I agree with 2R that Truman as president had a lot on his plate. Most of them do. Thanks to ReaderReader, I'm reading how Andrew Jackson avoided civil war with the Nullifiers of South Carolina. He and others like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster managed to delay the civil war by a few decades. Heady stuff.

Truman was also a veteran of the Kansas City Pendergrast machine; it's probably safe to conclude that he was intimate with patronage politics. I'm sure he would quickly dope out today's mess.

But I feel very safe rejecting this salt of the earth mythology. Formal schooling doesn't automatically equate to an education or intelligence, especially the farther you go back in time. Palin has more schoolin' than Harry, after all. Common sense isn't necessarily gained at a University, but neither is it lost there.

Truman didn't make a virtue of being uneducated, he studied law for two years, and only his financial situation prevented more progress there. He paid his dues before becoming VP. He was a Judge, worked for the state of Missouri, and was a two term US Senator who got things done.

I must disagree with you about Harry Truman. The pressures he faced were staggering in comparison to those which confront a modern president.

From 1945-1948, he slowly awakened to the fact that the Soviets had no intention of withdrawing from eastern Europe, and in fact western Europe (and thus half the engine of the free world) was in danger of going under. He flirted with World War III over the Berlin airlift, then, taking a breath, woke up in Key West to find the Korean invasion. There was much concern at the time that Korea itself was a head fake for the ultimate Bolshevik advance into Europe, and no sooner did Korea seem to be in order than he found himself in a paralyzing ground war with China. Responding to the collapse of the British Empire, he overruled Marshall and recognized Israel, notwithstanding the latter's insistence that it would make bitter enemies throughout the Arab world.

Meanwhile, back in the states, the country was beset by a series of crippling strikes and emergency state interventions. All of this occurred against the backdrop of ongoing fears of reversion to the Great Depression.

Truman handled these things ably, with no more education than a high school diploma.

It's available here:

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/records-costs-attachment-2.pdf

But, with a hat tip to "The Mudflats" blog, here's a comment from the governor's newest press secretary--emphasis mine:

David Murrow, a spokesperson for the Governor, said in an interview that much of this money was budgeted to the lawyers in advance and would have gone to them anyway, even if state lawyers hadn’t been defending against these ethics complaints.

In response to our questions, the Governor’s office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.

But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are “just distracting them from other duties,” Murrow said.

In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.

Eerie how you saw the same Sarah Palin I did....gosh, what are the odds? Must be some kinda conspiracy or somethin....or maybe our BS detectors are in full throttle after 8 long years of GWB..

They're heeere.

The word for which you were searching:

Hypnocrite

First, thank you for keeping you comments about your "beloved Sarah" out of the realm of how HOT she is. Your last long post about this on another thread mentioned her hotness in item two, I believe. (Politely, yes, but really, it leads to the suspicion that other than intellectual motives are driving your Admiration Society.)

Second, it is painfully obvious that you do not understand Ms. Palin's shallowness and how dangerous this is for the country.

You wrote:

"Although I do think she will "study up" on issues per her Rudy theme, I also think she doesn't intend to change who she is, or how she handles herself politically. The more she stays the same, the more I will support her."

Who Sarah Palin IS is a person who doesn't THINK she needs to study up on ANYTHING. She proved that during the campaign during her lame interviews which really never improved over time. She has also proven, time and again during her tenures in office, that she isn't interested in the input of anyone, beyond a circle of cronies and intimates. She does Not Play Well with Others and descends all too readily into snittiness and backstabbing when she doesn't get her way.

We already suffered under a "leader" like that for eight years. Look where it got us. Seriously.

Might I also submit that the America of 1945 was considerably different than the America of today and that Harry Truman never had to navigate the intricate system of patronage, PACs, multi-national corporations with enormous power, a non-stop media, and the myriad other treacheries that essentially compel a person in public office to be, at the very least, informed on a huge variety of subjects? And that's just in DC.

If you haven't visited Alaska, I suggest you make a trip up there. It is startlingly beautiful and extremely remote. Things are much simpler there than in just about any mid-sized city in America. Not necessarily the best place to pluck a political newbie from, especially one who Already Has Everything All Figured Out.

Look at any discussion of tort reform or medical malpractice. The standard argument technique is to cite a few wacky cases to taint things, then present a number for all verdicts as though they are all frivolous, obscuring the fact that most aren't.

You can get the list here

http://www.adn.com/palin/story/838912.html

First, we would want to define frivolous, which to me is not a question of whether she was found guilty or not, but whether, if true, it is something of consequence. Of them, only a handful are really frivolous:

7. The 150k Wardrobe- The state wouldn't have jurisdiction here.

9. Giving partisan interviews from her office. Probably violated the letter of the law, but not exactly harmful in the grand scheme of things. It's not really using up some state resource like stealing stamps or having the state pay for people to work on your campaign.

10. Campaigning for Saxby Chambliss. Elected officials campaign for each other all the time.

16. Arctic cat gear. Not particularly relevant unless there was some quid pro quo.

So that's 4 that are probably frivolous out of 18. Look at the rest of the allegations. We have abuse of power, labor violations, using state workers for partisan purposes, and the last one (about claiming a per diem she isn't entitled to) actually crosses into the criminal realm as that is embezzlement. It is absolutely correct that these charges were investigated, as they are serious allegations and it is also not as clear that she has been as exonerated as she claimed. Several staff members were punished as a consequence of some of these, indicating that something was wrong. It at least indicates that there was enough wrongdoing in places to warrant a closer look.

Perhaps if she wanted to avoid ethics complaints, she should have not done so many things that were ethically questionable.