Bill Kristol Lowers His Standard on “Experience”

Well, Bill Kristol, who spent a whole afternoon “with Palin a little over a year ago in Juneau,”—probably more than McCain spent with Palin before “vetting” her last week—is excited about McCain’s “bold vice-presidential pick,” and, after having “followed her career pretty closely,” believes that she “can pull it off” in “A Star Is Born?”

After having harped for 18 months about Barack Obama’s alleged lack of experience, Kristol dismisses Palin’s real lack of experience by continuing to use the newly minted Republican benchmark that “She’s only running for the No. 2 job, after all…”, and “McCain doesn’t need a foreign policy expert as vice president to help him out.”

Kristol chimes in with what Charlie Black, one of McCain’s top advisers, is quoted as having said by the New York Times: “She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years…”

Never mind that she’ll be literally a heartbeat away from stepping into the No. 1 job, considering McCain’s age, his history with skin cancer, and the uncertainties of life. Never mind, that she may not have four years, or one year, or one day to “learn at the foot of the master.”

And, by the way, the fact that Alaska has a border with Russia doesn’t really count as “foreign experience.” Nor do her stops in Ireland and Germany during what may have been her only foreign travel. She did visit Kuwait, not Iraq, during her extensive globetrotting. According to the New York Times, she didn’t even have a passport until 2007. That doesn’t mean, however, that she may not have had extensive foreign travel and gathered an impressive amount of foreign experience with vacation trips to Mexico and the Caribbean, before passports were required.

Even Kristol admits that “McCain has gambled boldly” on this “bold” pick, and asks, “But what was McCain’s alternative?”

Well, McCain’s alternatives were Lieberman, Romney, Huckabee, Hutchison, Bobby Jindal, Charlie Christ, Tim Pawlenty, Tom Ridge, etc., etc. But, of course, these candidates did not nearly have the experience of Palin.

Finally, and strangely enough, Kristol agrees with what Obama has been offering America all along, and with what the American people want by pointing out that:

…the crucial political fact is that the Obama campaign no longer has a monopoly on “the courage to change.” Facing an electorate that wants change, McCain has given himself a fighting chance to win the election.

Wow, wasn’t “change” something else Bill Kristol has been ridiculing Obama for all along?

The fact that Bill Kristol isn’t sure about anything anymore with respect to McCain is perhaps best illustrated by the question mark in the title of his piece, “A Star Is Born?”