Good Times

Glad to see it's a special five-year anniversary today, and as noted elsewhere, at the time there was no shortage of credulous scribes in the Washington media corps who took this person seriously as a national political figure. Some journalists still do, apparently. So, just for fun, your humble blogger thought he'd comb through the Brainiac archives to see if he, too, had ever bought into the bullshit:

The Ex-Parrot Sings
AUGUST 29, 2008

Earlier this morning, a Fox News-aficionado colleague of mine wrote in to hail McCain's bold choice of Sarah Palin, citing her working-class roots. My response, which has been pretty much echoed across the Left Blogosphere today, was as follows:

Rose-colored glasses, my friend. Michael Palin would have been a smarter pick. In one dumb move, McCain just took Obama's “inexperience” off the table as a campaign issue. I mean, the woman's served one year as governor of Alaska, with NO experience in national politics? Crikey, that's even thinner than Obama's resume . . .

Look at it this way: If anything should “happen” to a President Obama, he’s got a seasoned and experienced VP in Biden, ready to take over at a moment's notice. If something should “happen” to President McCain, and the Middle East or the Caucusus blows up, who's left in charge? A pretty novice. If you don’t think the Democrats aren’t going to hit this point, and hard, between now and Election Day, you don’t know what’s coming down the pike.

After last night in Denver, I am guessing that Pawlenty, Romney, Ridge and the other leading VP contenders saw the writing on the wall and ran for the hills to wait until 2012, and Palin was a last-minute fallback. Considering that she's under an ongoing ethics investigation in her home state, this really smacks of desperation.

Now, I've read reports that Ridge, Mitt and the rest of the bridesmaids did not in fact head for the hills---and that there may be some bad blood between some of them and the McCain camp---but even a few hours later, I think the rest of my observations are fairly solid. And it really brings into question a topic that Obama has raised time and again in the campaign, and surely will again: McCain's judgment. For a guy who's only trailing by three or four points in the polls, why such a Hail Mary play? When Walter Mondale tabbed Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in '84, he was down 20-plus points in every opinion poll; Wally had literally nothing to lose with such a gambit. But for Pete's sake, why not Ridge, a blue-collar meat-and-potatoes guy who could've likely delivered Pennsylvania? Why no Mitt, who also cleans up nicely on TV, and could also have helped shore up McCain's support out West, and maybe even helped to tip the scales in Michigan? Why not Pawlenty, even, the governor of a key battleground state?

The answer, it appears, would be that Palin is a darling of the anti-choicers---a group still leery of McCain and one which his brain trust apparently felt they could not afford to alienate as they likely would have with a pick of Mormon Mitt or pro-choice Ridge. You still have to wonder, though----this should have been a day when McCain stole some of Barack Obama's thunder with a VP pick of depth and accomplishment, whose virtues would be extolled ad nauseum by all the usual network bobbleheads over a long holiday weekend. Instead, the mass media reaction, outside of Fox and the NRO Dittohead Brigade, has been, and likely will be, a collective "Huh?"-fest of mutual head-scratching.

Okay, so he needed to shore up his support among women and young voters, as well as among his party's religious base. But it's a bit late in the game to be making a major course correction in your campaign, isn't it? And any and all intraparty fences should've been mended weeks or months ago, out of the limelight. What McCain needs now isn't a few thousand PUMAs or the usual Dobsonites---he needs to win states. Like Pennsylvania. And Ohio. And Minnesota. And Colorado. And maybe his own state as well. To do this, you need to build effective state organizations during primary season. Barack Obama's people figured this out long ago, and they've got an efficiently-run organization on the ground already in every state, with millions of volunteers on call to organize, fund-raise, register voters, and turn them out to the polls. McCain obviously has nothing resembling that for an organization. And generally speaking, the presidential candidate with the best-financed, best-coordinated, and most broadly based campaign organization usually ends up winning these things, certainly over the past 40 years of Campaign-by-TV. Maybe that's what drove a cash-strapped McCain to make the pick, who knows---the realization that there was no infrastructural way, in money or manpower, to win a prolonged campaign against Obama. Still, while there's a certain logic to it, given the uniqueness of his opponent, this strikes me as a decision that was made in a moment of panic.

Summing up, put it this way: when a bonafide red meat-eater like this guy is bamboozled at the choice, you know you've traded one set of troubles at the convention next week for another set altogether. (And for what it's worth, this may be the only time you ever see Krauthammer and Vitelius ask the same question at the same time: why call a Hail Mary play in the third quarter of a game that's essentially tied?)

I guess all we can say is, the man has apparently chosen to succeed or fail on his

Celebrated Maverickyness® . . . but my suspicions are, this won't play very well for very long, even among a fair number of Republicans.

Update: Well shucks, nobody took me up on my wager the other day. I gotta admit, though, even I wouldn't have imagined McCain was that stupid.

Not to toot my own horn---okay, a little---but I think this proves yet again that in politics, being right about everything and two bucks buys you a tall Americano at Starbuck's. But it's nice being reminded, at least, that my personal crap detector was fully functional in those days.

---Baron V