Palin and passports for the working class

How can cost be an issue to visiting foreign countries when all she needs is a rowboat to visit Russia?

Neil

Sarah Palin is full of it. My dad died young and I was raised by a single mom, who worked in the school cafeteria, and we were far from wealthy. When I was 15 she spent her hard-earned money to send me to Europe with a school group for a month, so I could be exposed to a wider world than the one we lived in.

I loved the experience so much that I got a job, saved up, and went back for a second time four years later on my own dime. Sarah Palin could have gone abroad had she chosen to do so. She simply had other priorities

There are better ways she could have answered this. Instead of disparaging those who've traveled, she could have pointed out her dealing with native Alaskan cultures as being interesting enough in itself. Unfortunately, it appears she and her handlers don't have the wit to do something like this.

Funny, I also had a great-aunt who was very curious about the world. She and my grandmother and their siblings also grew up working class - my great-grandfather worked in a trainyard - but Aunt Anna grew up to work as a bookkeeper, saved her money (she never married or had kids) and travelled the world as an adult.

Also, Scott M. wins the award for dumbest comment ever. What could you possibly find objectionable about the beginning of this post?

I don't have a passport either. Never really had any desire to go overseas. Probably because I grew up in DC and was constantly dealing with foreigners anyway. Faffing about Europe buying shoes in Rome or eating lard in London or doing the poverty tour of the Third World doesn't make you any better it just means you have an up to the limit credit card.

It's not like she had to travel abroad and see the world from another point of view. I mean, Russia is right there, she got all the different points of view she needed (along with oodles of foreign policy experience).

;)

"I don't have a passport either. Never really had any desire to go overseas. Probably because I grew up in DC and was constantly dealing with foreigners anyway. Faffing about Europe buying shoes in Rome or eating lard in London or doing the poverty tour of the Third World doesn't make you any better it just means you have an up to the limit credit card."

Dymphna for President!

Many flights between East Asia and Europe and between East Asia and the Lower 48 stop over in Anchorage. I might be wrong, but I don't think it would be all that expensive for an Alaskan to board one of those planes.

As governor of Alaska, she probably would have wound up doing this, since Asian countries buy a lot of Alaskan food products, timber and oil. This is, again, another object lesson in why letting identity politics take precedence over other things, like experience, isn't a great idea, even when conservatives do it.

The question is, do we want someone that is so uniformed about the world, with no real desire to learn about foreign policy outside of Bush's advisors and what she's learned in books to be the potential leader of this nation?

Sorry for the run-on.

"Faffing about Europe...", etc.

Dymphna, you're illustrating Rod's point perfectly. The fact that some people travel as yet another way to express their rampant consumerism doesn't mean that's why everybody travels. Your sneering attitude toward foreign travel is exactly what Rod finds unsettling in Palin's answer.

I don't care if Sarah Palin doesn't have a passport. It's her smug dismissal of travel as an elite activity that grates on me.

So, what's a conservative to do when, after all the talk radio hosts have excoriated and mocked the liberals and Democrats for falsely promoting a double-talking empty suit as a "communicator" and an "agent of real change" and a "leader" (themselves having helped achieve Hillary's defeat by campaign's like Rush Limbaugh's to have conservatives vote in the Democratic primaries to prop up Obama and drag out the contest), they turn around and go ga-ga over Palin and drink the Kool-Aid and use the same tactics and techniques to convince their listening public that she really is (Vice-)Presidential material and a Ronald Reagan in the rough?

They mocked Obama for rising and riding to stardom based on his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, yet were quick to promote Palin based on her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

"We've got the babe!" Rush chortled with glee.

This is depressing. I feel your pain, Rod, 'cause it's starting to be mine, too. I would like to think that Palin is simply staying on message and doing what she has been told to do - i.e., promote John McCain at every twist and turn and question, using the word "maverick" a lot, and not say or do anything else. But if her experience as mayor and governor is as significant and valid as her promoters and supporters want us and all the undecideds to believe, then she indeed can and should speak for herself. But when she does, she stumbles and fumbles. Not good.

Well, good for you. You went to Europe as a young adult because you were "intensely curious about the world." Therefore, because I didnt go to Europe as a young adult I must not have been "intensely curious about the world". Wow, thanks for the insight, I now need to re-evaluate my entire life. What else can you tell me about my life based on your life?

Posted by: | September 26, 2008 11:15 AM

Palin actually says she had no desire to go, nor does she show any really knowledge about foreign policy. She reminds me of the dad in 'The Namesake'. He thought, 'Why should I leave my home when I can read about it in a book?'. In the movie it took a life threatening accident to change his mind. Also in the movie, he never tried to run for public office.

Rawlins Gilliland: You've got it exaclty right!

On another note, my post didn't come through right--the part I quoted from Rod, with emphasis, should have been: [O]ne thing Loisie despised as much as people who thought themselves superior by virtue of their intellectual gifts was people who were proud of their ignorance and parochialism Without the boldface part, it doesn't make much sense. Sorry!

Anonymous: You went to Europe as a young adult because you were "intensely curious about the world." Therefore, because I didnt go to Europe as a young adult I must not have been "intensely curious about the world".... What else can you tell me about my life based on your life?

Rod implied nothing of the sort, and you are misintepreting him. For various reasons, partly familial and partly financial, I never have been able to go abroad, but I am intensely curious about the world. I would have (and would now) go abroad in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose. I think that if Palin were "intensely curious" about the world, she would have answered in words similar to what I've just said. Rather, she didn't even say "Gee, I've always wanted to go abroad", but just ragged on the "rich kids", in effect. And given that she went to college in Hawaii and in the Lower 48 (to which I assume she didn't walk or swim), call me crazy, but I think she could have gone overseas if she had really, really wanted to. I doubt it would be much pricier to fly to Vladivostok than to Hawaii or Portland.

Rod, I feel your pain; for me the gut level turning point with Palin was the knock on community organizers in her "great" convention speech. Unprecedented, really, for a national candidate like that to dis an entire profession.

You write: "I did it because I was intensely curious about the world, and how other people lived. That curiosity was planted in me by my elderly great-great-aunts, farm girls who volunteered as Red Cross nurses in World War I, and who served near the front lines."

Yes, exactly. My grandma raised me the same way - travel, see places! How else will you learn anything about people?

This is what has bothered me about Palin all along. Its not her lack of intelligence, necessarily; it's her transparent lack of intellectual curiosity. She just doesn't seem that interested in anybody's ideas or experiences except those of people who she has decided are part of her tribe.

Bless,
Doug

"This, by the way, is my definition of Elitism. Your decision is automatically better than my decision purely because you made that decision."

