What exactly can one make of the vice presidential candidates?
Joseph Biden is a logical, if slightly conventional selection. Due to his long and illustrious career as a senator, he carries a good deal of automatic name recognition, has diverse experience in foreign policy, and is a fearsome debater. He does, of course, also occasionally have lapses in tact; most recently, he made headlines by memorably describing—of all people—Senator Obama as an “articulate and bright and clean” African-American, a slippery kind of qualification which although strictly true probably had racial overtones. To some, this is precisely Biden’s charm; he’s an ordinary, plainspoken guy with a degree from a state school, a conventional upbringing, and the manners to match. And as far as proper political affairs are concerned, his inclusion does shore up support in some critical areas, namely among those who were concerned about Obama’s lack of experience in foreign policy, those who were concerned about his lack of experience in general, and those who had concerns about his so-called “elitism.” On the balance, Biden completes the ticket as well as did anyone else in the selection field.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is something of a baffling choice. One’s immediate analysis is almost embarrassing in its simplicity; is it actually possible that the GOP has blown its vice president pick to pander to disenfranchised women angered by what they saw as Hillary’s active exclusion from the process? It’s always important to remember the immense sophistication and nuance of the GOP political machine and their proven track record, but what else could it possibly be? Ms. Palin’s dossier certainly doesn’t suggest otherwise; she’s inexperienced, nullifying their own mantra, and she’s a governor sequestered in a non-contiguous state with little influence over national policy in an election of senators with national experience. And although she is rather popular in her home state, she has virtually no name recognition in the rest of the country and is currently under investigation. So supposing the vagina gambit to be the case, this stupid and transparent maneuver fails for two reasons: not only will Hillary’s supporters never flock to McCain en masse, he has lost his own critical opportunity to rally his native constituency.
On the first, neither McCain nor Ms. Palin represent the political interests of Clinton’s prospective voters. No woman who considers herself a Clinton feminist will cast a ballot for a duo who don’t favor coverage for contraceptives and don’t support abortion rights. The so-called “disenfranchised” will continue to complain vociferously, and a few might even abstain in November, but those who cross the aisle will do so in small numbers. With her gracious Wednesday night speech, Clinton herself saw to that. And on the second, he has lost his only opportunity to mute the objections of his detractors on the far right, who remember his moderate, “maverick” rhetoric. Selecting someone with strong conservative credentials was the only way to avoid a severely depressed evangelical vote, and he effectively sealed it. Palin has some conservative positions, certainly, but not all of the correct ones, and not in the preferred tradition. The ticket remains without genuine credibility.
Based on all of this, I can only make the following conjecture: Palin was obviously not a departmental selection, and was certainly not the choice of the mainstream GOP consortium. Senator McCain must have made this choice largely—if not entirely—by himself, relatively free from outside influence. Romney, Pawlenty, Ridge, Lieberman, and a host of others, despite their weaknesses, are much better and more qualified choices. Palin is at best an unorthodox choice, and at worst a fatal mistake.
