The pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin by John McCain has certainly created a buzz, undoubtedly one of the main reasons the McCain campaign selected her as the Republican nominee for vice president. Unfortunately, not all of the buzz has been positive. Amid all the revelations about Ms. Palin’s background—“Troopergate” (why does every potential scandal HAVE to have the word “gate” attached to it? Is it now a required suffix like “ism” is to political and social movements???) and Palin’s teen-age daughter’s pregancy—I offer a few thoughts about Ms. Palin’s positive and negative impacts for the McCain campaign:
POSITIVES:
* She shores up the Republican social conservative base. There has been a lot of moaning and crying from the “Base” for many months now. Pastors like James Dobson and right-wing radio talk show hosts, including the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, at various times over the year vowed to sooner vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama than McCain, or not vote at all. McCain’s nomination was the destruction of the Republican Party to hear the conservative pundits tell it. However, with Ms. Palin’s selection—and in the background of the shrieking banshees of socially interfering “conservatism” essentially backing off of their fatalistic prophecies and generally coming around to supporting McCain over the last month or two—the social conservatives are mollified. This is a woman who believes that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape or incest, who does not believe that global warming is due to human activity (and may believe that it is not occurring—this is unclear), believes creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools, and feels that the only form of sex education should be abstinence, not birth control (do you think she has changed her opinion in light of her daughter’s failure to abstain?). Hardcore social conservatives love her. They’ve got their person on the ticket.
* She’s a woman. The McCain campaign felt it had to do something to combat the historic nature of Barack Obama’s candidacy, as the first mixed heritage / African American on a major political party’s ticket for president. So they selected a woman for the veep spot, and a very photogenic one at that.
NEGATIVES:
* She’s a woman. Clearly, this is a pick that was motivated in substantial part to gun for disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. I may be proven wrong by the exit polls, but I think that the reverse will occur. I think that female Hillary Clinton supporters will be insulted that the McCain campaign thinks that just by nominating a woman, it—he—sews up their votes, even though she is diametrically opposed to just about every position Hillary Clinton has taken and stands for.
* She’s so obviously unqualified to be “ready on day one.” McCain’s mantra leading up to his selection for the VP spot was that he would pick the most qualified person to be president in the event of his incapacity or death. Then he picked Palin. Now his campaign’s mantra is that she really “complements the ticket.” Republican claims to the contrary—she’s governor, uh, of the state, uh, closest to Russia (seriously, this is something I have heard)—she has no foreign policy experience and is completely unready to be commander-in-chief. Her selection deprives McCain of any semblance of an argument that Barack Obama is unready to be president, since Palin has less experience with foreign affairs and far less time in public office than Obama. The experience argument could have been a good one.
* She’s got baggage. As the whole Troopergate controversy and unwed teen-age daughter revelations demonstrate, picking someone whom no one knows anything about results in intense media investigation and unwanted and unforeseen revelations. Additionally, because most people (other than people in Alaska, an electorally insignificant state) have no idea who she is, she risks being defined by salacious, scandalous stories, because they’re good news copy. We’re not going to hear a lot from the mainstream media about how she is adored in Alaska or led some tough negotiations with BP.
In sum, I think Ms. Palin was kind of a mixed bag for McCain. He was definitely going for shock value, and he got it. But he has to take the good with the bad. On balance, I’d say he could have done better (I was terrified he would pick Kay Bailey Hutchison), but the election will still be about McCain and Obama.
And... at least we don’t have to listen to Mitt Romney for the next 2 months.
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1 comment:
I think Palin is a political mistake for McCain for another reason, too. Obama often distinguishes the leadership quality of judgment from that of mere experience; for example, when he parried Hillary's attacks in the primaries by arguing that her wealth of experience did not improve her judgment as to whether to authorize the Iraq war - indeed, it may even have impaired her judgment somewhat; and when he notes the vast experience that the manifestly incompetent Bush administration brought to office. Republican apparatchiks like Cheney and Rumsfled brought in decades of high-level experience to their jobs, and then promptly made a complete mess of things. In picking Palin, McCain appears to privilege intraparty politics and media buzz over any other criteria, displaying a shortsighted and selfish judgment, while Obama's pick of Biden looks wise and sober by comparison. Whom would you rather have as president, Palin or Biden? If McCain is elected, and then dies (he is rather old, is he not?), then has he picked someone who would be a good president in his stead? (Or does he not care about that?) Obama appears to have the better judgment, even working from a point of less overall government experience than McCain.
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