As a practical matter, we allow this argument to be used in only one direction. It is perfectly okay for Palin to say that HER decision is automatically better than my decision, purely because SHE made that decision, as long as that decision involves only stereotypically blue-collar choices. She's not being an elitist. However, those of us who, for whatever reason, did have and use passports at some time in our lives, are elitists even if we don't think that makes us any better than anybody else. (I did my traveling, BTW, because my parents were living outside the country at the time, not for any touristy reasons.)

Rod,
I was going to shoot off a sarcastic one but I'll try to be gentle.

I know you don't mean to but you almost come off as an elitist snob yourself on this one.

The definition of intellectual curiosity is not that you want to travel to Europe. We all have different paths in our lives, don't we? My intellectual curiosity was wrapped up in my developing career when I was young and when I was a little older my time was absolutely consumed with career and raising a family. Only recently did I take my first trip to Europe; I didn't get my first passport until I was about 44.

Honestly, so what if I didn't go to Europe until I was 44? So what if Sarah Palin didn't get her first passport until she was about the same age? Lots of people in their 20s haven't gone to Europe; are they uncurious? To be looked down upon?

I don't think being well-travelled makes one particularly interesting, mature, sophisticated, or whatever (speaking as someone who is pretty well-travelled). There are travel bores just like every other kind of bore.

I thought Derek's comment was the most interesting: "Instead of disparaging those who've traveled, she could have pointed out her dealing with native Alaskan cultures as being interesting enough in itself. Unfortunately, it appears she and her handlers don't have the wit to do something like this."

Americans travelling in Europe must surely be the most nimaginative and unadventurous type of traveller. By that, I mean that (i) it costs a bit to fly there, so they're obviously not doing the Kerouac thing; (ii) nevertheless, they're not going somewhere a bit more challenging, thought-provoking, etc.; (iii) a lot of travel in Europe is urban - if it were hiking through the Carpathians, say, it would be more adventurous; (iv) aren't cathedrals and mediaeval cities just a little bit boring when you've seen two or three? I would find someone having spent time in the Alaskan wilderness, with knowledge of the tribal cultures, and perhaps languages, and genuine survival skills, far more fascinating and impressive (not that I know whether Palin has that experience either - I don't think shooting animals from helicopters counts?).

Isn't there the problem, though, that to part of the US Right, interest in "Injuns" would look even more "liberal" than interest in Europe??

You've just spoken for me, Charles Cosimano! Here's to the privilege of loving where you live and staying there as much as possible! Some of us just aren't travelers at heart, and would rather do our exploring through books, while pouring all our love and energy into "Home." It doesn't mean we lack curiosity. Stamina, maybe, but not curiosity. (Take it from someone who DOES travel, but just doesn't enjoy it much.)

If you really want to understand how 'Western' you are (down to the marrow!), live in East Asia or some other non-Western country for a few years.

If you really want to understand how American you are, spend a month or more getting acquainted with the people in the lands of your ancestors (Connacht and Thomas Hardy's 'Wessex' in my case, Poitou in the case of my wife).

Timbo is right: the majority of foreign travel seems to be motivated by consumerism (the 'consumption of culture') and not an effort to understand oneself or 'the other'.

Honestly, so what if I didn't go to Europe until I was 44? So what if Sarah Palin didn't get her first passport until she was about the same age? Lots of people in their 20s haven't gone to Europe; are they uncurious? To be looked down upon?

And:

The only time my step-grandfather left North Carolina was to fight in WWII. He grew up in poverty, and overcame it by working hard. He went to the Pacific to fight. Then he returned to NC and stayed put. He provided a good life for his family, loved his wife, and sent his kids to college. He's truly a great man. I'm surprised, Rod, because surely your "crunchy con" ethos should make allowances for such people.

Well, I'm surprised, though I probably shouldn't be, at these obvious misreadings of my post. Read it again. I'm not saying that wanting to travel to Europe is a sure sign of intellectual curiosity. Many of us know people who only want to go to Europe (or wherever) so they can have their photograph taken in front of a famous monument or work of art, and come home to show the snapshots to their friends. Besides, as I made clear in my piece, the kind of pseudo-sophisticates who think their interest in world affairs makes them superior to their fellows who don't share those interests are an affront. My Aunt Lois, who was a worldly and sophisticated woman, snorted at our relative N. and his wife as a pair of phonies. And she was right.

I don't have anything against Sarah Palin for not having traveled abroad. Traveling abroad in and of itself proves nothing. Except for a couple of business trips, I haven't been able to go abroad for seven years, after our oldest passed the age of two, and we would have had to have bought him a plane ticket. My days of traveling overseas for pleasure are over until my children are grown, unless I get rich.

What bothered me about Palin's remark is that she seemed to frame world travel as something effete. I associate it with the same cast of mind that sneers at historical preservation, classical music and other manifestations of high culture. It's not the disinterest that bothers me (I, for example, could not care less about opera). It's the pride taken in one's disinterest that jars. It's the self-satisfaction in parochialism that offends. It's the flip side of thinking yourself superior because you travel to Europe every summer, even though you are no traveler, but merely a tourist.

Well, I just watched the interview and I have to agree with Rod. "Neeewww, I worked for a living, usually two jobs." Traveling was, supposedly, a luxury she couldn't afford. My guess, however, is that she and her family chose different luxuries: expensive snowmobiles, atvs, etc. I live in snowmobile country in Minnesota, so I'm not denigrating sleds. It's just that it's disingenuous to play financially challenged populist when she and her husband chose different ways of spending their money.
And another thing is that I've not seen much evidence of the knowledge that she's gained through reading. She's been compared here and elsewhere to Harry Truman. Truman was a voracious reader. He was especially well read in history. I don't see that in Palin.
The hope of Palin's supporters, I think, has to do with Truman's quote that "it's the office that makes the man, not that man who makes the office," when he was reflecting on his unreadiness to be president. Perhaps she has that in her somewhere, but it has yet to surface in an interview.

Elitism is showing in the comboxes. We people without passports just don't measure up, do we?

I think Marty has it right--she has five kids and she and her husband work very hard. She didn't have the time nor the money to take expensive vacations to exotic locations. Heck, she lives in an exotic location!

My wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to afford to take our children on road trips every summer. Many people can't to that. We can't afford to fly domestic, much less international.

Rod, how many European trips have you taken with your wife and children? I've heard you describe road trips to Louisiana, have you ventured across the pond?

Never had a chance to travel and I am 40 years old now. Couldn't do it in college because of a long-term illness that made it all but impossible to do more but just get by and then after college there were years of poverty, and then traveling within the U.S. Now I'm settling down and trying to put down roots. I do have a trip planned (WYD 2011), and will finally get to use the passport I got in 2001.

I haven't traveled much overseas because I was working, scrimping and saving to build a secure financial house. I have no debt other than a mortgage that is about 1/5th the current mkt value. That's my personal version of crunchy conservatism.

