Crossposted at Marginalia: Politics from the Outside In, at thewhole9.com.
How is John McCain's selection of Alaska Governer Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate imprudent, impolitic, and irresponsible? Lord, let us count the ways. And, just to clear the record, let us do so while defusing theRight's only plausible argument about Palin--that she is just as if not more qualified than Barack Obama to be commander in chief. Bullet points will be used to make powerpoint presentations to your conservative friends easy as, although perhaps not American as, apple pie.
- Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska, a state with less than 700,000 people, for less than two years. Before that she was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 5,469. The city that Barack Obama represented as state senator--Chicago--has four times (!) the population than her state.
- Sarah Palin has no--no--record of having said or though about anything related to national security, let alone evinced a knowledge of these issues. Even the smartest person in the world could not possibly learn the intricacies of international politics in the next two months. To paraphrase James Fallows: quick, tell me about your position on Georgia's admission to NATO? What's your position on Turkey's admission to the European Union? What do you think about Iran's growing regional power since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and how should we respond to it? What should we do about our balance of trade deficit with China? No? Didn't think so.
- Even excluding national security matters, Sarah Palin lacks the necessary experience or knowledge to be vice president, or very possibly president, as John McCain would be the oldest president in our nation's history. Obama's just as inexperienced, you say, and he's running for president. To this I say: not quite. Obama has four years of experience in the Senate, and has worked on issues of national security and international relations, including helping craft and pass a bill on nuclear non-proliferation with Richard Lugar , Republican of Indiana. In addition, he's had nearly two years of tutoring on the issues on the campaign trail. And, with the risk of sounding elitist, Obama edited the Harvard Law Review and subsequently taught law for years at the University of Chicago, one of the world's premier legal institutions. Sarah Palin has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Idaho.
- Sarah Palin is, to echo conservative commentator Ramesh Ponunu, a tribute to Tokenism. She is an obvious, cheap, unprincipled ploy for disaffected Hillary Clinton voters. It is callow and tasteless. There are other, much more deserving female Republican public servants, like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republican Senators, both representing the State of Maine. Will this cheap ploy to attract Hillary supporters work? Probably not, once they find out that Palin does not believe in abortion even in the case of incest or rape.
- In fact, Palin's positions reveal who the pick is really for: social conservatives. They love her. And why shouldn't they? As we've learned over the last eight years, ideology trumps competency in today's Republican Party. If John McCain wanted to shore up his "maverick" credentials by picking Palin, he instead affirmed the greatest precepts of George Bush's Republican Party: that no matter how woefully unqualified you are for a position, your ideological predisposition comes first. A true blue,ideocracy. No, better: an idiocracy, "idiot" used in its original sense Greek sense, which among other things meant "person lacking professional skill." Sarah Palin is, in this sense, George Bush's bequeathment to America. If the Democratic Party wants to connect John McCain with George Bush's America, they have to look no further than right beside him.
The Republican Party is dead; long live the idiocracy, with incompetence and hollow pandering for all.