Many Democratic operatives are advising Obama and Biden to essentially ignore Palin. I don’t think they can. President-elect McCain (I use the term to focus your mind on the stakes here) has made her one of the most important issues in this campaign.
In choosing — or being forced to choose — a person with no national or international experience, whose government background is a few years as mayor of a tiny exurb and 18 months as governor of a state with 670,000 people (less than half the population of Phoenix), McCain should be giving the nation pause. Pause to wonder about his judgment, for if he chose her it was the kind of impulsive, irresponsible action for which he’s known. Pause to wonder who is really pulling his strings, considering she is the candidates of the hard-core evangelicals McCain once denounced, and the oil industry he claims to be willing to fight. Pause that he would make a shameless political move to energize his base even if it meant putting the country at risk. President Palin. Think about that.
One of the many outrageous things about the Palin affair is her refusal to hold news conferences or meet with reporters. Proper "deference" was demanded by the McCain campaign. Deference? Here, ma’am, the people rule — unless you are willing to proclaim us an authoritarian empire where the press is treated as it is in, say, China. It should be a deal-breaker in itself that she has been shut off like a celebrity.
What is McCain hiding? What is he afraid of?
The Gibson interview, soft as it is, has produced several frightening
moments, including her willingness to go to war with nuclear-armed
Russia and her ignorance — even under gentle prompting — of the Bush
Doctrine. As James Fallows writes, "What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough
in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues."
She casts herself with the parochialism and lack of curiosity displayed by candidate George W. Bush. Similarly, she is the creature of the religious right and end-timers. Similarly, she seems easily drawn to abuse of power and claims of executive privilege, as with Troopergate. Similarly, she is an easy liar, as with the bridge to nowhere, the unbuilt pipeline and her fiscal stewardship of her tiny town. She glibly trucks in the fear and hate tactics of Karl Rove. A real agent of change.
She claimed that her knowledge of energy gives her decisive foreign policy experience. An Alaskan’s knowledge of energy is similar to a heroin addict’s knowledge of advanced pharmaceutical research. "Drill, drill, drill, baby!" Has this vast knowledge advanced her understanding of, say, peak oil? Or of the extremely limited amount of oil available in ANWR or on the outer continental shelf, given American consumption and that all oil is sold on an international market?
Much more to come on this huge issue: Palin. Polls show her giving McCain a big edge with working class whites and women. Do you even believe this? I am skeptical. But if it’s true, this may come down to an election between stupid people and those who can still think for themselves. Palin casts her lack of experience, curiosity and insularity as plusses — against the educated elite. In itself, this is a new elitism of ignorance. If it triumphs, we’re done.
If I had to bet, it would be on the stupid people. “No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of Americans” or something like that. It got us 8 years of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, ad nausium. Oh wait, I did lose money on THAT bet as my IRAs will attest.
Well, just ask yourself if John McCain, acting personally and independently, would have selected Sarah Palin as his ideal running mate. It seems to me that since the answer is an obvious “no”, we have to assume that McCain is acting under compulsion from his campaign advisers. The question then becomes, what compulsion?
I think a reasonable hypothesis can be inferred by examining where the McCain campaign was before the Palin for VP announcement, what his campaign was lacking, how Republican strategists think (as judged by their actions in recent presidential elections), and what the McCain ticket gains from Palin — or at least, what the perceived gains might be according to his campaign advisory team. Then we can examine the (surprisingly subtle) question of how good McCain’s judgment was in acceding to this advice.
(1) What the McCain campaign was: (a) Demographically: old, White and male. Not the ticket to attract young voters, women voters, or minority voters. (b) Politically: conservative, but not enough to enthuse the right-wing types who make up the activist core of the Republican Party (a large portion of which consist of the Religious Right); yet simultaneously, conservative enough by Republican standards to convince others that a vote for McCain was essentially a vote for the continuation of Bush Administration policies.
(2) What the McCain campaign was lacking: (a) Something to appeal to young, female, and minority voters; (b) Something to appeal to the activist core of the Republican Party.
(3) How do Republican strategists think and what did they hope to gain? We know that in the Bush campaign, great store was set in appealing to the Religious Right as a politically active Party core whose enthusiastic participation, if obtained, could energize campaign activities in practical ways along propaganda, organizing, and campaign finance fronts. We also know that in choosing Palin, McCain has killed two birds with one stone. By injecting youth, beauty, and plucky femininity into his campaign, he now gains some appeal, however superficial, among younger voters (male and female) and women voters (including, laughably, some of the feminist contingent). The choice of Palin as VP did not, of course, broaden McCain’s appeal to minority voters, but running against Obama he would always be playing second-fiddle in that game anyway, in addition to the risk of alienating closet racists among his own potential voters. On the basis of a strictly cynical cost-benefit analysis, he may have been shrewd in concentrating on wooing the remaining demographic and political target groups.
(4) How good was McCain’s judgment in acceding to this advice? Well, there was a general media concensus before Palin was announced, that McCain was running on borrowed time and that the campaign was all but decided. Now the media buzz, though including some rancorous discord, seems to regard the campaign as competitive again. The polling data, for whatever it’s worth, seems to reflect this.
Mr. Talton questions McCain’s judgment, and as a thinking person I can certainly see his point. But things become clearer if we divide the electorate (pre-Palin) into some broad categories: (a) informed, intelligent voters who had already decided whom to vote for; (b) intelligent, informed, but undecided voters; (c) lackadaisical or undecided voters whose degree of political engagement and understanding of the issues is low; (d) special-interest voters such as the Religious Right, as well as a subset of broadly “feminist” voters for whom the sex of the candidate is disproportionately important.
In deciding on a running-mate, it’s clear that McCain’s choice would not affect category (a), and category (b) is quite small. That leaves categories (c) and (d), which are by no means mutually exclusive and overlap in certain respects. These were the groups from which McCain might have hoped to gain votes through a savvy VP pick. Voters from category (c) were unlikely to find a conservative policy-wonk appealing, but might respond to superficial, image driven considerations — youth, beauty, sex appeal, personality, and charisma; all qualities lacking in John McCain himself, incidentally, but possessed by his opponent Obama. The biases of the remaining category, (d), require no elaboration.
So, by and large, McCain could not hope to appeal to persons of judgment in making his VP pick. Therefore, he had to appeal on other bases. Therefore, I would have to argue that McCain, having nothing to lose, demonstrated sound judgment in picking Palin — that is, sound judgement with respect to the narrow question of electability.
I agree, therefore, with Mr. Talton that Palin cannot be ignored. If she is the new strength of the McCain ticket, she is also its new vulnerability. That vulnerability has to be attacked until she becomes a liability, at which time the McCain ticket, faced with two liabilities, will sink under the weight of its own deficits.