I've worked since I was 12 and at that age the money went to provide for some of the basics and just having some spending money so I could do normal things like go to the movies and own some small consumer products. After that, it went to providing for college, food and shelter. I couldn't afford the time away from work much less the cost of travel. My situation was hardly unique among the working class where I grew up.

The kids that were going to Europe in those days (I knew some) came from more financially secure homes. They didn't have to pay their own way in college or buy their own cars, insurance etc. I'm not complaining but I think that the assumption Rod makes that he and Sarah Palin come from the same economic class might be off base. It is my experience that people (including me) tend not to see the opportunities they were given but focus on what others above them have gotten. We tend to figure we're the bottom. I suppose that could be what motivated Sarah Palins comments and some of the faux populism that emanates from these parts.

RINYC: "Rod is a world traveler ... and Sarah appears to be more of a "homebody." Honestly, it's no big deal, don't you think?"

Um, yes, as far as things worth considering when hiring the executive who will be our primary face to the world, it is something of a big deal. Not all by itself, of course, but it is yet one more data point supporting the general hypothesis that Palin isn't interested in world affairs, a fatal flaw for a president. And we're not really seeing any data points in support of a different hypotheses.

This bit from TN Coates at the Atlantic is brilliant:

"My point is that, Sarah Palin never struck me as stupid. When she talked about not backpacking across Europe and working her whole life, beneath the dumb anti-intellectual dig, I saw a gem of truth. I wish she had have mined it, instead of trying to score a cheap point. Rambling aside, she simply isn't ready."

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/sarah_we_are_not_that_different_you_and_i.php#more

As is this, from the comments on the post:

"No, Sarah Palin is not stupid. But as best I can tell, she is incurious, and that is a far graver thing. Her personal experiences have been decidedly limited, but I cannot fault her for that - she is more, not less, impressive for having raised herself to prominence from a modest background. But she has displayed neither the desire nor the ability to look beyond the scope of her personal experiences. And that worries me."

"It comes across in every interview she grants. She's clearly never thought about most of these issues before. What should be America's place in the world? How do we spread democracy to other countries, and is it in our interest to do so in lands in which the majority of the people would elect governments that would endorse our destruction? These are difficult questions, but many Americans have grappled with them in one form or another over the past seven years. Palin has a son heading off to serve his country in Iraq. She's the t**ular head of her state's national guard, and has gone to Kuwait to visit the troops. She's been a rising star in the GOP for years. You'd think that she, of all people, would have grappled with the complexities and the contradictions of our engagement abroad. But if there's any evidence of that in her remarks to date, I cannot find it."

Doug

Rod: It's the pride taken in one's disinterest that jars. It's the self-satisfaction in parochialism that offends. It's the flip side of thinking yourself superior because you travel to Europe every summer, even though you are no traveler, but merely a tourist.

Perfectly expressed Rod--that's the exact point in a nutshell. People are not getting what you said, for whatever reason, but I agree with you completely. To me one of the absolute worst things in the world is the taking pride in willful ignorance and parochialism. Reverse snobbery is just as ugly as any other kind.

The Chesterton quote posted by Kate Marie is good, but I think in the modern day it may be less true. With the mobility that people now have, the narrowing that Chesterton speaks of happens as people leave or stay in small towns, thus reinforcing certain mindsets. It is no longer true that small towns have "fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men" as they did at one time. Also, I would note that Chesterton lived in London and traveled abroad. Does that make him an elitist or a hypocrite? I for one don't think so. You need people who become deeply acquainted with one place and people who learn about many by travel. The problem is when people in each of these groups start disparaging one another on no more grounds than where they have traveled, or try to imply superiority for their choices.

I am with John C. on this - I am giving her the benefit of the doubt.
This "rock star-to-loser-in-two weeks" is a bit exasperating.

Apparently trying to broaden your experience by going to college outside of your hometown or state isn't enough anymore; you must take a trip to Europe, living cheaply, by the time you reach early adulthood, to show that you are truly the right kind of person.

I also didn't travel outside the US (or even west of the mississippi) until my mid-20's. The reason I didn't is that I always had responsibilities, to family, church, or work, and my family couldn't afford such trips. It's simply stating the truth to note that up until I took my first european trip, the only people my age I knew taking such trips came from families that were far better off than mine. Once in college, I met people who went to our school's semester abroad program, but it was more expensive than a regular semester and my mom was footing my bills. It wasn't until I went to grad school, on loans I will be repaying for years, that I went overseas to study. If you had asked me why I didn't travel before that point, I would have said to you, until I took out these massive loans, neither I nor my family could afford it. I might have even sounded resentful about it.

Now, looking at me from afar, you would have to conclude I didn't have the intellectual curiousity to be a traveler, since I lived in a wealthy place with an educated parent in a time (I'm a gen'x-er) when knowledge of foreign travel permeated the culture even as air travel prices continued to go down. And you certainly wouldn't have to buy my explanation that such a trip wasn't feasible due to economics or other obligations, at least according to the criteria presented.

I find that when we've decided we don't like someone, we tend to assume the worst about them, including their motivations and intentions. That seems as though it might be the place that Rod has come to with Palin, where even her reasonable or understandable explanations are viewed as coming from a fundamentally illogical, untruthful, or ill-founded place.

A lotta missing the point here. Gov. Palin could simply have said that international travel was not a priority during during the period in her life when she may have had the time (i.e. before marriage and children). It just isn't for a lot of people, and she probably wasn't thinking she would ever be nominated for VP at that time. She didn't have to lash out at those who did choose to go abroad in their youth. A cheap shot.

Apparently trying to broaden your experience by going to college outside of your hometown or state isn't enough anymore; you must take a trip to Europe, living cheaply, by the time you reach early adulthood, to show that you are truly the right kind of person.

Would you please trouble yourself to read what I actually wrote, instead of what you think I wrote?

Oh, and SVS, Palins parents were small-town schoolteachers, as I understand it. My father was a small-town civil servant, and my mother was a school bus driver.

It goes to show:
1 - She didn't need a passport until she wanted to drive from AK to the lower US and had to pass through Canada;
2 - She has no sense of a world view, nor does she value it. Otherwise she would have found a way to travel to at least one or two other countries. These are values she has probably taught her children, too, which makes me wonder how her son will do overseas;
3 - She probably veers toward isolationist policies, something that worked more than a century ago, but now is as archaic as wooden wheels and plowing with a team of ox - quaint but basically not very efficient. Hiding your head in the sand only makes your backside more vulnerable to attack.

She also has no sense at all to whom she is trying to appeal. The very middle class whose vote she would need have all gotten a much more sense of the world. I doubt Ms Palin has even been to EPCOT!

