Who can be my president?
I’ve been mulling over the proposal, from our friend Progressive Conservative, that we all take and publicize the Wendell Wilkie Pledge. He’s named it for the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Wilkie’s “Loyal Opposition Speech” is a reminder that politics is about choosing the best policies rather than about personality clashes, and that one can continue to oppose a party’s or politician’s ideas while respecting the rule of law and authority of the office held. In his explanation of the pledge, he writes:
When we vote we are making a promise. A promise to honor the results. A promise to honor the office. A promise to claim the president as our own, even when we disagree with him most. That is the oath I ask you all to take. I urge you to accept the results of this election. Regardless of who you vote for in November, our country can only go forward if we give our new president our loyal support, though I am not asking anyone to blindly follow this President.
I like this idea very much, and I wish that I was writing this post to affirm my support for the pledge and call on others to join me. However, I think the circumstances of this election make that impossible for me to do. I personally support the Obama-Biden ticket, and I would of course honor the results even if the McCain-Palin ticket were to win instead, but I don’t think I could wholeheartedly refer to McCain as “my president” when he and his campaign have gone so far out of their way to specify that they are absolutely no such thing.
I confess: I’ve finished college, and I’m a graduate student. In physics. I don’t live in a tiny town in a landlocked state; I live in a big city, near a coast. (Horror of horrors — the one on the east!) I’m not a Christian. I don’t even believe in a god. Because I’m an educated, metropolitan, “East-coast liberal” atheist, John McCain and Sarah Palin are willing to demonize me and others like me in an attempt to win the votes of everyone else. Why should I pledge my loyal support to a ticket that charges me with the problems of our time?
This hateful rhetoric is not new to Palin, though she did recently refer explicitly to “real America” and “the pro-America parts” of the country. Her speech at the RNC was all about how small-town people are good people (and not-so-subtle implications that if you don’t meet the Mayberry R.F.D. stereotype, you don’t really love your country). I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the irony meter-breaking RNC speech delivered by Mitt Romney, who ripped on “Eastern elites” despite being one himself. Just recently, McCain campaign adviser Nancy Pfotenauer dismissed northern Virginia as not “real Virginia,” but merely infiltrated and contaminated by “Democrats [who] have just come in from the District of Columbia.” North Carolina representative Robin Hayes told a McCain rally that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” Today, McCain explained to NBC’s Brian Williams that the “elitists” live “in our nation’s capital and New York City.” (In the same interview, Palin pointed out that an elitist is anyone “who [thinks] that they’re better than anyone else,” which puts an interesting new twist on the concept of a political campaign.)
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and Biden were campaigning in the same way? What if they repeatedly warned of what “conservatives from fly-over states” would do to the government? What if they promised to rid Washington of “Texas bigotry,” or “backwater Mississippi racism,” or “evangelical Christian ignorance?” What if when Republicans derisively referred to Obama’s Ivy League education, Democrats countered by pointing out that McCain graduated 894th of 899 in his college class, and that the best of the four colleges Palin transferred around between was the University of Idaho? I’d love to see each use of the adjective “latte-drinking” as an insult followed by a reminder that the McCain-Palin ticket is instead targeting the alcoholic demographic. Imagine if they argued, as Adam Cadre did not too long ago, that “Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets that Republicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that ‘There is no them — there is only us.’ There’s a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas.”
Of course, this would be outrageous. The media wouldn’t let the Democrats get away with a presidential campaign with that kind of language in it, and neither would the voters. Even though many of us do believe, deep down, that there’s something seriously wrong with states where creationism is taught in science classes, or where racial segregation is still the norm, or where everything from terrorism to hurricanes gets blamed on “the gays,” we believe that it would be both rude and unproductive to accuse everyone in an entire region of being blindingly ignorant or racist or bigoted as part of a campaign. A candidate willing to make such sweeping and divisive generalizations would be difficult to vote for, even if there were some truth behind them.
