6 things Palin pick says about McCain

[Justin5 20]

Hmmm some of the things here sound EXACTLY like what I've been saying. It's almost too easy.

Also worth noting is this is from Politico - the most right wing of all hill publications.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12997_Page2.html

6 things Palin pick says about McCain

By JIM VANDEHEI & JOHN F. HARRIS | 8/30/08 8:57 AM EST

The selection of a running mate is among the most consequential and the most defining decisions a presidential nominee can make. John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says a lot about his decision-making — and some of it is downright breathtaking.

We knew McCain is a politician who relishes improvisation and likes to go with his gut. But it is remarkable that someone who has repeatedly emphasized experience in this campaign named an inexperienced governor he barely knew to be his No. 2. Whatever you think of the pick, here are six things it tells us about McCain:

1. He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters — and too close for comfort in several states, such as Indiana and Montana, that the GOP usually wins pretty easily in presidential races. On top of that, voters seem very inclined to elect Democrats in general this election — and very sick of the Bush years.

McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide. That is the private view of Democrats and Republicans alike.

McCain’s pick shows he is not pretending. Politicians, even “mavericks” like McCain, play it safe when they think they are winning — or see an easy path to winning. They roll the dice only when they know that the risks of conventionality are greater than the risks of boldness.

The Republican brand is a mess. McCain is reasonably concluding that it won’t work to replicate George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s electoral formula, based around national security and a big advantage among Y chromosomes, from 2004.

“She’s a fresh new face in a party that’s dying for one — the antidote to boring white men,” a campaign official said.

Palin, the logic goes, will prompt voters to give McCain a second look — especially women who have watched Democrats reject Hillary Rodham Clinton for Barack Obama.

The risks of a backlash from choosing someone so unknown and so untested are obvious. In one swift stroke, McCain demolished what had been one of his main arguments against Obama.

“I think we’re going to have to examine our tag line, ‘dangerously inexperienced,’” a top McCain official said wryly.

2. He’s willing to gamble — bigtime. Let’s face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate. It is the political equivalent of a trick play or, as some Democrats called it, a Hail Mary pass in football. McCain talks incessantly about experience, and then goes and selects a woman he hardly knows, who hardly knows foreign policy and who can hardly be seen as instantly ready for the presidency.

He is smart enough to know it could work, at least politically. Many Republicans see this pick as a brilliant stroke, because it will be difficult for Democrats to run hard against a woman in the wake of the Hillary Clinton drama. Will this push those disgruntled Hillary voters McCain’s way? Perhaps. But this is hardly aimed at them: It is directed at the huge bloc of independent women who could decide this election — especially those who do not see abortion as a make-or-break issue.

McCain has a history of taking dares. Palin represents his biggest one yet.

3. He’s worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama and 28 years younger than he is. (He turned 72 on Friday.) The father-daughter comparison was inevitable when they appeared next to each other.

4. He’s not worried about the actuarial implications of his age. He thinks he’s in fine fettle and Palin wouldn’t be performing the main constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated. If he were really concerned about an inexperienced person sitting in the Oval Office, we would be writing about vice presidential nominee Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or Condoleezza Rice.

There is no plausible way McCain could say that he picked Palin, who was only elected governor in 2006 and whose most extended public service was as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,471), because she was ready to be president on Day One.

Nor can McCain argue that he was looking for someone he could trust as a close adviser. Most people know the staff at the local Starbucks better than McCain knows Palin. They met for the first time last February at a National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Then, they spoke again — by phone — on Sunday while she was at the Alaska state fair and he was at home in Arizona.

McCain has made a mockery out of his campaign's longtime contention that Barack Obama is too dangerously inexperienced to be commander in chief. Now, the Democratic ticket boasts 40 years of national experience (four years for Obama and 36 years for Joe Biden of Delaware), while the Republican ticket has 26 (McCain’s four years in the House and 22 in the Senate).

The McCain campaign has made a calculation that most voters don’t really care about the national experience or credentials of a vice president, and that Palin’s ebullient personality and reputation as a reformer who took on cesspool politics in Alaska matters more.

