A Blast from the Dishrag's Past

Loyal reader RB sends us the following bit to read...

Here are two quotes to consider:

Governor Palin’s lack of experience, especially in national security and foreign affairs, raises immediate questions about how prepared she is to potentially succeed to the presidency. That really is the only criterion for judging a candidate for vice president. She has had less than two years in Alaska’s Statehouse — elected as a long-shot insurgent admirably willing to take on her party leaders, decrying Republican involvement in Alaska’s Statehouse corruption scandals. Before that she served eight years as council member and mayor in small-town Wasilla, outside Anchorage.

Where is it written that governors and mayors ... are too local, too provincial? What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. Why shouldn't a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?

The first was written by the New York Times in August 2008. The second was written by, you guessed it, the New York Times in 1984.

Well, it should be remembered that foreign policy wasn't an important issue in 1984. After all, how tough could things have been if all we were facing was a "Cold" War?