Thus far the back-and-forth of the presidential campaign has reduced the race to two overriding issues: (1) Who has the judgment of a leader? (2) Who has the experience and is ready to lead "from day one"?
How is Senator John McCain doing on both counts? On the judgment side, the Arizona Senator has made several lapses. From the senator's own lips, he made the wrong calls on the invasion of Iraq; he seemingly corrected this bad judgment by support the troop surge. On immigration, Senator McCain said he was wrong by pushing what resembled amnesty without first securing the US-Mexican border. Thirdly, McCain made the wrong call on offshore drilling by opposing it; he has since reversed course and is now in favor of more drilling.
On Friday, August 29, 2008, the senior senator selected Mrs. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. This dear lady has only been governor for less than two years, and she is unknown to the national scene. Except for her strong prolife stance, many mainline Republicans are scratching their heads as to why McCain selected Palin for veep. After all, he could have covered the prolife issue by choosing his former rival Mitt Romney, who had greater experience as governor of Massachusetts, from 2003-2007.
The really confusing thing is that abortion is not even a big issue in the 2008 presidential elections. No poll shows abortion as a hot issue whatsoever.
One way to gauge McCain's choice for veep is to know who's happy and who's not. It seems those well pleased with McCain's selection are the hard-core conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Carl Rove, and the one-issue pro-lifers like traditional evangelicals, who must be doing flips and hi 5s over Sarah Palin as veep. But these were hardly the people that McCain needed to win. After all, where else do these right wing conservatives have to go on elections day but to pull the lever for McCain? The ultra-conservatives may not like McCain, but most of them were going to vote for him anyway. He did not need Palin to get the bulk of the pro-life vote.
If in his pick of Mr. Palin, Senator McCain has those Hillary Clinton female voters in mind, then he might be in for a rude awakening, since the vast majority of the Hillary girls are strong pro-choicers with liberal feminist leanings. McCain may have actually repelled or at least stopped those female voters in their tracks, slowing their movement towards him. Now, those pro-choice Hillary women might make a U-turn to the Demoractic candidate. The rule of thumb is that the happier the hard-core conservatives are over the veep candidate, the more leery and suspicious the moderates and independents will be about Sarah Palin. That's the catch-22 that McCain failed to really think through before making this rash choice, which may prove in November to have been a huge blunder.
What is that big question again that every presidential candidate must ask when he or she considers the choice for a running mate? "If something were to happen to the president, is the vice president ready to assume the role of commander-in-chief from day one?"
In McCain's case, this question is beyond the theoretical, since the senator is 72 years old. America has had 43 presidents, and 8 times a vice president has served out the remaining term of the commander-in-chief due to the death or resignation of the president. That math shows a ratio of 8 out of 43, which comes to about 19% chance of a veep becoming president. If John McCain, who has had cancer, were to become incapacitated, is Mrs. Palin ready to be commander-in-chief "from day one"? At this point, it is close to laughable to answer "Yes" to that serious question. One more question: "Where is the international experience of Mrs. Palin that rates her above McCain's opponent with regard to national security?" Tagging the magic word "executive" to the catchword "experience" may not do the trick to convince millions of Americans that Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified to be commander-in-chief should President McCain drop dead, God forbid!
With his presidential
campaign, Senator McCain has lectured us all to think and put "country first". But when it came to his choice for vice president, John McCain clearly did not put country first. Instead, he put politics first. He chose this woman based on his concerns and worries about the successful Democratic convention that just ended in Denver, where the Democrats made history. His selection of Mrs. Palin was McCain's way of saying, "Me too", wanting to "make history". Now, that has everything to do with pure politics, not country. There is nothing patriotic about that. If McCain had put his country first, he would have given serious thought to the question of Mrs. Palin being "a heartbeat from the presidency". Very serious, sacred matter when we talking the "heartbeat" of a 72-year-old man. Yes, we know how patriotic the war hero is; he needs no one to lecture him about patriotism. But in this case, the good old soldier made a glaring exception to his patriotic record.
