What I Learned in Grad School

Two months ago, I completed the Global Master of Arts program at Fletcher, a one-year intensive degree in international affairs. For a year, I asked my husband and two grade school children to tolerate my all-nighters, as I churned out a paper on drilling rights in the Amazon, or submerged myself in tariff law, while I fulfilled a long-delayed passion for world affairs.

The exhaustive curriculum, which included courses in politics, economics, negotiation, finance and law, required weekly readings, problem-sets, papers and massive preparation. Getting through it, and my final thesis, was itself an act of endurance. It's hard to believe that Governor Sarah Palin is doing in a few weeks what it took me a year to cover. And even though I now have a Masters degree, which I guess suggests I've "mastered" something, what stays with me is not how much I mastered but how much I missed, how vast, how intricate, and how humbling this area is. If there is one sobering truth about studying foreign affairs, it's that each bit of knowledge one gains only opens the door on another hundred bits of ignorance. Take a moment to dip into the academic database on "Democracy in Uganda," and dozens of articles come at you, each with a different take - historical, economic, political. They lead to articles about fair trade coffee, post-flood food insecurity, rebel movements in the north which bleed across the border to Sudan, or the Pentagon's unified command for Africa. The point is, international affairs are non-linear, complex, never black and white. And even after being immersed in it for 12 months, I wouldn't expect anyone to say I could run the country based on my understanding of international affairs.

Every era might make a claim to be the most important one for the study of foreign policy. But I would maintain that there has never been a riper time for it than today. Much like the curriculum of my program at Fletcher, the issues of the moment are urgent and interweaving. Humanitarian issues are tied to those of national security, which relate to energy concerns which bring in environmental questions. And where I would not wish on my worst enemy a course on International Trade, it becomes clear to any student of foreign affairs that the engine of the whole planet is trade, and knowing those fundamentals is indispensable to understanding pretty much everything else.

Furthermore, though no one expects Palin - or any candidate - to give an exegesis on the criteria necessary for democracy to emerge, some demonstrable grasp of history might be helpful in making an argument for why our system is best for most countries in the world. It's not enough to contend that freedom is good. It's simplistic to reduce a head of state to the status of "bad guy." Sure, we all can love a self-made, plain-spoken hockey Mom, but we also value expertise, and we raise our children to study hard for a reason, not to be satisfied with skimming the surface.

One can only speculate what Governor Palin actually knows about Iran, or her neighbor Russia, the far reaches of which skirt the Arctic Circle and flirt with Alaska's shores from across the Bering Strait and the International Date Line. Maybe she knows a lot - after all, the ties with Alaska are significant. A century before her birth, the territory was part of the Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander II. But Governor Palin's suggestion that foreign policy experience wafts over to the Statehouse from Eastern Siberia is startling, made more so because while defending her claim, she also apparently believes it.

I have to wonder what her thoughts were as she sped through Manhattan in her SUV, garnering foreign policy cred by osmosis, as if her presence at the UN gave her some automatic bona fides. Did she feel at all embarrassed for herself, or for Presidents Karzai and Uribe, who allowed themselves to be props in this tableau, looking themselves at once charmed, compassionate and slightly diminished? Did she allow herself a moment of introspection as she adjusted the angle of her bangs, and while catching her eyes in the compact mirror, privately yearn for the safety and familiarity of Wasilla, a frontier town so small it was not listed among the top 13 major cities on www.mapofalaska.net?

It is hard to determine, like all Palin conundrums, if she would be more or less appealing were she to concede that she had much to learn. No doubt, she spent her weekend boning up on North Korea, Afghanistan and Georgia. Still, no one seems to be asking for Winston Churchill, especially in a Vice President. Good enough may be, well, good enough. You can't get depth from cramming, (I learned that the hard way), but her supporters may not care.

Gov. Palin stresses her executive experience. When he was still Governor of Texas, George Bush scored a memorable 25% when asked by a reporter, early in the 2000 campaign, to name the leaders of four countries: India, Chechnya, Pakistan and Taiwan. Last week, Laura Bush called Palin a "quick study" on foreign policy. But do we really think foreign policy can be studied "quickly" with the clock ticking? As anyone who took high school chemistry knows, memorizing is one thing, but integrating it into real knowledge is another. This was obvious when Gov. Palin said, "When Putin rears his head," - the beginning of a sentence that devolved into another linguistic pretzel. What exactly was happening with Putin's head still remains unclear. What did come through was not only Palin's naivete, but also her lack of humility when it comes to these complex regions of the world.