"The kids that were going to Europe in those days (I knew some) came from more financially secure homes. They didn't have to pay their own way in college or buy their own cars, insurance etc. I'm not complaining but I think that the assumption Rod makes that he and Sarah Palin come from the same economic class might be off base."

Possible, SVS. This is what I learned when I tried to explain to my friends why I couldn't go study in Europe. A few of them kept saying, "But it's not that much more!" and stressing the advantages of European study. One insisted that if thus and such airfare was available, and this and such expense could be cut, I could do the thing for only about two thousand more than regular tuition--maybe 2500 to stretch a point, and to be sure I'd have some spending money to see a play in London or something like that.

I could *not* make him understand that even two thousand *extra* dollars beyond what I already needed to be able to return to school, at minimum wage (then $5/hr) with forty-hour weeks meant at least an extra ten weeks of work beyond the summer break--and that was leaving out the fact that my employer, to keep me "part-time" and avoid being legally required to give me benefits, would only let me work a certain number of 40-hour weeks before scheduling me for a twenty-hour week. Since my hours were random (days, evenings, weekends etc.) as they are in most minimum wage jobs, taking a second job was not possible. So the only way I could have afforded a European study semester would have been to take an additional semester off, and considering that I was already three semesters "behind" compared to people who had started college at the same time I did, this was not a particularly attractive option--especially considering that every time I did that college costs went up and erased part of my "gains" right from the start.

But even if you leave the "study in Europe" part out of the equation, there are many people for whom foreign travel represents a luxury they can't afford.

