Sarah freakin' Palin

Much was made in the days leading up to McCain's VP pick about both the timing of the announcement and the secrecy surrounding it. There had been a lot of secrecy surrounding Obama's pick which was ruined when the secret service showed up at Joe Biden's house the day before he was announced, and it seemed McCain was determined to up the level of secrecy before his announcement. And then, the day before McCain was set to announce his pick, the same day that Obama would be giving his historic acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination, news broke that Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty had canceled all appearances over the weekend. With the popular governor of an important state appearing to ready himself to accept the VP nomination, speculating pundits seemed to conclude that Pawlenty had been tapped for the nomination. As it turned out, they couldn't be more wrong. On that day, Gov. Pawlenty had been informed that he was NOT John McCain's pick for running mate, and that instead the honor would be going to the Governor of Alaska who 95% of America had never even heard of. Gov. Pawlenty then, in a huff, canceled all of his events campaigning for McCain over the weekend.

It seems that McCain wasn't satisfied with trying to steal away some of the spotlight from Obama's historic speech just with a condecending campaign commercial the very evening Obama spoke, or with announcing his VP pick the day after his speech. He was going to surprise everyone. He was going to be a Maverick. He was going to run with Sarah Palin.

The problem with writing this has been that since I started, every day new information has come forth about Gov. Palin. Whereas a week ago, no one knew who the hell she was, now the news is inundated with information about her as the public struggles to find out what could have justified her selection as McCain's VP candidate. So far what we've found out hasn't really been pretty.

First off, Sarah Palin doesn't seem to have any credentials on international affairs or national security. Sure, as the dimmer bulbs on the right have pointed out, Alaska is indeed next to Russia. And they've even tried to point out that as Governor, she was head of the Alaska national guard. And from that clip, it seems that's all they've been able to come up with so far. But it turns out that experience not only didn't amount to any foreign affairs experience, it didn't even consist of any command experience at all. In fact by law, the governor of a state only has authority of the national guard within her own state. Any international use of the national guard falls solely under the scope of the federal government. As for other experience, Palin has been Governor of the 47th most populous state in the union for only the last two years. (Puerto Rico has more than 5 times as many citizens) Before that she served as the mayor of Wasilla, AL. A town with a population of about 7,000 people.

Then you have the apparent desire of McCain to take someone who is outside the Washington bubble, someone who is untouched by the culture of corruption that McCain himself likes to pretend that he's above. (Funny fact about the Keating five scandal, John McCain was officially reprimanded for having "poor judgment" in his actions involving Charles Keating.) Well it turns out that Sarah Palin might not be a good pick on that front either. She happens to have been a supporter of the "bridge to nowhere" before she campaigned against it during her gubernatorial* run. She may have been on board due to her having been on the committee of Sen. Ted Stevens 527 PAC. If you're not aware, Ted Stevens is the senior senator from Alaska, who is currently under indictment for corruption. He also appeared in campaign commercials endorsing Gov. Palin which until recently were available on her campaign website. The other story is something that Gov. Palin happens to be currently under investigation for. During the messy divorce of her sister and an Alaska state trooper, much pressure was put on the director of the state police force to fire her ex-brother-in-law. While Palin never directly ordered the man to be fired, she did end up firing the director who refused to fire the trooper, supposedly over budget issues.

Well, at least she can be on message with John McCain for being a moderate who has a proven record of reaching across the aisle to work with people in a non-partisan fashion right? Actually it turns out that as mayor, there was an incident where she was under threat of being recalled after firing the police chief and the library director upon taking office. Apparently she didn't feel she "had the support" of the police chief, but succumbed to public pressure and let the library director keep her job. What could have possibly possessed her to have wanted to fire the library director in the first place? Well it seems that Sarah Palin isn't much of a libertarian Alaskan after all, she wanted the directors support in banning certain books from the town library.

To top everything off, Palin is a true, dyed in the wool social conservative. She supports discrimination against homosexuals, teaching intelligent design in schools, is against any and all forms of abortion, even in the case of rape or when there is concern for the health of the mother (this means in the event the women may die if pregnancy is not terminated, just so you know what people are talking about when you hear this), and she believes in abstinence only education. And it turns out the whole abstinence only thing didn't work out so well with her oldest daughter. So as far for appealing to moderates in any way, Palin does active harm to the ticket. Especially when you consider that one of McCain's campaign goals was to appeal to Hillary supporters. They certainly won't appreciate Palin's vehement pro-life stance for sure.

