On The Resurgent, Peter Heck complains that Senator and former GOP Presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) is mistaken in seeing his junior partner on that ticket, former half-term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, as a ball & chain his campaign:
Sarah Palin’s selection injected an energy and intensity into a campaign that was otherwise dead in the water. A quirky, conservative firebrand, Palin’s convention speech was the only moment of the campaign that serious political observers considered Obama’s meteoric rise might face a challenge.
To say that Palin wasn’t ready for the national stage is fair. To say that, in hindsight, she turned out to lack the policy chops that would have made her an effective player in D.C. is fair. But to say that McCain’s margin of loss without her wouldn’t have been staggering is engaging the worst kind of historical revisionism.
There was a perfect political storm that allowed a stunningly unprepared Senator from Illinois to ascend to the White House that year, not the least of which was the galling lack of a serious challenger on the right. But logically, who would a theoretical McCain/Lieberman ticket appeal to? The center-left.
I can’t agree. The selection of Governor Palin, especially when she went on display and became the iconic incoherent right wing extremist, was the moment when I believe most independents realized that McCain’s campaign was profoundly flawed. I know that, until then, I was willing to give McCain a fair hearing, but once he had selected Palin, my requirement that competent people, regardless of gender, had to occupy the seats of President and VP had not been met, and cast serious doubt on McCain’s future staff selections.
I agree with the sentiment that Obama was inexperienced at the national level upon his election to the Presidency, although I think Heck overstates the case, but Obama convinced me to vote for him based, in part, on his personnel selections. Let’s face it: no President can do this job without excellent help in the form of his selections to Cabinet posts and subsidiary positions, and that’s why the Senate has confirmation power -to help the President make good selections. To an overwhelming extent, the effectiveness of a President depends on those picks, and, for the non-partisan observer, I think history will prove that Obama made excellent selections. At the time of the campaign, Biden was somewhat suspect based on his previous plagiarism scandals, but he proved to be an articulate and convincing spokesman for the election, and has subsequently proven to be an excellent vice president.
But, more importantly, Heck betrays the limited vision of the extremist which loses elections and causes the party of any persuasion to become more hermetic and estranged. Why the latter? Palin was emblematic of the extremist right wing, and when the McCain campaign lost, and lost to a relatively inexperienced community organizer and only recent Senator, it became a full-scale rejection of the extremist offering of their best. For the citizen of flexible and inquiring intellect, this is an opportunity to learn and grow, but for the dogged zealot, convinced of the rightness of their cause, this is an embittering experience. Their best, stomped by someone they are already convinced is inferior, whether due to race or inexperience – keeping in mind McCain’s years of service in the military and in government, too – had to feel like sand in the teeth.
Palin may have attracted and appeased the extremist wing of the GOP, but she repelled just about everyone else.
And I think Heck overstates the case against Leiberman. Leiberman would have occupied the vice-president slot, not the president slot, and that’s not necessarily a policy making position. The only real consideration against Leiberman from a GOP perspective is if McCain were to die or become incapacitated during his Presidency. In another time, a conservative Democrat wouldn’t have been a problem – and his appeal to the independents would have been undeniable and even huge. But in 2008? The extremists were solidifying their hold on the heart of the GOP, and Leiberman was considered anathema. I think McCain, realizing he had little chance, decided to roll the dice on an unknown who had charisma and unknown other potentialities.
And he rolled snake-eyes.
