I think it's safe to say that voters in the Santa Barbara area appear to be solidly behind Barack Obama. In last June's presidential primary the number of Democrats in the county voting for Obama was almost twice the number of Republicans voting for John McCain.
And a McCain bumper sticker or yard sign is about as rare a sight in these parts as a telephone booth.
So what do Santa Barbara's columnists and commentators think of Sarah Palin, McCain's choice for VP?
Over at the Daily Sound, Leslie Westbrook and Cheri Rae think she's a bad choice, while "Ms. Impolitic," Gina Perry has evidently overdosed on the "hockey mom" Kool Aid.
The Montecito Journal asks on the cover of its current edition, "What's Not to Like About Sarah Palin?"
Other than the fact that she killed Bullwinkle and is proud of it?
Nothing I have heard or read about Palin in the last two weeks makes me any less queasy about the thought of her being vice president. For one thing she's an exaggerator. Despite what she would have us believe, she didn't sell the governor's luxury jet airplane on eBay. And her claim to have said "no" to the bridge-to-nowhere is pretty shaky as well. I don't know about you, but I had my fill of "story tellin'" in the run-up to the Iraq war.
When Palin's around, you have to wade through a lot of Eskimo pie to get to the straight talk.
And if she doesn't change her tune about global warming, the Alaska Governor's mansion could end up being the little house on the iceberg.
Bottom line for me though is her lack of knowledge or experience. It's nice that she may know how to field-dress a moose, but when it comes to the areas of foreign policy and national defense, the fact that my vice-president is skilled in that department is of little solace.
Of course, the only thing that is thinner than Alaskan ice after global warming hits is Palin's resume. And it's not just latte liberals like myself who are squeamish about it. As the conservative columnist George Will recently wrote; "The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience."
Haven't seen any strong opinions on Palin expressed over at Wendy McCaw's News-Press yet. On the one hand, given McCaw's recent flirtation with conservative causes and commentators such as Ann Coulter and the propensity of Republican presidents to appoint anti-labor/anti-union members to the NLRB, an area of immediate concern to McCaw whose paper is embattled in a fight with the Teamsters, a McCain/Palin endorsement from the News-Press would seem to be a sure thing.
Except for that Bullwinkle thing. Or the fact that as governor of Alaska Palin has supported the aerial hunting of Wolves. For a newspaper publisher like McCaw, who insists that even coyotes be given an even break in News-Press articles, that could easily be a deal breaker as far as an endorsement of the McCain ticket.
It will be interesting to see if McCaw endorses according to her conscience or her pocket book.
