As the country continues to try to come to terms with the nomination of Sarah Palin (and cope with the resulting indigestion), its important not to lose sight of two critical points in the Presidential race:
First, its still fundamentally about Barack Obama vs. John McCain.
Second, effectiveness in branding the opponent will probably be one of the two or three most important factors in the outcome (along with ground game and debate performance).
As a corollary to this second point, effective branding of the opponent is personal, not political or general. It has to be fundamentally about that opponent’s lack of character.
It is in this overall context that the Palin choice is so devastating for McCain, not to mention his phalanx of phony pundits. (Please join below to fully consider why.)
Its First and Foremost about the Lying
Sure, it was a bad move to pick an inexperienced, corrupt extremist. It shows a lack of judgment. It shows McCain is the captive of an extremist party (hardly his "own man"). The way he ran the selection process shows a clear lack of executive ability. It all hurts.
But what has to be most striking to any observer over the past few days is the amazing hypocrisy of McCain, his lieutenants, and his allies – how they are able to reverse themselves on a dime vis the importance of experience, sometimes in subsequent sentences in the same interview – without batting an eye.
With all of these second-to-second reversals on the "experience" issue, its impossible not to grasp that they are all fundamentally a bunch of liars – actors playing a part in an attempted con. And this speaks directly to McCain’s fundamental lack of character – whatever he might have been once, he’s clearly since sold his soul – and to the overall rot of the right-wing-media complex.
I think its going to stick.
Michael Kinsley has come up with the best formulation of this observation that I’ve seen. In an article a few days ago, he points out that Presidential campaigns are forever using the frame of trying to criticize the opponent’s lack of either A) executive experience or B) foreign policy experience. If a candidate happens to have both sets of experience, you call them a professional politician. Same as it ever was.
Kinsley then lays out why – once you get past the "experience" red herring – McCain’s VP pick was really an all out self-attack on McCain’s own core positioning, and on the integrity of his media allies:
...[T]he important point about Palin's lack of experience isn't about Palin. It's about McCain. And the question is not how his choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the "experience" issue, or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It's not even about the proper role of experience as an issue. In fact, it's not about experience at all. It's about honesty. The question should be whether McCain—and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of foreign-policy experience—ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not. Many conservative pundits woke up this very morning fully prepared to harp on Obama's alleged lack of experience for months more. Now they face the choice of either executing a Communist-style U-turn ("Experience? Feh! Who needs it?") or trying to keep a straight face while touting the importance of having been mayor of a town of 9,000 if you later find yourself president of a nation of 300 million.
snip
...How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama's background and job history are inadequate experience for a president and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin's background and job history are perfectly adequate? It's possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been—what's the word?—lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain's choice.
The last three days have been far more effective at exposing and indicting the dishonesty and hypocrisy of McCain, and the whole right wing cronysphere, than any negative ads could have been. A fundamental character flaw shared broadly across the right.
McCain has dealt himself both a major strategic blow (in further eroding his core "straight talk" positioning), and a major tactical blow in taking all of his media defenders out at the knees.
Democrats have been wise to keep a very low profile.
Recall the wisdom that has been batted around lately about the need to attack the opponent’s perceived strength? McCain did it for us.
As Kinsley put it:
This is especially damning to McCain because his case for himself (besides not being Barack Obama, a standard under which many of us might qualify) has rested on his honor and integrity. The North Vietnamese couldn't break him, and neither could the Brahmins of his own party in the Senate. He was a maverick who always told it straight. So much for that.
John McCain just eviscerated himself.
And if a wingnut wants to argue with you, here’s the question to make him or her answer:
"How could John McCain have believed a single word of his own core attacks on Obama -- a single word of it -- if he was willing to turn around and pick Palin as his VP?"