McCain's Harriet Miers?

By BJ

I'm still trying to wrap my head around McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for the Vice-Presidential slot on the GOP ticket. It seems more like pandering for novelty than a serious choice.

And it is not a question of experience, even though McCain has chosen the one candidate for VP with a resume so slim that even Obama's looks like the Encyclopedia Britannica in comparison. (I mean, I live in a town of 8,000 people. Mayor isn't even a full-time job!)

Obama has been fighting off the charges of his inexperience from the time Palin first took state-wide office, (and yeah, it's been a long campaign, but not that long!), by arguing the true test for leadership should be about judgement.

Obama had the judgement to foresee the consequences of attacking Iraq and opposed the decision. He had the judgement to make Afghanistan rather than Iraq the focus of the "War on Terror", something that both Bush and McCain have had to follow his lead on. He had the judgement to understand that negotiations with Iran were the way to go, and despite being ridiculed as naive by the "serious" folks in the White House and McCain camps, negotiations with Iran are what even Bush has had to acknowledge as the way to go.

Time and again, Obama has shown that he has the sound judgement necessary to lead the United States in the right direction. McCain's more of a hothead than a sound thinker, but at least you can't say you don't know which way he'll jump. Biden also has long track record to review. But Palin? What kind of judgement has she shown in regards to Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Russia-Georgia? Israel-Palestine? China? Hell, even Canada?

Do you really want the person who is one heartbeat from the Presidency to be a blank slate when it comes to foreign policy judgement? Not to mention someone who doesn't even know what her position is supposed to be?

A colleague of mine noted today that when compared to Michelle Obama, Palin looked like a junior high student next to a University graduate, and Michelle isn't even the Obama running for office. The colleague who was a Hillary supporter is insulted and thinks McCain just showed that he is an idiot.

For myself, the Harriet Miers nomination keeps coming back to me, though there doesn't appear to be the long-standing relationship and loyalty issues that Miers nomination had for Bush. And I'm not sure if that doesn't make the selection even worse. Bush at least could say that he had a long relationship that made him believe Miers was up to the task, while McCain barely knows Palin.

We'll know more soon, but from first impressions, Palin looks like someone being pushed into a role well past her current level of competence or ability, and there are only two months left to prove otherwise.

Comments

[shrimplate]

Something isn't right about all this.

[empty]

I would suggest you take a closer look at Palin. She is a right wing ideologue who successfully attacked the entrenched "liberal" republican establishment in her state. She is not a light weight. From Echidne of the Snakes

Palin's young, attractive, middle class, a sympathetic figure as the new mother of a child with Downs Syndrome and the mother of an 18 year-old son about to be shipped to Iraq. She hunts and fishes and is married to her childhood sweetheart. She's going to suck up a huge amount of media attention and comparisons to Geraldine Ferraro are going to keep opening wounds in the Democratic Party and give Ferraro, who's had almost as big a problem running off her mouth as does Biden, more air time. Lots of rural, Southern, and working class voters -- the one group that has yet to really warm up to Obama -- are going to like her. I include men from those groups; the large population in the racist and sexist overlap of that Venn Diagram will pick the anti-woman pretty woman over the black man. She undoes some of the damage that being married to a millionairess with a jillion houses has done to McCain. Elections aren't won or lost based on the VP debate, but Biden's going to have a tough time debating her and, if he mistreats her or patronizes her, that could have larger ramifications. Let's hope he's learned something since the days when he treated Anita Hill like the dirt on the bottom of his shoes.

[pwapvt]

She's a pick in the finest tradition of Goodling & Doan. Pretty & clueless.