The Democrats seem thrilled to be able to pounce on the issue of experience with Sarah Palin, who has served as small town mayor, Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and 2-year governor.
A couple of thoughts:
-No matter who McCain chose, there would be open avenues of attack (e.g. Romney fired people as a consultant, Pawlenty is boring and has no national experience, Lieberman is a turncoat or a shill for Israel, Ridge is pro-choice, etc.).
-Ms. Palin, though nationally inexperienced, has more executive leadership under her belt than all the candidates combined.
-It will be interesting to see how she stands up to Biden, who is smart, experienced, and savvy and the Dems now say the experience card is no longer McCain's to play, but let me pose this question: Let's say that McCain wins and then dies two years into office. Isn't it reasonable to say that her time as gov and two full years as VP would make her more experienced than Obama would be on day one of his administration?
In the end, if Palin removes the experience question and Biden invalidates the post-partisan change message from the debate, i'm fine with that. Let's get down to the real issue at stake here: do the American people want more overall government control and decision making in their lives or do they want to preserve and perhaps advance the cause of individual liberty? This is a serious philosophical question that I hope earns some serious debate.
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a few responses:
ReplyDelete1. yes, mccain was boxed in both by his need to mollify the right-wing of his party and somehow simultaneously reach out to some part of the moderate electorate needed to create his majority, a tough task indeed. and picking a conservative woman was probably the best way to square that circle. but why not pick one of many other indisputably more qualified candidates who satisfies those same requirements (hutchison/snowe/collins/fiorina/rice/etc.) while also having expressed a modicum of interest in national-level domestic issues, not to mention foreign policy. after all, the county is currently waging three wars (iraq/afghanistan/terror) and she is but a breath away from the most powerful office in the world. not all avenues of VP-pick attacks are created equal.
2. more "executive experience"? please, BHO has this one cold:
:: she was mayor of a small town barely larger than my freshman dorm (eight floor west, represent).
:: obama's presidency of the 80+ editors at the harvard law review stacks up damn nicely against her tour as one of three commissioners at the 25-person AOGCC.
:: she has been governor for 20 months of the 3rd least-populated state in the union (683,478). obama's 18-month presidential campaign signed up more individual donors than that in the month february alone (708,000). his campaign -- built from scratch across 50 states into the largest one in history, which then bested the 2nd most-powerful political family in the US -- has already raised almost $340m, or roughly the inflation-adjusted purchase price of alaska when acquired from the russian empire in 1847. (ah, there we go! a foreign policy angle! use it!)
:: he has been tested (and wildly succeeded) in realtime right before our eyes. can anyone say anything similar about SJP? has she ever even expressed any interest in doing so? does she even know what a vice president does?
3. BHO's knowledge of all applicable presidential issues that he has honed during the above campaign experience make him imminently more experienced than the hypothetical succession of a washington newbie two years into a veep's schedule of NASA meetings, state dinners and making sure your boss gets his way on senate ties. and i'm not even mentioning (too late!) the years he spent teaching constitutional law at the university of chicago. you know, the constitution? the only thing mentioned that a president is sworn to preserve, protect and defend?
in closing, the reason VP picks are so closely scrutinized isn't because of what they will actually DO while in office (very little, by design) but rather they are critiqued as the best (and sometimes the only, pre-election) example of the judgement and priorities of the person who selects them, the presidential candidate. this pick fails that test on its face, as it is all about electioneering and nothing about serious governance. it also -- for the first serious time -- makes me doubt the wisdom of any future choices that mccain might make while in office.
while mccain's VP pick may be smart politics (which is still highly debatable), it is the exact opposite of "putting country first". and for once, even conservatives acknowledge it. pat buchannan is exactly right (!) when he said "I think this is the biggest political gamble, just about, in all of American history." you cannot honestly say that about BHO's candidacy or his biden VP pick. and with this mavericky pick, JSM just became the riskier candidate than BHO. wow.
i can see the new RNC convention posters now: "john mccain: gambling with the leadership of the free world". but at least they'll look good on the wall above my TV during obama's now-certain 1st inaugural address.
(as an aside, watching the additions and subtractions grow throughout the day on SLP's wikipedia page has been a 21st century marvel. it went from a few boilerplate paragraphs to a fully-annotated and linked masters thesis in under a few hours.)
I think "not an actual commie pinko" presents a strong case against Palin. Let me add one more thought to the mix.
ReplyDeleteI think the next few news cycles will illuminate the degree to which McCain did not adequately 'vet' Palin before he made his decision. If he truly knew about Palin's daughter's pregnancy, the way the campaign 'managed' this story could not have been handled more incompetently. The fact that it managed to get equal billing (or at least a lot of air time) next to hurricane gustav says something.
The news story that Palin, the "reformer," once headed one of indicted Alaska Senator Ted Steven's 527s - when McCain is a professed opponent of 527s - is about to get some legs. And whether Palin was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it will garner much closer scrutiny.
Finally, Palin has just lawyered up because she is about to be deposed this month over whether she abused her office to pressure a state offical to fire her ex brother in law the state trooper.
These are headaches to any candidate trying to recover some momentum. But I have a broader point. And that is, it reinforces a negative image about McCain that is going to come up more and more: his temperament.
McCain is thought of by many of his colleagues as a hothead, too knee-jerk, the fighter pilot who relies on reaction speed rather than deliberate contemplation. At its more extreme, a person who makes very important decisions with his 'gut' and not with adequate information. Does that remind you of a certain president most of us strongly dislike?
By picking Palin, and with the press now running with this story of "what did McCain 'know' about Palin when he chose her" -- what is actually happening is a debate over whether McCain has the temperament to be president.
Because Palin's inexperience + McCain's age & health is going to weigh on people's minds. How could it not, after McCain has spent the last year emphasizing his experience and commander in chief credentials. And good luck with the argument that the public will feel comfortable crossing its fingers for two or four years while Palin learns how to be president.
well put, rogers.
ReplyDelete