Sarah Palin: Twice As Scary

Sarah Palin scares me.  Twice.  She scares me as a Democrat and she scares me as an American.

The Democrat in me is a little spooked that this brainstorm of McCain’s is so crazy it just might work.  She has a compelling story, a spunky* charisma that makes you want to root for her, and she has strong conservative bona fides.  And lots of hair.  In short, she’s everything McCain is not.

Choosing Sarah Palin was a shameless pander on McCain’s part.  A clear signal to anyone who would listen that his is a dangerously flawed candidacy that cannot survive without a shot in the arm.  And she just may be the right shot.  (They say she has a mean 3-pointer, after all.)

Between the two of them, they are insulated from nearly any criticism – the POW card, the woman card, the infant baby with Down’s, the son heading to Iraq.  And she and her husband are sure to make the NASCAR circuit swoon.

On the other hand, Sarah Palin scares me as an American.  On the off-chance that they do win, and she does become the Vice President of the United States,  she is so underqualified, so unschooled in political thought or maneuvering on a national scale – nevermind the global stage – that she would be a disaster.  Her statement a few short months ago that “I wish someone could explain to me just what the VP does” is perfect proof of that.

Take that and put it in the context of the oldest person ever to run for a first term of the presidency – a cancer survivor with unanswered questions about his health.   Suddenly the choice to put this 44 year old with 20 months of executive experience – the mother of a special needs 4 month-old – one heartbeat away from the presidency is simply negligent.

On Friday, she stood next to a man who is older than the state she governs and spoke to a crowd larger than the entire town she was presided over as mayor and introduced herself to the world.  She did a fine job, getting by on pluck and earnest brow-furrowing – which I suspect is her general MO.

But the last three VPs have taught us something.  Dan Quayle made it painfully, comically clear that good intentions and sit-com facial expressions do not constitute vice presidential mettle.  Al Gore came along to redefine the role of vice president as ax-to-the-grindstone policy wonk and true executive partner.  Then came Dick Cheney, who elevated vice presidential power to unprecedented and dangerous heights.

On the heels of Cheney comes Sarah Palin – Quayle without the chops or the gravitas – and threatens to plunge us back decades.  Which, given the Cold War imaginings of her new boss, probably makes her a pretty good running mate after all.

 

*  On a side note: I’m currently taking bets on which male television pundit will first describe her as “spunky,” and what kind of gender card hell will rain down on him when he does…

McCain To Women: Gullible Is Not In The Dictionary

At noon ET today, John McCain announced his choice for vice presidential candidate: Alaska governor Sarah Palin. And with that pick, the 72 year-old Senator sent a clear message to female voters: I think you’re idiots.

The man known for his public use of the C- word and his conspiratorial laugh when Hillary Clinton, his distinguished Senate colleague, was described as a “bitch” has grown convinced that he can win her voters. He’s spent the past two weeks trying to drive a wedge between Hillary’s female supporters and Obama with triangulation and passive-aggressive, disingenuous messaging.

He's made his strategy no secret. McCain clearly believes that women will vote for other women simply because they’re women. His choice of a pro-life creationist who is dead set on drilling in her own beautiful back yard is proof of that fact. By taking a staunch anti-choice stand, Sarah Palin virtually betrays the interests and longstanding struggles of American women – much the way her position on ANWR drilling betrays and endangers the well-being of her home state.

And John McCain’s statement of his intent to nominate conservative activist judges with the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade is further anathema to women’s rights over their own bodies. But women are gullible, he believes. They'll vote their kind, because they go with heart over head. Emotion over reasons.

Sen. McCain clearly believes that women will vote for him in November – against their own best interests – simply because he tapped a woman to be his vice presidential candidate. A choice that would put a severely unqualified, uninformed person a heartbeat away from The Button – weakening American standing and putting our national interests at risk.

But, according to John McCain, women aren’t concerned with that kind of detail. That’s man stuff.

Palin: Is Her Weakness Her Greatest Strength?