It's a no-win to discuss what is and isn't valuable regarding travel. Those who don't and haven't will make the inevitable litany of defiant excuses, many of them very valid indeed; while those who have feel passionately that only through travel can one fluently speak an otherwise sorely lacking dialect. So I won't debate this beyond my earlier posts.
~~~~~~~
Re: Reverse (aka defensive) Snobbery regarding wider first-hand knowledge of the world:

Sarah Palin is a very successful woman on multiple levels, and anyone discounting that is a partisan fool. But she is only going to achieve a national following by becoming the 'little guy's' champion. Never mind that there are often some very real reasons why a whole lotta 'little guys' are...and defiantly remain... 'little' in a larger sense.

Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first VP (later indicted and removed but picky, picky) made a national career denigrating the 'elites' who actually studied, achieved, traveled, read, listened and grew through a very adult mix of intellectual curiosity, spirit of adventure-daring and hard-earned disparate resume' elements.

Thus began the real 'culture wars'… where intellectual questioning students of life were dismissed as ‘nattering nabobs' by anti-intellectuals seeking validation somewhere besides their neighborhood bar.

I was born into a military family, I was issued my first passport at the age of three ahead of my Dad's orders to Germany. I attended two years of preschool and Kindergarten in German school. My mother and grandmother both also grew up in military families. Both my grandfathers served in Korea, of course. Most of their brothers and a sister or two also served in some capacity.

For us, news of the outside world wasn't something we could tune out. The state of our foreign policy determines the state of our military policy, which determines the very course of a military servicemember's life, and that of his or her family as well.

When my folks left the military during the drawdown in the late eighties, they didn't qualify for many benefits. We were fairly poor for a few years. There were times when we had no plumbing, and the kitchen oven was the only source of heat. We all slept piled into one or two beds, along with a Sheltie dog. We ate ramen noodles ad nauseum. I still won't touch those anymore. :)

But my parents kept up involved in Scouts, and at scout camp I met college age kids who were working their way around the planet. They were generally from Australia or England, but there were also girls from Finland, the Ukraine, a couple of African countries. They would stop in one country to pick fruit or be an au pair for a few months. Then they'd travel around a bit, and head off to the States. They would work at our summer camp for a season, and then head off, knapsacks on their shoulders, for points unknown. I watched jealously and swore I'd follow them someday.

And I did. I took out loans in my name to get through college, on the understanding that I'd be debt free after serving in the Army for four years. (Okay, so it's been six, but a war or two broke out, you know?) I took out extra one year so I could spend the entire year studying at the University of Vienna in Austria. We had a great time, every long weekend and break we'd hop some random train and get off wherever we felt like it, and start walking. It was amazing. Rome, Venice, Geneva, Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin, little tiny places with monasteries or lighthouses or wilderness preserves.

Aside from air fare, I did this on five thousand dollars of student loans for living expenses. For the entire year. I lived in subsidized student housing, had European student health coverage (11 Euros a month, no copayments or anything!!) I ate stews and cheap breads and peanut butter when I could find it. And I walked probably hundreds of miles. I have no idea. No, cathedrals and medieval towns don't get old. I climbed on ruins which once imprisoned Richard the Lion Hearted, and visited places where the Othman Turks and the Holy Roman Empire clashed. I visited vineries. Did you know that the Othmans once pierced the Vienna city walls? Have you ever heard the Vienna Philharmonic, live, or listened to the evening chants of monks in a 1200 year old monastery, or seen Monet and Klimt paintings, to say nothing of the sculpture David with your own two eyes?

Look, there's nothing wrong with you if all of that is outside your comfort zone. People are different. Not everyone gets the same chances. But if you aspire to be President of the United States it would behoove you to know a little of the world, to have heard a few different perspectives of the world, to have stood in the ruins of the original Senate, or pondered that all human cultures pass away like dust in the wind as you physically touched the ruins of some ancient and vanished people.

Airfare was for a while very cheap. I seem to remember getting round trip tickets to Europe for something like $850. I'm sure it's nearly twice that now.

Going to Argentina in January, I've always wanted to see the Southern Hemisphere stars.

Rod, it seems odd to me that you're decrying us commoners for our provincialism. Yet when I last looked, it's the jet-setting, cosmopolitan, Harvard-educated geniuses who are asking us to bail them out of their financial-derivaties-we-created mess.

I think Palin should have said in her CBS interview that she loves to see the world through the eyes of her favorite TV show--CBS's The Amazing Race --and that she will be taking a break from her debate-prep on Sunday evening when the new season premiers.

Would you please trouble yourself to read what I actually wrote, instead of what you think I wrote?

A little reading comprehension of your own might help here, since it's not obvious I was addressing you. The general tone of the conversation here, though, is tending towards a judgment that Palin's lack of travel-no matter her circumstances- shows her to be fundamentally flawed. I think that judgment is not what you were trying to express but it's happening here nonetheless.

Oh, come on, Rod. I think you're taking this a bit personally. we all know how she went to college in Hawaii and traveled back and forth during that time to see family and her boyfriend/fiance. She clearly wasn't just a homebody who stayed in "familiar" territory. She was more adventurous than most people would be. But I'm betting all her extra "travel" money was eaten up by travel to and from the non-contiguous states.

And I'm not particularly a Palin supporter. I just think you're taking this personally. Nice try, but this is a stretch.

What an irritation! I am Sarah Palin's age and I don't have a passport either. It is not because I am poor, nor because I am uninterested. It's because of other priorities! I've made sacrifices, and frankly travelling the world is one of them! I STILL haven't been to Alaska nor the Grand Canyon, because I am not the only person who has a claim on my money. Oh, Rod Drehr you are so judgmental.

Rod Dreher,

You obsess over everything differentiating yourself from Palin.

So you traveled as a youth to see the world for yourself. Yippeekayae. What have you accomplished to date to significantly improve the lives of any population? This blog? Nada. So you saw the world for yourself, but made no significant contribution to the world having done so. Now you're jealous of Palin's opportunities as though YOU are better qualified to be McCain's running mate, having requested a passport before Palin did.

Palin's life experiences as not "limited" as you would project. Her own experiences enabled her to actually make a difference for the better to improve the lives of Alaskans. Her experiences enable her to communicate better with Americans than your travels enabled you, Rod Dreher.

It isn't as though technology doesn't provide a relevant primer to the world at large. Palin's completing her personal exposure to a much greater depth than your youthful experiences ever provided your own mind's eye. Like it or not, Palin has what it takes to succeed.

Pro- or anti-travel is beside the point. The question was not "Do you think visiting other countries is important?" or "Do you have the ability to conduct foreign policy?" The question was why she didn't have a passport. It was a class question -- what kind of modern, accomplished, educated class person doesn't have a passport? She was being called a rube again.

Yes, she could have answered this question without disparaging others. But the point of the question was to make it clear that she is not one of the "right type of people" and shouldn't come anywhere near running for national office. Instead of dodging that or apologizing for it, she got in its face. No, she said, I'm not your type of people. And some of your type of people are spoiled, self-aggrandizing brats. It's the response of the enlisted man who is asked if he's an officer -- "No, sir," he says, "I work for a living."

My dad was an officer, and one heck of an officer, and boy did he work for a living. But still, when I hear that jibe, I get a little proud for the guy saying it. It's very American, this disparaging of the class system, no matter where you fall on the ladder.

I confess to a mild bit of irritation with the people on this thread who claim there's no financial or social excuse for not traveling extensively "because I managed it," and therefore the only explanation for not doing it is laziness or incuriosity. Hey, some of us didn't have options when we were younger, and aren't in a position to do it later. My parents, who kept the roof over my head and paid my tuition, would not have stood for any such thing, then I married relatively young and had kids young. Sure, those were my choices, but I made them because I valued those things more than being able to travel, not because I had no desire or interest in seeing the world at all. Now, with five kids, one income, and college looming on the horizon, international travel is not anywhere on the radar. Someday, maybe, when the kids are out of the house, if there's enough laid aside for retirement, it might happen. And then again, maybe I'll have to keep making different choices.