It feels like many eons ago now, but there was this time back in April when Obama, at a closed fundraiser event in California, commented that some Pennsylvanians were “bitter” about the government and the economy and as a result “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” It’s a reasonable characterization of what’s going on, and while it’s not something anyone would be happy to hear said about themselves, it doesn’t seem particularly vicious. I could even see it as sympathetic. But when his comments got out, the only words anyone remembered were “cling to guns and religion” which was interpreted to mean that Obama wants to repeal the Second Amendment and ban God. Obama backtracked, calling his statement “boneheaded.”
So then, why is it acceptable, even encouraged, for Republicans to make much worse comments in the opposite direction? I’ll set aside the obvious fallacy of assuming that everyone in New England is a liberal or that everyone in the Deep South is conservative. While that is insulting to our intelligence, it’s at least statistically likely to be true. My bigger problem here is with the divide between the supposedly good Americans and supposedly bad Americans. Republicans seem to think that the good Americans live in the small towns, with limited education, limited exposure to other countries or cultures or ways of life, and limited sobriety. They all work in manufacturing or construction or farming, and this is good, honest work. They all live in “real America,” the states or districts that are colored red on electoral maps. On the other hand, there are the bad Americans, who live in cities big enough to have more traffic lights than you can count on your fingers, tend to go to college and occasionally travel abroad, and have a wide variety of ethnic background and religious traditions. As a result of their college education, they have bad jobs in fields like law, journalism, or scientific research, which means they live in an elite Ivory Tower where they scheme about ways to ruin the lives of good Americans. Naturally, they do not live in “real America,” because their states or districts get colored in blue.
I wish I was making all this up. I wish I could honestly say that we can all get along, but I didn’t make this divide — I usually speak out against it. But when the demonization has gone so far that we appear to have a new Joe McCarthy in Congress, I think it’s gone beyond what I can handle in personal conversations. Republicans need to stop talking about who’s “pro-America” or “anti-America,” who lives in “real America” and who doesn’t. We all love our country; we just have different ideas on how to keep it great and make it better. If Republicans continue to characterize any and all opposing viewpoints as “anti-American,” I don’t see why anyone should be willing to be their “loyal opposition” providing respectful and reasoned debate. Unless John McCain and Sarah Palin suddenly decide to vehemently denounce this kind of rhetoric and seriously apologize for the tone of their campaign and the direction in which they’ve led their party, I just can’t see being able to call McCain “my president.”
Pandering to the stupid
I wanted to write something in response to the vice presidential debates last week, but I didn’t have much to say about the actual content, and just kept returning to an almost impossible to articulate sense of revulsion. (I’m sure a lot of people feel that after listening to Sarah Palin, though.) Watching news coverage and SNL clips over the weekend, I began to hear the cause loud and clear. In the debate, Palin said, “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again.” (Well, maybe not so clear, but still.) Joe Six Pack. She’s saying that in order to get “average people” on her side.
Hockey moms, I can understand. It sounds a little less trite than “soccer moms,” and it reminds everyone just how tough people are in Alaska. They’ll take a body check over a slide tackle any day, you betcha. But “Joe Six Pack” — I almost can’t believe it. Wasn’t that a derisive term, not so very long ago? Urban Dictionary defines it as “Average American moron, IQ 60.” Webster’s explains the etymology as “from average ‘Joe’ watching TV with a six-pack of beer” and points out the usage is “derogatory slang.” The term is found in the Wikipedia entry on John Q. Public, which notes that “Roughly equivalent, but more pejorative, are the names Joe Six-pack, Joe Blow, and Joe Schmoe….” We’re talking about a person whose defining qualities are a beer in hand and a low IQ. Is the McCain-Palin ticket actively trying to paint this picture of their supporters — and of typical Americans?
It’s not just about the general public, either. On conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt’s program, Palin recently declared, “It’s time that [a] normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that’s kind of taken some people off guard… we put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-pack like me….” We’re supposed to be voting for the McCain-Palin ticket because Palin is herself a Joe Six-pack. Do they even know what this term means?
Maybe people really are identifying with this rhetoric. But let’s not encourage them, please! Low intelligence and perpetual inebriation should not be glorified, and should certainly not be held up as desirable qualities in a politician. Americans working blue-collar jobs — well, really all Americans, since this is about us everyday, regular folks, and who isn’t? — should be insulted when they are described in this way by someone purporting to represent them and their interests. It’s belittling; it’s basically a synonym for stupid.
