At  the Washington Post’s “On Faith” site, Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver says he hopes Sarah Palin will step up to a new job for which she is eminently qualified: Civil rights leader for people with intellectual disabilities.

As a parent advocate, he says, she could lobby for better early childhood education, better health care, and “expose the dirty secret that people with special needs are among the most discriminated against populations in the health care world.”

This doesn’t have to be about the legality of abortion but rather about informing
 prospective parents that people with Down Syndrome can lead happy and productive lives. That’s a message that both the conservative Sam Brownback and the liberal Ted Kennedy have endorsed. I bet they’d both welcome Palin as a messenger.

Some will argue that Sarah Palin is too controversial to be effective in these roles. To the contrary: she could be a uniter.

Shriver also says President Obama is set to announce his intention to make the United States a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm and is filed under civil rights, commentary, Down syndrome, intellectual/developmental disabilities, NOT2BEMISSED, Obama administration, politics, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.