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The Girl Next Door? |
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I’m rarely shocked in politics anymore. It all seems so, well, scripted. When I woke up this morning here in Seattle to see that Senator John McCain had picked someone other than Mitt Romney as his VP pick, and that his pick was A) a woman not named Kay Bailey Hutchinson and B) a less than one-term Governor and C) from the state of Alaska, I was, and still am, shocked. This is not a wise choice Senator.
I try to be fair and impartial when looking at campaigns since I’ve worked on them for so long. I like to think I’m the first to point out when someone said something smart or made a good move, but this is not one of those times. For one, Governor Sarah Palin’s complete lack of experience pretty much eliminates McCain’s most effective attack against Barack Obama. Also, a pro-lifer who wants to teach creationism alongside evolution in our public schools doesn’t reach Clinton supporters, and think that’s the tactic McCain was going for.
This woman is technically a heartbeat away from the presidency, if it comes to that, and just looking at the 72-year-old McCain makes that statement more than just a figure of speech. If Obama’s four years in the Senate aren’t enough, then how is 20 months as Governor of a sparsely populated state that’s (according to my friends that live in Alaska) as disconnected of a state as you can get while still being an American help you pass the so-called “McCain Test?”
With all this, the VP technically has two jobs until the election: Be an effective surrogate and do somewhat well in a debate against the other VP candidate. The only question now is whether Joe Biden will be seen as a bully for knowing a lot more than Governor Palin does on, well, everything. In the sharpest critique of Governor Palin, my girlfriend (who thought McCain was President Bush’s VP right now) upon hearing the Governor speak stated, “She sounds like a librarian,” and then upon seeing what she looked like said, “She doesn’t look like she can be in charge of anything.” Take it from me, trust everyone who knows nothing about politics. These are the people who vote and these are the people that politicians are talking to in those boring speeches.
I do find McCain’s choice interesting, but only in the sense that he’s blatantly pandering to Clinton voters. My words for McCain? Palin is no Clinton. McCain doesn’t need Clinton voters, he needs his evangelical base. Why he isn’t pandering to them (since his lips are securely fastened to Pat Robertson’s genitals) is beyond me. Or, since this election is obviously about the economy, something McCain admittedly knows nothing about, why he didn’t pick a candidate with strong economic credentials? This pick makes me question his overall judgment in a time of crisis. Is winning more important than being right? Apparently so, in the mind of John McCain, but I doubt that this horrific choice for VP does anything to rally the faithful, and will probably leave more people shaking their heads after the convention.
Let’s look at it this way: John McCain’s first big decisions so far have been to allow his economic policy to be written by a man who called us a “nation of whiners,” and choosing as the potential 2nd most powerful person in the world someone who agrees with McCain on pretty much everything and really, really wants to be the Vice President. If he wanted a woman for shock value, he should’ve chose Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. The only problem is that people actually like her more than McCain, and his biggest fear is being thought of as weak. So he chose a weak VP to make him look tougher, but it just makes him look older.
Heck of a job there, Brownie. There’s about 60 days left to go in this election and McCain’s going to spend more time selling his #2 then talking about why he should be #1. Excellent “judgment.” Is she ready to lead on day one, and if so are you ready to admit that, then isn’t Obama is also ready to lead? Are you a hypocrite, or just stupid?
That’s my two cents. I’m glad to be back.
If McCain’s #1 goal in picking Palin was to rally the evangelicals, couldn’t this backfire? Many conservative Christians are extremely patriarchal. They won’t even allow women to be officers in their congregations. Would they have trouble voting for a woman to be vice president, no matter how much they agree with her politics?
It seems that the safe choice for McCain would have a man with more expereience who shares Palin’s views. But I’m glad he made this choice. Republicans have already spent ten times as much energy defending her as the Democrats did defending Biden.
I can’t help but feel like Mc Cain is intentionally shooting himself in the foot. I mean, Palin is an outrageously poor choice. I feel like these VP nods were some kind of contest, like Obama was like, “Check this out Mc Cain, I have an old white guy that is strong in foreign policy, what now?” and then Mc Cain was like “Oh really, well I’m gonna pick a woman, you don’t have one of those on your ticket do you?” and its a crime to make people make choices based on wedge issues that really shouldn’t have anything to do with how you feel about a candidate, but to the grossly uninformed public, they do. There is no denying that essentially, for the uninformed voter(which number is far more than any of us want to think it is) that there will be a struggle, black-white, old-young, male-female. I feel like this is just a crime against the public, I know these things don’t matter, but to many they do, even if they wont admit it.
And as far a Palin goes, she is alienating Mc Cain’s conservative Christian following, this morning it was announced that her unwed, 17 year old daughter is five months pregnant(yes, 5 months, so its not like it was a secret) I don’t know but to me this shows that the desire of Palin to teach abstinence has backfired on her personally… Now this really isn’t a problem for me, but for Mc Cain supporters, maybe so…
I have to dispute this just a bit. The social conservatives I know like the Palin pick because she’s one of them. It definitely makes Robertson happy.