Point is, knowing that you can't "have it all" and making choices against a particular good does not indicate that you're a parochial hick who has no desire for that good.

Having said all that, it's a little hard to imagine how a family with two working professionals couldn't scrape together enough for a cruise into international waters, a flight to Japan, or some other such adventure., over all the years of their marriage. Whatever the reasons, for good or for ill, that Sarah Palin has not traveled more, they're probably not my "I wish I could but I just can't" reasons.

Let's talk about what Palin has done--

She went to college in Hawaii and Idaho. (Pity me, I've never been to Hawaii)

She almost won a beauty contest.

She and her husband have started businesses.

She married young, and is still married to the same guy.

She has five children, including one with special needs (this is an adventure all its own, which many people refuse to endure).

She was involved in the PTA.

She saw some things that needed to be done, and so she ran for city council.

She ran for mayor, defeating a long-time incumbent.

She was elected governor, and maintained two homes--one in Wasilla and the governor's mansion in Juneau--more than 800 miles apart.

Her husband races snowmobiles over 2000 miles in the dead of winter.

She hunts and fishes--and eats what she kills.

She has been to Mexico and Canada.

And you guys are complaining that she didn't travel to Paris when she was young? No matter what you might think of her, this lady is no ignorant, parochial home-body. Jeez!

But that she disdains to travel herself and mocks those who do travel as "elites" is contemptible. Τὸ ἀποδημεῖν ἡ ἀρίστη παιδεία (to travel -- to be away from home -- is the best education) as a Greek sage one said. Travel broadens the mind, elevates the spirit, and exhausts both body and purse. It matures the soul to things universal and purges those merely parochial and puerile. It banishes complacency and instills curiosity: for does not Montaigne remark, "Je réponds ordinairement à ceux qui me demandent raison de mes voyages que je sais bien ce que je fuis, et non pas ce que je cherche" (I reply to those who ask the reason for my travels that I know well what I am fleeing and not what I am seeking).

Palin would scorn that prudent wandering sophist (the originators of "sophistication") whose wise apophthegm has been preserved: πλάνη βίον τίθησι σωφρονέστερον (wandering makes for a more prudent life).

A passport is not, to be sure, a diploma of higher education but rather a certificate of matriculation into the university of life. The education acquired there is indeed a κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί (a possession for eternity). Sarah Palin spurns that education: her insularity is evidently a self-chosen flaw, her provinciality a self-cultivated failing.

Oh, my. And here I love traveling. But my matriculation into the university of life was teaching a kid with learning disabilities, or spitting out three babies, or fighting and making up with my husband. Turkey was cool, Egypt was wild, Mexico was fabulous, Italy was divine -- but travel didn't teach me what life is about. People do that.

And sophists were the originators of sophistry, right?

Ann Kinney,
I hear what you're saying. Like you, I don't travel outside the US because of other financial and life priorities. But we're not running for vice president. Sarah Palin could conceivably become President of the United States. You must remember, also, that at first, Dreher was quite taken with Palin and saw her as possibly the new face the the Republican party. He now sees that the "bloom has come off the rose", as I predicted it would from Day One. What you see as judgmentalism may just be deep disappointment.

And no, Lisa P., Couric's question about Palin's passport was not a class question, and she was not being called a rube. She was not being called anything. She was being questioned about her qualification for potentially being president, which includes trying to find out what it means that she only recently got a passport. If Couric was calling Palin anything, and again, she wasn't, she was calling Palin unfit for the job of vice president of the United States because she had given no evidence of having enough interest in foreign affairs to travel outside the US. Based on Palin's answer to that and other questions, especially her cringe-worthy explanation of how Alaska's proximity to Russia qualifies her on foriegn affairs, if Couric was calling Palin unfit for the job, she was spot-on correct.

Andy: "She was being questioned about her qualification for potentially being president, which includes trying to find out what it means that she only recently got a passport. If Couric was calling Palin anything, and again, she wasn't, she was calling Palin unfit for the job of vice president of the United States because she had given no evidence of having enough interest in foreign affairs to travel outside the US."

Honestly, people, owning a passport and having an itch for foreign travel is hardly a qualification for the Presidency. I speak as someone who has spent a number of years actually living overseas and struggling to survive in languages other than English. However, I would not presume to think that experience is a qualifying factor for any Federal office. Because it isn't.

Sure, a lot of these Senators (Biden, McCain, Obama) can claim to having traveled a lot overseas ... but they've done so at taxpayer expense as members of Congress.

More important than foreign travel is an ability to negotiate and deal with some of these rough characters who run a lot of these countries around the world. This is a matter of temperament ... not a matter of how much academic experience or foreign travel a person can claim on their resume.

When I was a young adult, I worked summer jobs, and saved enough to go travel in Europe when the fares were super-cheap.

And then what happens? You turn into a Francophile and raise chickens in your backyard and compare Fourme d'Ambert to Blue de Graven. It's only cheese. I'm sorry... fromage.

Commie bourgeoisie elitist... :)

Lisa P.: Oh, my. And here I love traveling. But my matriculation into the university of life was teaching a kid with learning disabilities, or spitting out three babies, or fighting and making up with my husband. Turkey was cool, Egypt was wild, Mexico was fabulous, Italy was divine -- but travel didn't teach me what life is about. People do that.

There is more than one course in the university, Lisa. You have clearly passed with distinction the harder and move valuable ones.

And sophists were the originators of sophistry, right?

Yes, in a sense they were. Or more precisely, those who diluted and popularised their teaching. Literally, "sophist" is a wise man.

There are different personality types; some people throw themselves into a narrow area of the world but dive very deep--they come to know one place really, really well. Other people are more restless and explore the world more broadly but possibly with less depth.

I agree. But I would prefer a president (or vice-president) to be the second type of person. The first type would be great as a cabinet secretary, an ambassador, or a desk officer in the state department.

Sarah Palin is three years younger than I am. That means she was in college when colleges were really starting to push programs like junior year abroad, and other kinds of cultural exchange programs -- and in the 80s, there was a lot of money available to help students take advantage of these things.

I agree with the people who said that it isn't the fact that she hasn't travelled abroad that bothers me. It's the apparent utter lack of intellectual curiosity. Yes, travel does not in and of itself make you better rounded; it all depends on your attitude what you do with the experience. As Horace wrote about boorish travellers, "Caelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt" ("Those who rush across the see change the sky, but not their mind." Epist. I.xi.27) There are people who spend all their time in their armchairs with books and DVDs who are far more knowledgeable about the world than people who flit around the world but never leave the well-worn tourist path. The difference is intellectual curiosity. The denigration of intellectual curiosity and the concomitant exaltation of mediocrity and parochialism is one of the reasons I stopped being a Republican. (Not that I consider myself a Democrat, either.)

The plug needs to be pulled on this whole charade. Palin needs to resign the VP position, and the GOP needs to get a qualified VP and see if can catch up while there is still time.

I confess to a mild bit of irritation with the people on this thread who claim there's no financial or social excuse for not traveling extensively "because I managed it," and therefore the only explanation for not doing it is laziness or incuriosity. Hey, some of us didn't have options when we were younger, and aren't in a position to do it later.

Thank you!!!

I'm 28 with a 4-year-old daughter and another baby on the way. I do have a passport, because I went to England with my family when I was 14. My husband and I also went on a Caribbean cruse for our honeymoon, and went to Quebec this year. That’s been the extent of my international travel. I am *dying* to travel more and I am intensely jealous of those who get to do so, which seems to be pretty much everyone I know. But guess what, we can’t afford it, and it’s tough with young kids anyway. Rod was incredibly lucky to be young during a time when international travel was cheap. It sucks to be a 20-something during this crappy decade. Also, he didn’t have kids until he was older; we got married a year after college graduation and had a baby almost a year to the day later.