Even if you are intellectually disengaged and proud of it, you should at least be able to acknowledge that in order to have a functioning government, your leaders should be slightly more informed and engaged than you are. Politicians who call you stupid probably shouldn’t earn your vote. But a politician who brags about being just as stupid as you? That should really be a no-brainer.
What’s up with the polls?
Electoral projection website FiveThirtyEight is showing McCain at 289.1 electoral votes to Obama’s 248.9. They have him at 56% odds to win the presidency. This is a big change from a couple weeks ago. Before both conventions, Obama had about 60% odds of winning, and at the height of his post-convention bounce was at 75% (though no one expected that to last). Now that a bit of time has passed since both conventions and the transient effects are starting to decay, McCain is ahead. It may still be effects from the Republican convention, or it may be that he’s gaining a solid toehold.
What changed? Two major things. Sarah Palin has been announced as the GOP VP candidate, and the McCain campaign has been airing many negative ads. I can see how both of those things would change a few marginal minds, but I’m surprised that they would have this large of an effect. Then again, all the people who voted to reelect Bush in 2004 are still around and registered, so I shouldn’t write off voter stupidity as a possible factor.
And it is about stupidity. Sarah Palin has repeated so many lies about herself so many times and so blatantly, even after it’s been reported everywhere that they are false, that it’s hard to imagine she’s successfully winning over “values voters.” (It just underscores exactly which values matter, and exactly which ones don’t matter the slightest bit.) The smear ads also contain blatant lies and misrepresentations which, as Paul Krugman points out, “anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute.” The message that’s really sent by all this, as David Ignatius and Steve Chapman both argue, is that McCain will stop at nothing to win even if it means sacrificing the ideals he once stood for. Thomas Friedman believes that this trend of misrepresenting and oversimplifying the facts in order to turn everything partisan is ultimately making America stupid, and I’m inclined to agree.
As someone who prefers rational decisions to purely emotional ones, it’s hard for me to figure out how to argue with people swayed by these clearly false appeals. It seems to me that seeing the facts should make anyone’s decision clear. However, FiveThirtyEight has some great suggestions for the Obama campaign regarding Palin enthusiasts: acknowledge that she’s likable, and then point out that not every likable person would make a good vice president. Maybe a similar approach can be followed for the smear ads — explicitly agreeing that it would be bad for someone to do or believe the things Obama is accused of doing or believing, then explaining the truth. The concern, of course, is that this gives too much air time to the rumors, and denying something often just helps people to remember the something instead of the denial. However, doing nothing doesn’t appear to be working.
Standing up for the Constitution
This is exactly the kind of attitude I was hoping to see from a former constitutional law professor.
Referring to Obama at the RNC, Sarah Palin said, “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” It gave me chills and made me have to step away from the TV, but Obama has responded like the educated and intelligent person he is.
Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong person.’”
The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, “because we don’t always have the right person.”
“We don’t always catch the right person,” he said. “We may think it’s Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president.”
It might defy our instincts. It might be a bit nuanced. It might require us to read something — and for a few of us, require the assistance of a dictionary. (Who would have expected a presidential candidate to throw around Latin phrases like habeas corpus as though he knows what they mean?!) But it’s exactly those qualities that make me proud of this speech. Rather than play to our fears and herd mentality, Obama is inviting us to think about why our laws say what they say, and why laws shouldn’t be disregarded whenever we feel hysterical. I think he deserves a lot of praise and attention for taking the intellectual stance in a time when “intellectual” is almost as dirty a word as “liberal.”
I like the dash of self-deprecating humor as well. It nicely underscores the ridiculousness of those smears.
Storytelling at the RNC
There are plenty of interesting things to note about the speeches at the Republican National Convention so far. I could write several essays full of reactions and responses to Thompson, Lieberman, Romney, Huckabee, and of course Palin. But I don’t really want to go speech-by-speech with this post. I’d rather take the time to discuss the framing techniques being employed by the Republican party via the convention. They’re carefully telling a story that adjusts and refines reality to fit their agenda.