That is why I feel so flummoxed by Sarah Palin's glad-handing her way through town last week on her whirlwind public tutorial. One could excuse her lack of international experience if she convinced us that she has studied, considered, or pondered the world beyond Alaska's borders. I'm sure Gov. Palin will soon be using impressive words such as Waziristan, Ossetia, and Yuschenko as her running mate did last week, but I want to know that she has considered the nuances, and thoughtfully, before she got McCain's call, donned the designer heels and hit the political equivalent of the red carpet. If not, I want to know that she is now immersing herself in writers and thinkers, in treatises on coercive diplomacy, Wahhabism, the Law of the Sea, the Doha round, and China's dollar reserves, like my own Fletcher classmates have done, like every student of history and current crises must do. This is not to score points with some dreaded "elite" but because no complex situation - be it Iraq, Afghanistan, or Haiti - can be approached, let alone solved, with anything less. I don't believe it's enough to be briefed and primed; Palin needs to dive into Foreign Affairs 101 with all the seriousness and humility it requires. To real students of foreign policy, so far Palin makes running for V.P. look a heck of lot easier than the twelve months I spent hunched over trade laws and the Kyoto protocol.

Comments

[rockerandcounter]

Cheers to Marcia De Sanctis for setting out so precisely her perspective on the trouble with Sarah Palin. I've known Marcia since she was fresh out of Princeton and starting her career at ABC News. Even though I was older and had tons of experience in television it was humbling to be around someone as brilliant and beautiful as Marcia. In addition to her talent as a producer and writer she spoke several languages fluently including Russian. She also had an uncommon command of international affairs long before she had her Master's degree. Now if someone like Marcia was John McCain's running mate... But that is not the case by a lightyear. Sarah Palin is no Marcia De Sanctis.

[Ciganka]

Two words for you Ms. DeSanctis:

NAILED IT!

[lifeinfullcolor]

I keep asking why it is we don't have any discussions on standards to elect our leaders. When you see a 90 year old senator, hobbling up to make a vote, you realize he's not the one who's studying the issues. The republicans seem to like their shucks, howdy, kind of politicians to sell their trickle up policies, their shucks, howdy or actors. They rant and rave about liberal Hollywood but pluck the few conservative actors up, to run for office. Unfortunately, like most industry these days, it's not those in the know we value. Look at the pharmacutical industry, they pay their chemists minimal while they pay their sales staff maximum. I now ask my more conservative friends, how is it you care about whether the surgeon knows what he's doing before he operates on you, that he's studied medicine, but we choose people to oversee our government without any standards?

[scarletwitch]

You must work under the assumption that if Sarah Palin becomes VP then their is a chance (however small) she will become President if Mc Cain becames incapacitated, and the odds on this are unknown, simply as he will not release his medical records.

Her scariness as many have mentioned does not come from intellectual unsophistication, but simple lack of curiosity and the ability to be humble, coupled with an inability to string a sentence together coherently (You really don't need a degree to pass that test).

She simply has no "upside" other than being "folksy", and this is becoming increasingly apparent, as the blinds are slowing being pulled from peoples eyes over Middle America.

Given the current polls though, a disaster from her on Thursday will be game-set-match for Obama - the stakes have never been higher.

[scarletwitch]

Can I give you an alternative European Perspective?

Amongst the intelligentsia here their is amazement at the level of stupidity of what seems a large proportion of the American General Public.

It is patently obvious, even to most Republicans who can face to be honest with themselves, that Sarah Palin is an extraordinary joke, that may, became reality.

What happens if McCain passes away during office - do you really think you would be safe with her as president.

Put it another way - if she passed into power - I would seriously leave the UK as being a US ally - it may became the battleground for a non-conventional exchange - due to the stupidity of this woman - I'll be moving somewhere safe and neutral.

[ljmck]

Send me the address. I want to go too.

[tersan]

I have a Master's of International Affairs as well. Yes, it is useful in considering International Affairs.

This woman is a fraud, a random redneck in brightly colored pumps. It's no more valuable to think about her geopolitical knowledge than to wax philosophical about her competence in neurosurgery. She's not a professional whatsoever. So why even think about her ability to "soak it in with dignity and curiosity?"

She's a fundamentalist redneck. That's what the entire GOP has become. The lines are all too clear.

[gvc]

You believe in facts and logic. Sarah, and a substantial fraction of the electorate, don't. You can no more use facts and logic than Santa Claus to appeal to non-believers.

[reader39]

Great article - but sadly, I don't think that any of this matters. I believe that in this country, we are generally ignorant of the world around us. Our news is not focused on international affairs so unless there's a war or a major event, we don't know very much.

I've always watched the news (I also have a masters degree) and I would always have considered myself "current" on world events. Then I moved to London for a year several years ago and I discovered that I knew NOTHING about the world. I would hear conversations about world events and I had NO idea about most issues. I worked with people from all over the world and most of them could discuss world issues fluently but I couldn't even begin to contribute to these conversations. Since I've returned to the states, I've discovered that it's an effort to find out what's going on outside the US since our MSM doesn't really focus on international events.

