FRC Action Summit: Bill Bennett

Bill Bennett brought his wit and charm to the FRC podium, starting off by digging at the media for its treatment of Sarah Palin as a rube.  Mocking their concern that Palin had never been to Europe, Bennett said that some CNN correspondents had probably never been to Texas.  “Frankly,” Bennett said, “Jefferson could have used a little less Paris.”

Bennett spoke about values, and the contrast between Barack Obama and Palin.  John McCain, he said, is a known quantity, the product of a life of service in defense of the nation and in the public sphere.  He quoted McCain’s line from the convention: “And so, I was no longer my own man; I was my country’s.”  Joe Biden is also a known quantity, a standard Democratic pol.  But Obama and Palin need more scrutiny.

Palin, Bennett says, is a woman of accomplishment.  She has raised a family while succeeding in a difficult career.  If the McCain campaign lets Palin be Palin, Bennett says, she’ll be fine.  She has already proven her mettle.  But what about foreign-policy experience, critics ask?  Bennett says the three most accomplished foreign-policy makers in the late 20th century were Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher.  They came from humble origins and did remarkably well.

Bennett said that we have to tread carefully in our support of the Palins for the pregnancy of their teen daughter.  We need to applaud the way that they handled this family crisis, Bennett says, but we have to remain focused on preventing teen sex and fight an epidemic that creates these pregnancies.  We can do both, and we should.

Obama represents a different set of values, and Bennett warns that these could prove dangerous to the American way of life.  We shouldn’t question his patriotism, but we can certainly question his judgment.  Fred Thompson summed it up best, Bennett says.  “There are two questions we will never have to ask about John McCain: Who is this man, and can we trust him with the Presidency?”

He hit Obama on two specific points.  The first was his statement at the Barackopolis that he can make America the last, best hope for mankind once again.  Bennett asked, when did we stop being that hope, and who took our place?  The second was Obama’s assertion that we couldn’t criticize Russia well for its invasion of Georgia after we invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and liberated Iraq from a brutal and dangerous dictatorship.

Obama seems engulfed in a blame-America-first mentality, which got an airing at the Saddleback Forum in his answer on the necessity of confronting evil.  Obama claimed that we perpetrated evil while operating on a pretense of fighting it.  When, Bennett asks?  When we liberated Dachau?  When we kept the world safe from an oppressive Communist totalitarianism?  Why is Obama focusing on our evil, instead of the real threats to our nation?

Bennett says he thought we’d gotten past the blame-America-first mentality, but Obama proves otherwise.  He can do that and run for President, but it expresses a value system that seems hostile to the America that most of us know.  “You, sir, are just too ambivalent about the United States to become its leader.”

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