Let me first say that I don’t think Republicans are the only people doing this. I bristled every time during the Democratic convention that I heard populist rhetoric about keeping jobs from going overseas or needing to buy American-made goods. Even though most of the speakers, or at least the speech writers and strategists, probably understand that free trade is essential for long-term economic success, the general public can’t tolerate hearing that, and rather than explain to them the difficult truth they chose to tell the easier story. Rhetorical flourish steps in for intellectual honesty. At the RNC, though, this sort of occurrence is much more frequent. (Mitt Romney called China “Adam Smith on steroids” — so, what, it’s now a problem that they’re adopting capitalism? What was he talking about? It sure made China seem scary, though, huh.)
One notable frame depicts John McCain as the women’s candidate. It looked like this was about disaffected Clinton supporters at first, but it appears to be a broader message. Tonight’s program, ultimately leading up to Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, opened with Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Setting aside the unresolved issues about exactly how chummy McCain wants to appear to be with CEOs of huge businesses, I found it very interesting to note how Whitman and Fiorina kept talking about how McCain recognizes the contributions women have made to the economy. Was… was that really something controversial? Is that supposed to imply that Obama does not think women have any effect on the economy? Over and over they used phrases like, “As a woman, I support John McCain because….” This, juxtaposed with the choice of a female VP, does a good job of making an inattentive viewer feel like a vote for McCain is a vote for women’s lib. Maybe this is an attempt to mitigate the history-making factor working for Obama, or it could just be a really over-the-top attempt at the Hillary voters, but either way, it’s a misrepresentation.
First of all, I’m insulted by the idea that there are “women’s issues” as distinct from issues that are generally important to society. I acknowledge abortion as a women’s issue only insofar as women are the ones with the wombs, but I think that whether abortions are legal should be and is a concern to men as well. Ditto for the availability of contraception, or maternity/parental leave, or sex education in school. Nevertheless, this is what people mean when they talk about “women’s issues” and this is what we’re pretending McCain will excel at when someone claims to support him “as a woman.” Listen carefully, though — you’ll never hear him actually take the women-friendly stances on these issues. McCain isn’t even in favor of equal pay for female employees. How’s that for recognizing their contributions to the economy?
Also, I’m floored by the contradictory framing of government assistance programs. Many speakers have admonished those who depend on the government for financial support. Mitt Romney blurred the truth about Obama’s tax plan when he said that it would “raise taxes to put more people on Medicaid” and “grow the ranks of those who pay no taxes at all.” It sounds like everyone’s going to pay higher taxes — oh no! — unless you’re listening and realize that some taxes would be raised in order to allow people who can’t afford to pay taxes to pay less or none. Most of you booing in the convention hall would actually pay less in taxes as a result of Obama’s plan. Nevertheless, Romney spun it so that lower taxes for the not-super-wealthy meant barnacle-like dependency on federal programs. Thus the Republicans, advocates of tax cuts, managed to pull off “Higher taxes: bad! Lower taxes: also bad!” That’s odd enough on its own, but then we heard Palin promise parents of children with special needs that they would have an advocate in the White House to make sure they get the assistance they deserve. I’m confused. When are government handouts something to cheer for, and when do they spell “death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity” exactly?
The other major area of storytelling has to do with “small towns” versus “eastern elites.” Never mind that the latter term was tossed out by a multi-millionaire, former governor of Massachusetts. This is the biggest, weirdest frame of all, and it’s one that’s crept into nearly all the campaign coverage. People from small towns are regular folks, just like you, even though about 80% of the US population lives in an urban area. Then, the story goes, regular folks just like you, or like a guy you’d want to have a beer with, are best equipped to run the country. Now, let’s play a game. Think about the person sitting next to you the last time you were in a bar. Would you trust that person with the US nuclear arsenal, or even with a legislative veto? Come to think of it, would you trust yourself? The reality is, a president needs to have a rock-solid legal and political education and needs to have some experience with government. These are not qualities possessed by the average American, so don’t use your averageness to prove that you’ll make a good politician. I want to vote for the above-average candidate (as far above average as possible!), and I don’t think that makes me elitist — it just makes me rational.