So if Sarah Palin can just drop a few names and mention a few impressive sounding places, I think most people will be satisfied that she passes the foreign policy test.

[feyangel]

I don't think Palin is capable of the level of "thoughtfulness"-- or thought that this author suggests she needs to "master" or even really grasp many of the issues she needs to understand and be about to think and work effectively with if she is to be an even functional VP. I also really don't get that she has even a tinch of the "humility" referred to here. Like many uneducated and "unexposed" people I have met, she doesn't seem to know that she doesn't know-- in other words, she has no idea how stupid and off course she is and how silly she looks most of the time.

[Alterion]

These people aren't stupid. Lack of knoweldge is not a crime, what I see is a lack of interest in learning. Seriously, I don't have a pompous degree in foreign policy, but I could have aced both the Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews from my just watching an hour or two of network news every day.

Learning requires a passionate interest in learning, and humility, an acknoweldgement that you don't know everything, and the occasional admitting that you were wrong (neither gop strong points).

Its not lack of experience or knowldge, its attitude. I mean we can argue all day long over whether a small town mayor or community organizer is more experienced, but if one was to be honest - Obama had about as much experience as Palin did before his campaign started. Hear him talk now, not an expert but certainly has a grasp of what's going on. He has grown and learned during the last year, and hopefully will continue to do so as President.

[Haditup2here]

I need to write a similar piece on her so-called "Experience on Energy".

[ljmck]

If Palin should succeed to the presidency, will there be some sort of unelected regent advising and guiding every move? Will Cheney volunteer for the position?

At least, she'll be awake studying when that 3 a.m. phone call arrives.

[PhDiva]

I have a Ph.D. Through committed analysis you learn that genuine respect for your subject involves recognizing its complexity. Sarah Palin's goal is to simplify things, not for the purpose of communicating to a diverse audience, but for the purpose of reducing even the most complex ideas to oversimplified sound bites that appeal to the worst of our stereotypes and generalizations. She does not want to communicate with her audience, but to pacify and delude us. It's one thing to understand a complex concept and to then translate it into more basic terms for the average person as Obama does at his best. It's quite another to demonstrate a contempt for knowledge and understanding, as Palin does. She has never displayed even the most basic intellectual curiosity about a single idea. She wants to know just enough to "get by" and to "get over" on us. Don't we deserve more from our leaders?

[cognitivedissident]

I have a PhD, too, but I have chosen not to use it--at least not in the "traditional" way. 90% of my day-to-day interactions are with people who have a GED at best, many of whom don't even know what a PhD IS. I'm fiercely anti-elitist, and increasingly skeptical of the benefits of "formal education" by degrees. So I would not necessarily consider ANYONE who doesn't bring to the table a list of academic credentials unqualified for ANY job, but I'm sorry....anyone who cannot, within a couple of seconds, come up some pivotal Supreme Court decisions (let's say Brown v Board, Plessy v Ferguson, Bush v Gore) or the titles of some of the nation's major print media (NYT? WSJ? Time? Newsweek?)--I'm sorry, but these are NO BRAINERS.

Sure, Palin's probably kicking herself on those 2 points, but answers like that are the kind that confirm for us the degree to which she is trying to "get by" and cover up her total absence of basic intellectual curiosity. If you've got to cram information like THAT in your prep for the VP slot, it's no wonder there's no room for the more complex stuff. Kinda like having to memorize your alphabet and multiplication tables while preparing for a bar exam.

[Maderous]

This is why the elite charge and anti intellectual movement in this country get me. I know that most people in this country don’t go to college and even fewer graduate, and while I certainly don’t think that a person has to have a degree of any kind to be considered smart, there are also some things that inherently come along with a college education and certainly with an advanced degree. When people first tried to make the argument that Palin was as qualified as Obama based on experience I wanted Obama to say, “Yeah, well, I’m well educated and have some pretty impressive academic accomplishments under my belt.” No, this is not an answer to everything, but it does answer why he, without “executive experience” is so much better suited to be President. Education matters, proving yourself in an academic setting has to be allowed to count for something. Spending time studying topics helps your understanding, if for no other reason than to help you realize how little you know and how much there is to learn. If you are uneducated (again different than not being smart) you have a much better chance of not realizing what you don’t know. And keep in mind that many of the same people supporting Palin supported Bush, yet they still don’t second guess their own ability to evaluate qualities that make a good president.

[emily00011]

If you decide to see international affairs as black and white, good vs. evil, it sure does simplify things greatly. Should ask her how she feels about Sweden's neutrality, that might make her little mind short circuit.