If Palin *chose* not to travel, then I admit I don’t understand that, but people are different and want different things, and that’s fine. I’m not sure it disqualifies her from being VP (though certainly her lack of knowledge in general does disqualify her IMO). But it could be she just never had the opportunity; remember she started having kids pretty young, like I did.

Lucius,

Your comment at 2:43 PM is "right on target." I had the same sense, but lacked your precision of expression.

Great insight you have. Also, it was very helpful of you to share the comment by Christopher Lasch.

I am really growing very weary of the nit-picking attacks on Palin.

It's not that I want to vote for her -- it's that I DON'T, but with every attack I am drawn back into defending her.

I'm mad as hell about the business-as-usual bailout support from McCain-Palin. I really loathe the Republican party. I am deeply disappointed in Palin's interview performances.

Please. I'm begging you, all of you. Knock off the attacks on Palin so that I can go "not vote" with a clear conscience. Don't make me vote for the GOP. ;^)

You know, fbc, a lot of people wouldn't have a problem with her saying "you know, I just never wanted to travel around the world," or "I was busy with a family." Those are great reasons not to travel around the world. I think I've learned a lot more about life in the two weeks that I've had my little girl than I would in a two week trip to Europe.

Guess that makes me an incurious parochial hick like Sarah Palin.

I give up. I truly $*&^ give up trying to talk about this. I do not see how any fair-minded reading of my post can result in a comment like this. I made it very clear that having gotten a passport and traveled abroad does not make one sophisticated, nor does not having done so somehow make one wise. The thing that bothered me -- and I said in the very first sentence of my comment that it was a small thing -- is the idea that not traveling abroad is somehow a mark of authenticity and "realness." I think it was a nitshit question by Couric, but I didn't respect Palin's answer either. I've never been to Asia, or Latin America, and probably never will get there. But I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of, or to boast about, because I'm curious about what goes on in those places, and read what I can.

All I'm going to say furthermore is if you think I'm putting you down because you never traveled abroad, you should re-read what I actually wrote.

Rod's post and mine were at the same time saying the same thing. Rod should be afraid. VERY afraid! (On the other hand, maybe I may get some chickens).

If she wasn't interested in going abroad - then just say so - but, why does she find the need to engage in culture war rhetoric to explain her way out of it?

Because she's a culture war candidate. Rod just found himself on the other side of the culture war he wanted to "lock and load" a few short weeks ago and is feeling the heat from the knee-jerk defensiveness some of us were treated to a few weeks earlier. She's a Rorshach test for the culture wars and Rod just found out what it's like to be the enemy of the "little people," the "authentic ones." He's in good company.

Rod,
Your age and rural background might be similarities with Gov Palin, but there is probably a more significant difference in the fact that she has an adult child now. That means she had a child to raise and a husband to be with while you were out being curious and intellectually vibrant in your globe-trotting youth. Those values that you love so much in Sarah Palin come with costs, many of which you seem to abhor.

I have a law degree, an MA in political science, and a PhD in a field related to medical science and national security. I have a 175 IQ, was an officer of Mensa, and... well, you get the idea. I have worked on Capitol Hill, and can state with certainty that I know more about national security and foreign policy than 95% of the members of Congress. (It's not bragging if you sign yourself "Anon." ;)

I started working on the family farm when I was in grade school, and helped support my family financially from age 13 on.

In my life, I have spent a total of three or four days in other countries. I have met a number of national opposition leaders but no heads of state other than three U.S. presidents. I would love to have traveled the world and to have met many world leaders, but I never had the opportunity.

By the way, I had a long conversation with Joe Biden shortly after he became a senator and I've followed his career closely ever since. I've also followed Sarah Palin's career -- I was one of those promoting her as a VP choice -- and I have written extensively about Barack Obama and John McCain. Of those four, Palin would make the best president.

Being prepared to assume the presidency is what is important for Palin. That should include some evidence that she has been interested in international issues. International travel could provide some exposure to the rest of the world. Reading could also accomplish the background one should have. A combination of the two would probably be best IMO. If PAlin has no interest in these issues, why does she wnat to be VP?

Steve

I don't think Democrats are much different in this day and age anymore, either, but they at least attempt to appeal to voters who truly, in practice, prioritize peace in the global community.

Really? You think sticking a metal rod into a baby's skull and vacuuming out her brains while she's still alive, is "prioritiz[ing] peace in the global community"?

I guess the "peace" comes after the shut off the vacuum.

I think they need to re-prioritize their "peacefulness", but that's just me.

Bang on -- this isn't about travel, it's about the culture and class wars. Fight it out as you will, in or between lines. But many seem distressed less about the travel question as about Palin's belligerent tone. I'd assert that the interview question, "Why didn't you have a passport?", was the first shot in this battle, and Palin shot back. From there, I think the shrapnel flew pretty wide (I think I'm beating my metaphor to death here. . . .).

fbc, if your horror for the suffering and death we bring onto innocent people in these perpetual wars equals your horror for that committed in abortions, you do well. For many Republicans that is just not the case.

Palin's answer is my answer. Same reason. Same thinking.

I've yet to manage to explore all of these 50 states. Hell, if I lived in Alaska, I'd yet to have seen all of and explored Alaska.

If anyone asks me why I don't yet have a passport at 46, and why I have no urge to hang around Europe, my answer is: I don't freaking care to. I have yet to see THIS country, and spending a bunch of money to indulge myself in some mostly pointless cultural gibberish is not a huge motivating factor for me.

A week in any major city is enough to think nothing other than how on earth to get the hell away from all this noise and busy and back to where I can hear the wind in the trees and the birds and the birds fly unhindered. Why would I want to stick myself into this same excessive noise and agitation, but where the stresses are higher?

Snob away all you want, people. I know exactly what she means and agree with it entirely.

Roland: [T]he homoousial quintessence of Aphrodite, Athena and the Theotokos

I love it!! Absolutely love it!!!

Gov. Palin's answer is honest. She worked all her life.

Look. The big media have NO responsibilities. They talk daily but how they helped to prevent Wall Street collapse?

Gov. Palin controlled the budget well in Alaska. There is surplus and bonuses for the people. Compare that with some Wall Street CEO's and big press slanted journalists of NYT etc. Sharah is Better.

She sacked the Police chief who can't control his budget.. And the DEM & press come out with the "troopergate" smear.

Whatever the journalist say, I think Palin is praiseworthy.

Come Nov 4, and the voters will prove all the journalists and editors wrong.

DC said, "And you nail the key point here, which is a scary parochialism and lack of curiosity."

Rod, I've been trying to think of a way to explain myself better. This may be helpful, though it's not an exact sort of comparison.

You've said many times that you don't read much fiction, and don't generally enjoy it. Although as an English major I may think, in the abstract, that people who don't read fiction are missing a lot, I don't think all individuals will have a taste for good fiction or indeed be able to learn much from it if they dislike it. I think most people would find that a reasonable opinion.

But suppose that we lived in the kind of society where an admission that one doesn't read fiction is taken the same way that the admission that one hasn't traveled is. Suppose that every time you admitted your general dislike of fiction or your lack of exposure to some of the great classics, you were greeted by a reaction comprised of equal parts pity, horror, condescension and contempt. Suppose that your explanation that you can't "afford" fiction, in the sense of not being able to allocate what little leisure time you have to something that is so far removed from your life and for which you have little inclination was taken as proof that you are possessed of a "scary parochialism and lack of curiosity." Suppose that people regaled you with tales of their own journeys through the great classics of fiction, remarking wittily on the fact that it took them three sojourns through a particular work by Hemingway or Faulkner before they could see the plot detail that everyone else kept talking about, but once they saw it--! And suppose that they felt compelled to say of you to just about everyone, "He's a nice enough person, for someone who doesn't *read*."