But that brings me to my point in this, why exactly DID John McCain pick Sarah Palin? She doesn't seem to back up any of the themes that McCain has been stressing in his campaign. On top of that, she undermines the two biggest attacks he has been using against Sen. Obama. The first is that Obama is too inexperienced to be president. Well, while Palin argued in her speech last night that she is more experienced because of her less than two years as governor of one of the least populous states, neither than not her years as mayor of Wasilla lend much credibility to her experience as a leader or with how to run a country. Hell, she doesn't even know what a vice president does. (Ok I admit, the comment was half in jest. But let's be honest, it was only HALF in jest.) And secondly John McCain asserts that the president needs to be ready to lead on day one. Well as far as I'm concerned Barack is ready to lead on day one, and I can't for the life of me understand how anyone would think for a second that Palin might be. McCain has said many times that the VP must be someone who is able to lead the country in the event something happens to the president. Which would make Biden a good choice, and Palin, well, something else.

So you could accuse the campaign of failing to vet the Alaska governor enough. And you know what, you would be right. It turns out that when her home town paper was contacted by news organizations about stories from her time as mayor, they handed over files from before the paper had gone digital. The files hadn't been touched by anybody, not the McCain campaign or anyone. The campaign didn't even go so far as to ask prominent members of the Alaskan government about her. It turns out that McCain had only met Palin on one occasion before the Thursday before his announcement. On that day he met with Gov. Palin for only the second time and offered her the chance to be the vice president of the united states.

So what were the reasons that McCain went with Palin? There were other candidates considered that were truly more qualified for the job, better suited and less risky. There were even some that were women to woo Hillary voters. Well as far as I see it the reasons are three-fold.

1 - He needed to appeal to the base of the party.
The right wing has never been a huge fan of Sen. McCain. It's led to his Maverick image, but it's also led to him courting John Kerry for the VP spot in 2004. Die hard conservatives were frustrated with his victory in the primaries, and some swore never to vote for him. Some of these same conservatives are undoubtedly sporting McCain bumper stickers already, but he did need to shore up some support. In this regard, Palin is actually a good pick. Anyone who saw her speech last night can't deny that the crowd was behind her. True, it was behind her more when she was attacking Obama than it was at any other point, but it was behind her nevertheless. And as I've discussed she holds very conservative values. (socially at least) So as far a point one goes, I'll give him credit. Not because she's a good choice to actually govern as VP mind you, but because she fulfills this particular political function.

2 - He needs to shake up the race a little bit.
The polls took a bit of a dip for Obama lately but post-convention have opened back up with Obama leading anywhere from 5-8 points nationally. In more specific states he leads important states and it appears that if the election were held today he would win. What's more important is that Obama has rode through the first waves of negative campaigning and is poised to do some of his own. So his campaign worried that they were on the losing track if they didn't make a big move. They couldn't afford to go with a boring, predictable pick like Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney. Well, they certainly accomplished the goal of attracting attention. The media has been going nuts over the past week trying to uncover everything they can about Gov. Palin, and they've had plenty of success finding things to talk about. So I'm gonna go ahead and award McCain points on this. He certainly got people talking, even if I can't imagine he likes very much what they're saying.

3 - The simple fact that she's a woman.
As far as I'm concerned this is the most important aspect of McCain's choice. Now this is related to point one, because conservatives can feel inclusive and high and mighty about their acceptance of a woman when the ugly sexist democrats wouldn't let Hillary win. And it's related to point two because it's a (mildly) historic event, and it definitely got people talking. (Palin is NOT the first woman VP candidate, that honor belongs to Geraldine Ferraro, who since losing on the Dukakis ticket has gone bat-shit insane.) But the main reason is that they wanted to appeal to disenfranchised Hillary voters.

When Hillary Clinton gave her speech at the DNC, I thought one of her best points was summed up when she asked her supporters: "Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? ..." She essentially challenged her supporters to remember what it was that brought them to her in the first place. Not the fact that she was a woman, but because she was a politician that shared their principles and their goals for the country. Over the course of the campaign it became too focused on the fact that she was a woman, and some people lost sight of why she would have been good for the country.

And now John McCain is trying to pull these women into voting for him by inviting the token woman to the ticket. The party of actual sexism is using a woman not for who she is, but for WHAT she is. The true essence of sexism. McCain is trying to convince women to vote for him because he believes they'll vote for a woman solely based on the fact that she's there. John McCain thinks women are idiots. It CANNOT be argued that Sarah Palin adds anything to the ticket that could not have been added by another, more qualified choice, except being a woman. In patronizing the female voters of the country in this way his campaign reveals what he truly thinks of them. I can't imagine that any of the women that fought tooth and nail to earn the right to vote, to participate in democracy, to have a voice in America, would appreciate being used in this fashion. But that's not up to me to decide.


* this is an awesome word