That’s really the bottom line of all of this. Politicians tell these dodgy stories to make their policies more palatable to the American public, and at the end of the day we’re left with little more than lies and distortions. There are plenty of perfectly rational reasons to side with either party, or to land somewhere in between (or off in some entirely different direction), but we don’t seem to be hearing those reasons. In all fairness, I’m sure both McCain and Obama understand these reasons and would love to talk about them. However, those of us who think of politics as an intellectual rather than emotional exercise are far in the minority, and appealing to us isn’t the way to win an election. Until intellectual discourse becomes cool, I guess we’ll have to supply the rationality ourselves.
Palin, take 2
I’ve been away all 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 format:
- Her 17-year old, unmarried daughter is pregnant and has dropped out of high school, but will be marrying the father and keeping the baby.
- She is being investigated in “troopergate,” where she is accused of trying to get the state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with her sister fired. She is alleged to have fired the state police chief when he refused to fire the brother-in-law. The report on this comes out a couple days before the election.
- She supported a group pushing to have Alaska secede from the United States (though there’s some confusion about how much).
- Despite bragging about turning down federal funding for the bridge to nowhere in her first speech as the VP nominee, she turns out to have supported it at first. She didn’t refuse the federal money, but just allowed it to be diverted to other pork projects and eventually killed the bridge proposal when there was no money left for it anyway.
- Her husband was arrested for a DUI in 1986.
- As mayor she talked to the town librarian about banning books she found objectionable.
- She doesn’t believe global warming is man-made.
- In her first election, she took a traditionally nice, friendly small-town mayoral race and injected a lot of divisive social issues.
- She only met McCain in person once, months ago, and he had one brief phone-call with her about the vice presidency.
Now, these issues vary massively in importance. The one that’s getting all the coverage, her daughter’s pregnancy, is the one I’m most conflicted about. There is a slight bit of relevance to governance in that it maybe says something about her opposition to comprehensive sex education, but that’s only a minor relationship. It really is irrelevant. I am inclined to totally ignore it and criticize everyone who writes stories about it, etc. What’s holding me back is the parallel hypothetical. Say a liberal Democrat had a pregnant teenage daughter. Would James Dobson be saying encouraging, supportive things about how much love was being shown the daughter? It would obviously be used as an attack and a rallying point for those who believe liberals have no family values. (It probably wouldn’t be used directly by a Republican opponent, but it wouldn’t need to be.) Imagine if it was Obama, with all the racial stereotypes that come with it. It would be a massive story and horribly damaging. This of course is part of a larger, broader question. Which is worse, to play dirty or to play clean and let those who play dirty win? I’m not ok with either, and that’s why I’m still so conflicted on this one.
What worries me more is that the sexy but obviously unfair story is overwhelming the more mundane but in reality more worrying stories. The first public statement she made included large, highlighted claims that were outright lies. Supporting Alaskan independence?! That’s nutso kook territory. McCain didn’t meet with her in person somewhere in between her becoming a candidate for the vice presidency and him choosing her?! She has a history of doing whatever it takes to win an election and then making even the most uncontroversial job into a political appointment. These things are seriously worrying. They fundamentally undermine her reputation as the honest reformer. These things should be getting real coverage. They’re much more important than the pregnant daughter story, but they can’t break through. (Even the pregnant daughter story had some trouble, being purposely released at the moment that Gustav made landfall.) I can only hope that, as the tabloid story passes, some real time is spent on the actual worrying issues.
I’ve also got to say, while on the subject, that the efforts to show that she is qualified to be president are now getting somewhat ridiculous. We’ve gotten things to the effect of “Alaska is physically proximate to Russia, so she has foreign policy experience.” There was the wonderful interview on CNN where Tucker Bounds couldn’t name a single decision that Palin had made as commander of the state national guard, despite bringing that up as important experience for her. The winner, though, has got to be the person I just heard talking about how she had once “helped to run a family-owned fishing business.” I’m all for that, but by the time you are in the presidential line of succession, things like that should be pushed to not-worth-mentioning status by other things on your resume.
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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