Krauthammer is one of the best conservative commentators in the United States and his opinions have an important impact on the national discourse. When the subject of Sarah Palin comes up, however, it's as if he pops a rivet on his ordinarily impeccably objective logic.
Purpose-planned travel is acknowledged as of the best forms of education, and many serious, objective observers agree that Palin is not dumb. She will spend much of the summer of 2011 visiting the most important historical places in the United States of America. She will get an education while on the tour about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Constitution, and much biographical information about the founding fathers, among many other things. And, by the way, she will be getting paid to get educated, and her head will become an important repository of US history with useful anecdotes galore with which to spice future speeches, political and/or otherwise. She is a true patriot and this tour will serve her well.
But US history is not global history. So the Krauthammers of the world will next pick on her scant knowledge of world history and world affairs, a necessity if one is seeking the highest office in the land.
The big question is will Sarah Palin even run for president? Many savants are saying “no” today, and I agree. She needs the time to become educated in world affairs. After 2012 and President Obama is re-elected, not because he has done well as president or because of his own spotty knowledge of US and world history, but because, as Krauthammer has said, Obama is so “likable”, and now likability is suddenly more important than knowledge of political history.
My prediction; Sarah Palin will not run…….in 2012. In 2014, she will announce her plans for a worldwide tour of important places around the world including US military installations, cemeteries and memorials overseas… and visits with foreign allies (possibly a charter flight with American patriots willing to pay for such an exotic and unusual tour). The American Battle Monuments Commission, a branch of the President’s office, maintains cemeteries on US soil in 6 European countries (grateful European allies, after both WWI and WWII, donated the land for the cemeteries to the US; these properties are maintained by the US Department of Interior). There are Americans buried in military cemeteries in Mexico who were killed during the Mexican-American War. She may visit the Halls of Montezuma in the Castle of Chapultepec, a scene of a marine battle during the Mexican American war, or the Shores of Tripoli (both references from the Marine Corps Hymn) if either still exists. In addition to WWI and WWII sites in Europe, US memorials exist in Morocco, Saipan, New Guinea, Cuba (Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, treated the wounded in Santiago, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War), Gibraltar (to commemorate the comradeship between the US and the Royal Navy during WWII), and Cabanatuan, Philippines, doubtless among other noteworthy sites such as the DMZ in South Korea. She could visit Versailles where the treaty following WWI was signed. She could visit Stalingrad (now Volgograd), one of the bloodiest battles in history and, if you're from that part of the world, the real turning point of WWII. She could visit some of the world's most important cultural/historical sites.
Picture Governor Palin holding forth before an audience of Americans and Filipinos at the Cabanatuan Memorial to the victims and survivors of the Bataan Death March in which 70,000 prisoners were forced to march from the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula to a POW camp 63 miles away. 54,000 survived the march in one of the worst war crimes in the Pacific theater (She would have to judge how to deal with the Japanese with such a stop, thus adding another feather in her education about world diplomacy).
There are, of course, countless possibilities for the Palin World Tour of 2015. A panel of philosophers and historians could be engaged to plan a visit to the sites (with seminars on the lessons) of the Peloponnesian Wars, or a similar approach to the history of the Ottoman Empire. A visit to Spain to hear first-hand the story of how Prince Juan Carlos surprised his citizens and converted Spain's constitutional dictatorship into a pluralistic, parliamentary democracy/monarchy in 1978 would be inspirational. The possibilities and degrees of relevance, interest, and attractiveness to American patriots and political history buffs are endless; selective choice of sites could produce a world-class, world-wide education for everyone on the tour.
Then, in 2015, Sarah Palin could announce her candidacy for the US Presidency in the following Fall. By that time, she will have had an enviable domestic and global education about much of the planet (the real tour, of course, would be much richer than this crude concept piece). She will also be more likable because of what she has done and learned. By that time, Charles Krauthammer will hopefully have learned to keep his Palen rivets tight; furthermore, Palin can afford to wait because in 2015, she will be just 51.
