Finally got a chance to read the Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin:
The first thing McCain could have learned about Palin is what it means that she is from Alaska. More than 30 years ago, John McPhee wrote, “Alaska is a foreign country significantly populated with Americans. Its languages extend to English. Its nature is its own. Nothing seems so unexpected as the boxes marked ‘U.S. Mail.’”[…] As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked. Scrutiny is not welcome, and Alaskans of every age and station, of every race and political stripe, unself-consciously refer to every other place on earth with a single word: Outside.
That’s true, but in an essential way beside the point: the crime of Sarah Palin is not anything particularly essential to her or her sometime home state, but that anyone would not take one look at her and recognize someone who should not be trusted anywhere near an important decision.
The McCain staffers discuss their growing dissatisfaction with her, but my question is how it wasn’t blindingly obvious that she was a disaster from the opening bell. Let’s look at what we can imagine of McCain’s VP decision tree, bearing in mind that he had months to go through this in detail and seems to have preferred hanging out at his ranch:
- Joe Lieberman. First choice, but pro-choice, which apparently scared the McCain team who took seriously the threat of a floor fight.
- Lindsey Graham. Let’s assume he is a collateral victim of don’t ask, don’t tell. Got along wonderfully with McCain but didn’t contribute electorally.
- Charlie Crist. Same DADT problem. Would he have delivered another 120,000 votes? Would have been a huge help.
- Mitt Romney. Terrible candidate, and McCain didn’t like him, so unlikely to be picked. On the other hand, if he had been picked at the very end of August and the economy had gone Chernobyl three weeks later, McCain would have seemed clairvoyant for picking a “business” VP. Thank God McCain didn’t like him.
- Tom Ridge. Who needs Pennsylvania? Not a swing state, the way Boston is not a big college town.
- Tim Pawlenty. Too boring.
- Kay Bailey Hutchison, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe. No idea why John didn’t pick a woman who could speak in complete sentences, except perhaps that none was pretty enough.
After running through the list of options, somehow McCain decided to bet his entire campaign on Sarah Palin. Contrary to popular belief, when McCain made the Palin decision the campaign was nowhere near over; Obama had a modest bounce coming out of the Democratic convention but nothing that could not be expected to diminish. Palin exceeded expectation at the Republican convention and McCain closed the remaining gap, but any candidate would have closed somewhat.
I was scared by the bump – my reaction on September 8 was this:
In addition to all of John McCain’s negatives, Sarah Palin is new, professes no understanding of foreign policy, thinks being a mom is a qualification to be President yet succeeded so well that her daughter is pregnant, was involved in Ted Stevens’ 527, which is hardly the sign of a reformer, has spent most of her time in elected office pursuing her own vendettas, does not believe in abortion even in the case of rape and incest, and is now on a campaign to run away from the media. Oh, and unemployment is up and the Treasury has needed to sign us up for a massive bailout of the GSEs to avoid a complete run on the dollar. Before November, at least.
Oh those happy days when the bailout of Fannie/Freddie was a big deal…How could anyone remotely connected to the campaign not see Palin’s liabilities? Wouldn’t you have to expect that ten relentless weeks would expose some of them? Even if McCain had pulled it off, wouldn’t that have been a testament to his charm (and some level of electoral corruption and a dash of racism)?
Now Sarah is on her own – well away from the media filter she claimed to so dislike – and I suppose we will see where she ends up. Roger Ebert described her as the American Idol candidate; there is something in the combination of her incompetence and relentless self-esteem that makes other incompetent people feel good about themselves. I struggle to raise children, I struggle to hold a job, these are real challenges, who are they to tell me and Sarah we aren’t good enough?
Are there enough of these folks to win an election? I doubt it. My sense is that the next Republican president will be more Reagan (or first-term Dubya) than Nixon (or second-term Dubya), someone who is able to channel a corporatist politics into a sunny package. I’m much more frightened by Mike Huckabee than Sarah Palin.
