Scarborough, in general, is a pretty smart guy, but he continues, for whatever reason to let his partisanship get in the way of facts and logic. Over the past few weeks he has been a fan of the following line (I don't have the exact quote, but it goes something like this): "Barack Obama has the thinnest resume of anyone ever running for U.S. president. Why is his experience as a community organizer, state senator, and U.S. senator for two years anymore relevant than a mayor and a governor?" He usually says this in a condescending way, in which he tries to make the argument that sarah palin. (yes, the period is there on purpose) and Barack Obama have the same experience, so how could you favor one over the other? Leaving aside his butchering of Obama's resume (he leaves out the fact that he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, a civil rights lawyer, and a constitutional law professor at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country), the case for Obama was never about experience, it's always been about good judgment, temperament, and intellect. Of the aforementioned sarah palin his demonstrated none, and John McCain has only demonstrated the latter to varying degrees. If it were only about experience, and it is valuable to a certain extent, Obama would never have been the Democratic nominee. Of course, this argument would be too easy to make, and so no one on the show has ever put that rebuttal to Joe. Mika has tried, but she always does it in such a way that makes her look as though she's not sure of it. Just once, I would like Mika to ask, "Joe, name for me one foreign policy view that sarah palin has expressed other than, 'I love Israel'."

On another note, I'm glad Lawrence O'Donnell is there to keep things somewhat sane. A great exchange occurred this morning in which he absolutely decimated former Secretary of State Eagleburger. He allows the secretary to rant and rave about how important experience is in foriegn policy, and that we can't trust Barack the novice, and then Lawerence poses the following, pretty simple, question to him:

"Secretary, it goes without argument that a U.S. Senator has more foreign policy experience than any U.S. governor, by virtue of their jobs. If that is the case, why did you feel it was ok to support the candidacies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?"

Of course the secretary had no response for this that didn't require him to completely get rid of the experience argument he had just spent 8 minutes making a case for. Very well played.

UPDATE: Video from the exchange, here.

The Mailbag

I stumbled across this today (3rd question at the bottom). After a classic Michigan comeback, I'm looking forward to a great month of football this October.