Sarah Palin--We've Done Worse

I  like this Sarah Palin choice.  Of course, I won't vote for her.  After all, she has confessed publicly to being a Republican.  But that aside, she rests well with me.

All those things McCain says about himself like "maverick" and "independent" that were probably true about him long, long ago, before he married into all that money and then got caught up in the Keating Five mess, may still be true about Palin.

First, is experience really necessary for the presidency or any other position of power?   I think choosing Congressmen based on who last won a multimillion dollar lottery in the district would be a good idea.  I think judges should be chosen randomly, a big drawing, say on the courthouse steps with ping ping balls, among the lawyers qualified to serve.  One big national drawing, with many, many ping pong balls, to choose the president based on all eligible voters would work for me.

Sarah Palin is about as close to a randomly selected candidate as we could get without throwing 250 million ping pong balls in a giant hamster cage.  She far more represents our demographics that the traditional rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones vs. rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones that was inflicted upon us in 2004.

She is a woman.  This is good.  The six years, six colleges including a junior college is endearing to me as well.  I like the basketball playing, the moose hunting, the beauty pageants and the marihuana sampling.  I like this messy bundle of kids of all ages and the Eskimo husband.  I also like that she drove everybody nuts when she got elected Governor.  I feel like I could be related to her or maybe she was the type of girl who could have had a thing with Uncle Tiger when he was a football star in high school.  

I see her as a wild, loose cannon who is too new and too little connected to be controlled.  I saw Huckabee much the same way.  If she can become president quickly rather than waiting until the lobbyists have an opportunity to give her some "experience," she could prove to be a surprising treat and a nightmare for the oligarchy.

I know she presents herself as an anti-environmentalist and a war-monger, but we seem to get those characteristics no matter who we elect.  

There are the only a couple of things that give me pause:

1.  I fear she doesn't believe in dinosaurs.  There are ways to reconcile dinosaurs with creationism and she may have decided upon one, but so far I cannot find it on the internet.   This should be her first major policy statement.  I would like a president who believes in dinosaurs.

2.  I still haven't heard if she has read Shakespeare and the Bible.  I understand that you can get a degree in journalism and miss these things.  Also, I don't mean reading the Bible in that "verse for a day" sort of way that you get at Sunday School.  I would like to think she has struggled with people like Lot, Onan and sick, crazy old David.  If she has not, rather than wasting a bunch of time with Joe Lieberman being "briefed," I urge she head out to the tundra with the Collected Works and that big Bible on the coffee table.

We could do, and usually have done, worse.

Go ye into all the world--or just keep it in Arkansas.

During his campaign, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was quoted as saying, “Any federal judge who uses some international law as a precedent to make a court decision ought to be impeached.”

I spent part of today listening to the testimony of two international lawyers, Larry Warner and Ignacio Torteya on the application of treaty law. During my first year I debated for the University of Texas Law School International Moot Court Team. We debated the fishing rights in international waters and whether the national territory should be expanded to 200 miles. I rented a black suit and we went to Topeka for the National Competition. It was great and I thought that was what law practice would be like.

The next summer I went to Mexico City and took international law classes at the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Mexico City in the early 1970's was a wonderful city. This was before the population exploded and traffic and pollution became so bad. I thought it was the most wonderful place in the world. Restaurants, museums, parks. And for the first time, people were treating me like an adult. I was exultant and wanted to live there forever.

This was when I thought I could be an international lawyer, flying around and giving opinions about treaties in exotic places.

Two monkeys threw wrenches in the plans. One was discovering I could not be a freelance interpreter of treaties, but that I would have to work for a government or corporation. Even then I knew this would not likely be a good fit.

The other was that I found out that international law also seemed to involve a lot of taxation issues. Then, in a large class, maybe a hundred and fifty students, I made the third lowest grade in the class.

The same semester, I made high grades in criminal and constitutional law classes. This should have helped me decide to go another direction, but I was learning pretty slowly.

Still set on the idea of becoming an international lawyer, I dropped out of law school one semester and headed for Brazil to learn Portuguese. It was great. The Amazon, Carnival in Rio, Bahia, the new capital city.

For all of this, maybe I could learn tax law or work for the government or a corporation. But I really couldn't, so I started hanging out at jails.

Anyway, all of these years later, I still get a warm feeling thinking about what might have happened if I could have just shoved this square peg into a round hole.

I also get great pleasure hearing about the international courts. And comparisons between different national laws. And conflicts in laws. And treaties and international rights. Great stuff.

So today, no small amount of nostalgia.

Does international law matter in little Texas courtrooms? Should it?

I have known people who think international law can save the world. They join organizations that support the United Nations and hope for greater involvement of international courts to bring peace and justice to the whole world.

When I was young, I had this same sense about federal law. The states were racist and violated personal rights and didn't believe in free speech. But the U.S. Department of Justice would put little Negro children in white schools where they could get a good education. The feds would bring peace and justice to the whole world.

Life is too short to suffer that type of disillusionment twice.

I expect very little, but I have begun to read international treaty law again. Mike Huckabee, notwithstanding, the world does not seem to be getting any simpler and the judges will have to face the wrath of the former governor of Arkansas.