5. He’s worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain’s throughout the process). He had no such room. GOP stalwarts were furious over trial balloons about the possibility of choosing a supporter of abortion rights, including the possibility that he would reach out to his friend.

Palin is an ardent opponent of abortion who was previously scheduled to keynote the Republican National Coalition for Life's "Life of the Party" event in the Twin Cities this week.

“She’s really a perfect selection,” said Darla St. Martin, the co-director of the National Right to Life Committee. It is no secret McCain wanted to shake things up in this race — and he realized he was limited to a shake-up conservatives could stomach.

6. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.

On the upside, his team did manage to play to the media’s love of drama, fanning speculation about his possible choices and maximizing coverage of the decision.

On the potential downside, the drama was evidently entirely genuine. The fact that McCain only spoke with Palin about the vice presidency for the first time on Sunday, and that he was seriously considering Lieberman until days ago, suggests just how hectic and improvisational his process was.

In the end, this selection gives him a chance to reclaim the mantle of a different kind of politician intent on changing Washington. He once had a legitimate claim to this: After all, he took on his own party over campaign finance reform and immigration. He jeopardized this claim in recent months by embracing ideas he once opposed (Bush tax cuts) and ideas that appeared politically motivated (gas tax holiday).

Spontaneity, with a touch of impulsiveness, is one of the traits that attract some of McCain’s admirers. Whether it’s a good calling card for a potential president will depend on the reaction in coming days to what, for the moment, looks like the most daring vice presidential selection in generations.

Mike Allen contributed to this story.

[CCTAU 3,369]

It is EXACTLY the pick someone like McCain would make. Keep trying to paint him as Bush III, it won't work. When they refere to McCain as a maverick, this is the type of thing that comes to mind. Be prepared for a change in DC, just not any change from achmed.

[Justin5 20]

That's your rebuttal? Really? Also, please show me one post where I have painted McCain as Bush III.

How about debating any of the 6 things? Or do you agree with all of them?

[CCTAU 3,369]

Don't care about them. They are superfluous at best. She is running for VP and you guys still can't quit running agianst her and not McCain. You are falling dead into a trap and are too goo-goo-eyed for achmed to even see it.

Your co-horts and even your beloved achmed continues to try and paint McCain as 4 more years of Bush. So even if you personally have not tried to do that, the messiah you follow has set it in stone. Will that get you excommunicated form the order of achmed?

[Justin5 20]

*sigh*, yes it's the left that started the attack on the VP choices. You guys are really getting sloppy at this point.

http://www.aunation.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=50048

[OldNewby 27]

That's your rebuttal? Really? Also, please show me one post where I have painted McCain as Bush III.

How about debating any of the 6 things? Or do you agree with all of them?

I don't agree with very many opinions from the left, especially from these two guys. They are just POed. Politico has joined Team Scream Obama like their parents, the Washington Post.

4. He’s not worried about the actuarial implications of his age. He thinks he’s in fine fettle and Palin wouldn’t be performing the main constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated. If he were really concerned about an inexperienced person sitting in the Oval Office, we would be writing about vice presidential nominee Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or Condoleezza Rice.

If the talking/typing heads would brush up on their history a bit, they might have a clue. This nation once had an inexperience VP named Harry Truman.

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

LINK

[au2004ece 30]

1. The writer says he is desperate, but then lists reasons this was a good pick. So, why is making the right pick desperate?

2. Why isn't taking gambles the sign of a self-confident man? The Obama selection of the safe Biden seems to me to have been made from an unsecure perspective. Bold moves are only made by those that are confident they will be able to succeed after having taken a risk that has possible downsides.

3 and 4. The writer disagrees with himself. He picked her because she is new and an outsider to Washington. She could be the new future of the republican party and unlike Obama, who is equally inexperienced, she is the VP selection and not the P nominee. She will be able to gather experience as VP, while Obama would have to assume the responsibilities of presidential decision-making without anybody dieing if he wins the election. The pick of her puts the experience question more into the public discussion. The question is would you rather have a inexperienced (socialist) person making presidential decisions from day one with a do-nothing senator at his side for advice or would you rather have the experienced John McCain making the presidential decisions with a new outside-the-box-thinking VP at his side for advice? I think the second option is the obvious choice. McCain > Obama in experience. Palin = Obama in experience.

