Gambling on Palin
I’m not going to do a full post on the Obama speech because I largely agree with the conventional wisdom that everyone started spouting the minute it was done. It was a very good speech, and it was excellent political theater. I was particularly excited to see the counterattacks on McCain. I say counterattacks rather than “attacks” or “defense,” and I think the distinction is important. He defended himself against McCain, but he did so by attacking McCain for even making the attacks in the first place. (Perfect example: attacking McCain for suggesting that Obama didn’t put his country first.) Attacking the partisan attacks is a very good way to go on the offensive without totally ruining the bipartisan, new politics feel of the campaign.
Now, for the news of the day: McCain picks Sarah Palin for VP. This is, as far as I’m concerned, a huge gamble in more ways than one. There are some obvious upsides, though most of them are political/tactical rather than about good governance. She has very good anti-corruption credentials. That should definitely help get the McCain as reformer image back. She’s also young, which helps, though it also might highlight McCain’s age. Most importantly, of course, she’s female. This is obviously an attempt to win over Hillary voters, and it’s one that has a meaningful chance of working. It obviously won’t get nearly a majority (I mean, she’s vehemently pro-life, for starters) but getting a sizable minority would be plenty to do massive damage. She also has a nice, conservative-friendly biography.
The downsides, though, are blatantly obvious. The first one is her utter lack of any experience whatsoever. She has two years as governor of Alaska, a state with fewer people living in it than most major cities. She hasn’t touched a foreign policy decision in her life. This is particularly noteworthy because of McCain’s attacks on Obama. It’s not insane to claim Obama is short on experience. At the very least, he has far less than McCain, but you can’t claim Obama is too inexperienced and then claim Palin is ready to jump into the presidency at a moment’s notice. Being a prominent senator is clearly more experience than Palin has, even if it’s still your first term. Moreover, Obama has all sorts of other resume items — community activism, a distinguished academic career, time in the state legislature. Palin was mayor of a town of under 10,000 people. That puts her somewhere in between high school principals and university chancellors in level of responsibility. She definitely doesn’t have a distinguished early life either (second-place Miss Alaska followed by University of Idaho and no post-grad degree) or any other non-political credentials. She doesn’t have anything like Obama’s early Iraq speech to show that despite not being in office she was making good policy decisions. Choosing someone like Lieberman would have allowed McCain to continue the experience-based criticism. Picking someone like Jindal or Pawlenty would have made it hard to criticize Obama. You have to go pretty far into the land of the neophytes before Obama would feel comfortable going on the offensive on experience, but McCain has managed to do it.
Palin’s issue profile is also about as far the right as you could possibly fine. She’s very fiscally conservative, which is something that, while I disagree with it, I can respect — there’s a legitimate argument to be made for it. She is also, however, conservative in some ways that make no sense. Reason has a good post about this. There’s this great gem on global warming, for example:
Q. What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
A. A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
You’d think that the governor of Alaska of all places would be clear on this one by now. My favorite, though, is this one, where she comes out in favor of teaching creationism in public schools. Now, as much as we like to point out that intelligent design and creationism are in fact the same thing, it’s a little comforting to me that most proponents of teaching creationism at least feel the need to pretend they’re not advocating teaching a religious belief in a public school, or at least have enough deference to the Supreme Court to try to work around it. Here, though, she goes against decades of established law and practice and actually calls what she’s supporting creationism. It’s nice that she’s honest, but I really thought that phase of the debate was over by now.
“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information….Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject — creationism and evolution. It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”
She’s also, of course, massively pro-oil. Anyone from Alaska has to be. Lots of states have their own self-interested idiotic policies. In Iowa it’s ethanol, and in Alaska it’s oil. I’m not particularly extreme on environmental issues. I can definitely see the argument for drilling offshore or in ANWR, though I still come down on the other side. What I can’t stand, though, is the implication that those decisions, which are pretty low-impact, could possibly take the place of strong efforts on alternative energy sources and other kids of research (electric cars, actually clean coal, etc.). Nevertheless, here she goes right off the deep end:
I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem…
The outcome of this choice is going to be a wonderful experiment in the intelligence of the average voter. If voters are rational, she should be loved by the Republican base, but hated by independents. She should win over very few Hillary voters. She’s massively opposite Clinton on the issues. If people though Obama was too inexperienced (the only rational reason I’ve seen for voting for Clinton but then choosing McCain over Obama), then Palin should seem much worse, and should hurt. The only reason left for the Clinton-to-McCain switch is to literally say you are such a feminist that you will vote for a female regardless of the issues. That’s a bizarre form of feminism, choosing the affirmative-action type voting motivation over things like abortion rights and equal pay. I would have respect for someone who was honest about that motivation, but I think it’s so obviously idiotic that no one consciously believes that it’s the reason for their vote. In general, Palin should hurt McCain’s appeal to anyone other than the far right wing.
If, however, voters are irrational (and they probably are), the outcome of this decision is unclear. The youth and vitality and reform will help the brand. She might make McCain look old, and the inexperience will definitely get some traction. She’ll get some female support, and in a way being female might make it harder to get the far-right policy stuff to really stick. It’ll be interesting. There’s definitely no way anyone can criticize McCain for making a boring choice, at least.
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[...] weekend, and the stuff that has come out about Palin is almost too much for me to keep track of. (We had plenty already.) Let’s review in nice, condensed, bulleted-list [...]