It's Sarah Palin. That sound you hear is thousands of reporters and oppo researchers tapping away at Google and shuffling through papers, trying to figure out what this beauty queen-cum-local pol is all about. There’s the state trooper flap. And the dangerous Stevens endorsement (gotta be worse than Rezko, right? Right??). And there’s the fact that she’s a complete greenhorn, utterly unfit to be a heartbeat (a 72 year-old cancer survivor’s heartbeat) away from the presidency.

But that last point, clearly the most important, valid reason to discount her candidacy, could prove to be a valuable asset. For one thing, the experience issue is utterly off the table for the Obama campaign this election. As convinced as Obama may be that his judgment and life experience qualify him to be president, he knows that it’s a losing topic for him. He has plenty of angles from which to attack McCain / Palin, but experience isn’t one of them. The trick for the Obama campaign all along has been to find ways to keep the word “experience” out of the national dialogue.

Fine, so they don’t have to say it. They can show it. After all, isn’t that what all writers are taught: show, don’t tell? About an hour ago, most Democrats’ mouths began watering and they circled Oct. 2 – the date of the Vice Presidential debates – on their calendars. After all, it’s a widely accepted fact that Biden will tear just about any challenger apart in a one-on-one debate. The man’s head is chock full of national security knowledge and his voting record a veritable Congressional history lesson, and he has a direct, candid, hard-hitting style that is borderline relentless.

There’s no question that Biden would win against Sarah Palin, but there’s a very real possibility that he won’t prevail against Palin. Thinking back to the Gore / Bush and Kerry / Bush debates, Bush was uninformed, a poor orator and generally dismantled by both Gore and Kerry. The vast majority of pundits and commentators had Bush losing those debates. But with each failure of a debate, Bush’s poll numbers rose. Republicans painted Democrats as arrogant and condescending. And, truthfully, it’d be damn hard not to condescend to George Bush.

Biden will have an exceptionally difficult time coming out of a debate with Sarah Palin without seeming condescending or preachy. For every verbal smack-down Biden issues, the GOP will issue statements that Biden was overbearing, cocky or “mean.” I can see it now – and it stands a very good chance of working. People’s hearts will go out to the “poor lady” who is getting schooled on national television by an aggressive older man. The Republicans will release YouTube videos using “Papa Don’t Preach” as a soundtrack. They will do everything they can to hold up her shortcomings as strengths, the same way they did with George W. Bush.

It’s a risky pick, to be sure – and it’s a gamble that the American people, having been fooled twice, will be rubes yet again. If there’s anything we love, it’s narratives about underdogs, come-from-nowhere triumphs, and young, charismatic beauty queens. I still believe that Jan 20, 2009 will inaugurate a President Obama, but the McCain campaign just laid down some tacks and maybe an oil slick on the raceway.

Hothead McCain

Over on TalkingPointsMemo, David Kurtz brings up the Obama camp's new line of attack branding McCain as a "reckless hothead," and asks "does it have a chance of working?"

I say the answer is yes - it has a chance of working. I'm not saying it will work, and I'm not saying it's the best message ever. But it has a definite chance of working, for a few reasons.

First and foremost, it's consistent with the way the public already views McCain. Other memes, which should be more damaging - the Bush III meme, especially - require a bit of swimming upstream. For years, McCain has held the title of Maverick in the eyes of the public and the press. And, while he no longer deserves that title, it will take a lot to convince low-information voters of that fact.

Whereas, with the trigger-happy meme, it goes in lock-step with everything we know about the man. Even what we (and by we, I mean the press & the electorate) like about him. It is one thing that is consistently true all the way back down the narrative line. Now, Obama doesn't have to trot out a bunch of Phillip Butlers the way the Swift Boaters did in '04 or talk about the C-word if he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. There's plenty of poorly chosen one-liners, Senate floor tantrums and Iraq War grandstanding that will do the job just fine.

And secondly, it subtly ties McCain in with Bush - in a way that's much more effective than hammering home "Bush's Third Term" over and over again. It's effective because it plays on the same emotions - the war fatigue, the sense that Americans are dying for our president's (vice president's?) whim.

If Team Obama gets this point across, then the only card McCain has available to him will backfire sensationally. Every time he tries to talk about judgment, experience, the 3am phone call, he will be undermined by his own carefully-nurtured narrative. At least, there's a chance of that.