5. This country is much more conservative than it is liberal. The Republican record in presidential elections since 1968 shows this. The Bush administration questionable leadership and execution skills have soured people on the Republican party. But, this does not change peoples' core beliefs. This is why McCain was tied with Obama, even with the negatives for having that R that come in 2008, before the conventions began. So, choosing a conservative to satisfy the base is the same as choosing a conservative to satisfy the majority of American voters.

every time a Battleground Poll has come out since June 2002. The results are always the same: people who call themselves either “conservative” or “very conservative” constitute the overwhelming majority of all Americans.

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/20...tleground-poll/

6. Seems correct to me.

[au2004ece 30]

*sigh*, yes it's the left that started the attack on the VP choices. You guys are really getting sloppy at this point.

http://www.aunation.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=50048

I hope the democrats attack away at Palin. They lose by doing so. Any questioning by Obama of Palin's experience boomerangs on him big time because he is the presidential nominee and she is the vp nominee. Some of the other criticism, such as saying that she should stay home and take care of her son, will alienate women.

[Tigermike 3,425]

Two things the Palin pick says about McCain, and four three things it doesn't

The first two are saying the same thing:

1. He's desperate. [...] Politicians, even "mavericks" like McCain, play it safe when they think they are winning - or see an easy path to winning. They roll the dice only when they know that the risks of conventionality are greater than the risks of boldness........

2. He's willing to gamble - bigtime. Let's face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate.

Okay, let's hear it: who would have been a better pick? Who would have really been a safer pick, given McCain's narrative and history? Who would have come without baggage, who would have reinforced McCain's message, who could have reached both to the base and the swing states at the same time?

3. He's worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama, and 28 years younger than he is. (He turned 72 Friday.) The father-daughter comparison was inevitable when they appeared next to each other.

If he was worried about the political implications of his age, why would he select an obvious contrast to stand by his side? This is like saying Obama is worried about the political implications of his skin color, since he selected Biden for VP.

4. He's not worried about the actuarial implications of the age issue. He thinks he's in fine fettle, and Palin wouldn't be performing the only constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated.

Err, the vice president also serves as the President of the Senate these days. But this is otherwise a fair point.

At least, until Vandehei and Harris expand on their point to say:

McCain has made a mockery out of his campaign's longtime contention that Barack Obama is too dangerously inexperienced to be commander in chief.

McCain played a deeper game, is all - not much deeper, but one step ahead of Politico. With this pick, he invited the Democrats to make that argument because the only way to use that against McCain's VP pick is to open their own Presidential candidate up to the same criticism - which only reinforces McCain's existing narrative against Obama. If Palin, after ten years of elected office, two years of governing a state Obama wants to challenge, and shaking up the establishment, is dangerously inexperienced, Obama is definitely not ready to lead on Day One. After all, it's an open question whether Palin will be called to serve as President any time in the next four to eight years if McCain is elected. It's a certainty that Obama will have to be ready on January 20 if he is elected. And every American who isn't already invested in Obama can do that math.

5. He's worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain's throughout the process). He had no such room. GOP stalwarts were furious over trial balloons about the possibility of choosing a supporter of abortion rights, including the possibility that he would reach out to his friend.

Leaving aside for a minute that it's incongruous to argue that Palin has no national experience and then say that she doesn't represent a break from Washington as usual, this is in part a fair point. As I pointed out in my post yesterday, her background and bearing are definitely playing well with the base (which has increasingly needed shoring-up in the Mountain West and in some parts of the South), but they also bring something to the Rust Belt battleground.

6

. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick, or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.

That he does. But I repeat: this was audacity, not recklessness. It completely captured the news cycle and gave his campaign some much-needed initiative, to put Barack Obama on the defensive just as he was coming out of his rock-show convention with his fists up.

Five of the points (and I'm being generous by not calling it six) the Politico tried to make were about McCain being "worried" in some fashion or another. But anyone looking at the scrambling response from the Democrats yesterday can see who was worried, who was on the defensive, who was struggling to put together a narrative.

Can you spell desperation?