The proof that Sarah Palin was a bad pick is in the steady stream of negative commentary about her. Over the last couple of days, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times all dedicated large portions of their Op-Ed pages to criticism of McCain and Palin.
The Washington Post points out the problem at the heart of the Palin selection:
It’s hard to recall a time when either major party asked voters to accept a nominee with a thinner record.
The New York Times is even more blunt:
If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.
To address those many problems, this country needs a leader with sound judgment and strong leadership skills. Choosing Ms. Palin raises serious questions about Mr. McCain’s qualifications.
A Democratic member of the Alaska House of Representatives, Mike Doogan, explains in the Washington Post why Palin is not qualified to be Vice President:
But I do know that, on all these fronts, she is a big, big risk if her ticket wins and something bad happens to John McCain. And that the risk isn’t just McCain’s. Or the Republican Party’s. It’s all of ours now.
And that tells me all I need to know about John McCain’s judgment.
Both Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman used their columns to point out problems with McCain’s pick. Dowd notes that:
Since John McCain played craps first and sent the vetters to Alaska afterward, Republicans have been defending Governor Palin by saying that, while she has no foreign policy experience — except, as Cindy McCain pointed out, that “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia” — she has a lot of domestic policy experience as a supercharged P.T.A. and hockey mom.
As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.
And Friedman writes about Palin’s attachments to the oil industry:
Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”
So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.
Garry Willis compares Palin to Thomas Eagleton, and suggests that McCain should have heeded this lesson of history:
The lesson for succeeding races was that a vice presidential candidate should be thoroughly vetted — a lesson apparently neglected by Senator John McCain.
Sam Harris explains the probability of Palin becoming President if McCain wins the election:
The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper’s scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain’s medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.
Tim Rutten finds hypocrisy in how Sarah Palin has managed her personal life and her political positions:
The point is that the Palins were able to make all these decisions [regarding her daughter's pregnancy and her own decision to not abort Trig, her new baby with Down Syndrome] according to the dictates of their own consciences, formed by their own religious convictions, within the privacy of their own family and according to its values and traditions. What they decided is nobody’s business but theirs; the fact that they were free to arrive at their own decision is everybody’s business.
The particular brand of social conservatism in which Sarah Palin quite evidently believes deeply would deny other American families and other American women the freedom to make these same intimate decisions according to the dictates of their own consciences, religious convictions and traditions.
I guess the John McCain did accomplish one thing with Palin: the focus of this election has shifted almost entirely to the McCain campaign.