If that's what admitting to a lack of love for or experience with fiction meant, you might soon become defensive about it, too. You might start to say, "Look, it's not that I don't appreciate some fiction, but these longer journeys are too costly in terms of time away from my family, and anyway I have enough to do to keep up with the nonfiction reading that's really necessary for my job." You might easily react to a fairly innocent question about your favorite among the Bronte sisters or whether you thought "Jane Eyre" was darkly ironic with exasperation; and heaven help the hostile person who quizzed you about your library card! ("Mr. Dreher, your library card shows that until this recent presidential election when James Fenimore Cooper became a hot issue you had *never* visited the fiction section of your local library! Why is that?" etc.)

In fact, I could easily see you answering that you're a working man and a family man and don't have time to analyze Cooper's works to assess the accuracy of Twain's famous essay on the subject unless it's a job requirement, under this (silly) scenario.

But somehow travel is idolized as the one thing necessary to change a person from a bucolic self-satisfied ignoramus into a magnanimous cosmopolitan to the degree that those who don't do much of it are supposed to apologize, speak with regret of their lack of opportunity, and promise to set foot on foreign soil should the gods of fortune ever smile upon them--at least in the credit card travel miles department.

Another cheap shot in the culture wars. Just like back in the '04 election when John Kerry was called elitist because he spoke French. The sad thing is this kind of sneering anti-intellectualism is considered a badge of authenticity and patriotism. Speaking more than one language is bad, because the only language that matter is "Merican."

I was put off by the comment, too. My parents didn't buy me a passport, backpack and ticket to Europe, I got my passport on my own and scraped up money to travel on my own out of sheer interest in seeing the world.

You don't have to be a rich "elitist" to do that.

Erin, your literary analogy is fascinating and well-presented. I have a few problems with it, though.

1. Anyone who reads Rod regularly knows he is intelligent, inquisitive, and non-parochial. This would disconfirm any impressions one might have of him from his indifference to fiction. In other words, if a person pursues or does not pursue a certain activity, one can look at other areas of that person's life to see what they're like. If I meet someone who goes to the opera and find out from further acquaintance that they're an ignorant boor; or someone who goes to truck pulls whom I later find to be a PhD. in philosophy; then in both cases the bigger picture confirms or disconfirms the orginal impression. I don't think Sarah Palin is stupid; but I have yet to see anything else in her life that disconfirms the impression given by the passport brouhaha that she is uncurious, parochial, and defiantly so.

2. If Rod were interviewing for position for a publishing house that published a fair amount of fiction, and dealing with fiction would be a major part of his responsibilities, then his opinion of the Brontes might be relevant. Remember, foreign policy is a big part of being POTUS or even VP, and if Palin is indeed relatively uniformed and parochial-minded regarding foreign affairs (and in this context her response is, I think, evidence of this), that has major implications as to whether she's fit for the job.

3. I understand the point you're making about defensiveness. Being from a small Appalachian town, I have been defensive, to some extent, about my origins in certain contexts. I think the larger point here is that the GOP has spent the last thirty years deliberately playing on reverse-snobbery and class resentment ("Nattering nabobs of negativism! Dukakus looks like a doofus in that tank! Gore is a pointy-headed policy wonk! Edwards is a f*****! Kerry speaks French and looks stupid pretending to hunt like a real man!"; and on and on ad nauseam). I can't read Palin's mind, and if she really is feeling defensive for the reasons you say, I can sympathize. However, the GOP never loses an opportunity to portray the Democrats as weak, effete, unmanly, and out of touch with the "real people" of America. They deliberately paint a picture of intellectuals, academics, or hell, even people who appreciate travel, foreign langauges, or high culture, as supercilious phonies (as, presumably, anyone who can spell supercilious! ;) ). Given how her statements fit into the Republican pattern, I'm much less willing to give her a pass.

I always like to quote the line from Derek Jacobi's character in Gladiator, when prodded by a fellow senator who needles him for slumming at the gladiatorial games: "I never claimed to be of the people, but I am for them." FDR epitomized this; but if he were running today, he'd be characterized as an elite, wealthy, out-of-touch New York librul!

But somehow travel is idolized as the one thing necessary to change a person from a bucolic self-satisfied ignoramus into a magnanimous cosmopolitan to the degree that those who don't do much of it are supposed to apologize....

There are widely traveled "bucolic self-satisfied ignoramuses", and there are stay-at-homes who are "magnanimous comopolitans", as I think Rod made perfectly clear. The point is that most of us are not running for VP; and that rather than just say straight out that she couldn't afford it or that it wasn't her thing, but that this shouldn't disqualify her, she responded in a way that very much seemed whiny, parochial, and taking a slap at perceived upper-class snobs. This is what Rod said, and a lot of us here watched the clip, too, so I don't think we imagined it. In any case, it's the attitude, not the actual travel or lack thereof, IMO.

Roland: [T]he homoousial quintessence of Aphrodite, Athena and the Theotokos

Turmarion: I love it!! Absolutely love it!!!

Thanks, Turmarion. I am an aspiring combox commedian! :-)

To me, the issue is not at all that Sarah Palin didn't travel. It also has nothing to do with small-mindedness, which (I agree with others here) is not proved by what she said.

What concerns me is what she did say in her justification.

First, she gave reasons that just don't hold up. As many here point out, she did not try to travel even though it was possible for people with small means and who were working to do so. As many others point out, she decided instead to start a family early. Why could she not have instead said that?

Instead, and second, she denigrated those who made decisions that differ from hers.

In this particular case, it is for those two reasons that I am troubled by this answer by someone who might be so close to being President.

It should be clear to every savvy observer that Palin will answer the foreign policy questions she may not know the answer to with "values" answer. Hence, her reference to "good guys" or "those people. Substance free? Yes. Tactically smart? Probably.

One can hardly denigrate Obama's travels because they were circumstantial or not voluntary. A child instinctively understands and learns much more of a culture and language than an adult can. That is a child's purpose, to learn and understand.

I am sorry all of this fell apart into a class war debate. It is true that if you married young, or had other family financial obligations when you were young, it was likely not possible to travel. It's also true that the only reason I could afford it when I was 20 years old is because I took out extra federal loans. My own job paid next to nothing, and barely covered half the airfare. I knew going into it that eventually joining the military was the only way I could attend the private college I chose, without being saddled with student loans for two decades. I chose the school I did (Central College in Pella, IA) because it had a well established Study Abroad program, and the school automatically let you apply your normal annual student aid package to any of their study abroad programs. They also have a linguistics major, which is hard to find in the Midwest.

Of course, I had my five year plan all plotted out at the age of 19, and it worked out. I wish I could be as certain of my next steps in life as I was then.

I grew up poor and I've always worked. I have three children. (grown up now) I have never been out of the U.S.A., Simply because there are so many wonderful places to see in the LOWER48. If I had wanted to travel abroad,I would have made it happen! I think that Sarah is a snob who looks down on everyone else in the lower48 and the rest of the world.

Here's part of my response to Rod's post:

I must have missed the part of Palin’s answer where she claimed her lack of foreign travel as a badge of honor, but that’s beside the point. Is it really to be regretted that a candidate seeking national office hasn’t traveled abroad? Why? Is it not possible to be intellectually curious without having gone overseas? I can certainly think of a number of people I know who traveled extensively in Europe and are not at all intellectually curious.

Could Palin have saved and found a way to travel? Of course, but on a list of priorities for future vice-presidents, I don’t think foreign travel, especially of the tourist or business variety, would make the top ten.

Elitism would be the easy charge here, but it smacks more of intellectual laziness.

http://palinreport.com/2008/09/29/whats-wrong-with-rod-dreher/

I've read a few of your so called "conservative politics and religion" articles and I've bit my tongue until now. What is it with your contempt of Palin? Is it that all the women in your life were not spirited, not monogomous, not joyful, not thankful.
She's a believer, plain and simple. She's not a hypocrite, doesn't tout sin over virtue, doesn't get intimidated by the immoral majority and doesn't change her tune every other day.
So back off, cause your contempt is making you look really ugly.
And as far as traveling goes, I've got friends that jet set all over but haven't a clue about the truth depth of the heart, spirit or mind. But they sure have some great photos. So whatever issues you've got with women like her, I pity you. And quit tag lining your articles as conservative, cause you sound awfully bitter and liberal to me.
If you've got issues with yourself that's one thing, but take it to your therapist cause your anti Palin rants are getting old.