7 commentsPalin Update
As the long weekend winds down, a few more thoughts about McCain’s VP pick.
It bothers me that candidates’ kids are part of their platform in some way, but things involving them aren’t open to verification in the open. I’m still very conflicted about it, but I’m willing to accept that this is how things have to be, and I don’t really care about any of Sarah Palin’s kids (or their kids).
John McCain is a notable exception here. He explicitly keeps his kids out of anything political. In the bio on his site, it barely mentions them, and he refuses to answer questions about them. Two of his sons are serving in Iraq, so it would work well politically to bring them in, and I respect his restraint. All the other candidates have involved their children in some way.
It’s easy to mock Palin for a lot of things, but I’m realizing this may drown out some of the real, significant criticism (I wrote some here) that should be discussed about her.
The foreign policy problem isn’t just one of experience, it’s that Palin hasn’t even shown an academic interest in foreign policy. There’s more of my opinions about foreign policy on the Internet than her’s. I’m not saying I’m more qualified, just that people who think about these issues talk and write about them, instead of just “hearing about them on the news”.
Here’s a really good clip from CNN where Campbell Brown presses a McCain spokesman about exactly why Gov Palin is ready to be Commander-in-chief:
I really enjoy watching him try to find an escape route from that question 
The premise of the question is important, too: “Foreign policy experience has been a huge issue in this campaign because you guys made it a big issue in this campaign.”
There should be a rule in TV interviews and debates that the answerer needs to repeat the question AT THE END of their answer, making it really clear when they’ve run away from it.
7 comments
I find it painful to watch people evade questions like that. He didn’t even try to answer it, he just talked around it. At least she kept asking him, instead of letting him not-answer.
Oh yeah, I don’t actually like that he’s trying to evade, I just like that he fails.
The real answer is that the McCain campaign recognized that the “we’re more experienced than Obama” argument had run its course. McCain needed something to both energize the conservative base of his party and swing the media attention away from Obama’s acceptance speech. McCain’s selection of Palin accomplished both goals quite well.
The Palin choice is interesting to me because it takes away what had been McCain’s most effective argument against Obama: that Obama doesn’t have enough experience. I think that Palin and Obama have roughly the same level of experience, one as Governor, the other as Senator. I think it would be a mistake for the Obama camp to criticize Palin for her lack of experience because Obama doesn’t have much more experience and making that argument only serves to bring more attention and scrutiny to Obama’s lack of experience, especially given that he is on the top of his respective ticket.
In the end, the Palin choice does little to threaten the Obama ticket. McCain’s selection was made to ensure that he was the full support of the conservative base while also perhaps enticing some women to vote because of Palin. I think it is a mistake to assume that disgruntled former Hillary supporters will vote for Palin since the two are at opposite ends of the spectrum on almost every issue.
[...] took the time to write a counter-argument comment in my previous Palin post, so I’m going to reply here (and invite more [...]
Capra’s Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington Speech
[...] a clever trick, but I sure hope it doesn’t work. The media is asking a lot of good questions, like Campbell Brown’s question about Palin’s national guard decision-making, and the McCain campaign cried foul and canceled [...]
[...] respected about McCain’s campaign was that he kept his kids out of it, for real, as I wrote before: [McCain] explicitly keeps his kids out of anything political. In the bio on his site, it barely [...]
Leave a Comment