Would McCain Have Picked Alaska Governor Barack Obama For His Running Mate?
One of the questions asked in “Answer Jake’s Question” is:
Would Sarah Palin, given her breadth of experience, history, views and issues, been selected by Sen. John McCain as his running mate if she were a man?
It is an interesting, thought-provoking question that is getting lots of interesting responses in the comments section.
As the (modified) saying goes, one good question deserves another, or perhaps better, one provoking question begets another.
This is the question “provoked” by Jake’s question:
Would John McCain have picked as his running mate a person with exactly the same qualifications, experience, background, political affiliation, etc., etc., as Sarah Palin—with the exception, of course, of gender and gender related factors and with the exception of ethnicity—if that person’s name had been Barack Hussein Obama, and if Republican Alaska Governor and ex-Wasilla-mayor Obama had still been available?
36 Responses to “Would McCain Have Picked Alaska Governor Barack Obama For His Running Mate?”
Not a chance. Michael Steele's Senate race proved that black people are simply not going to vote for Republicans en masse whether the candidate is white, black, or neon green. Granted, Maryland is a heavily Democratic state, but it is made so by inner cities dominated by African Americans and surrounding counties with incredibly diverse populations. If being an African American was seen as a huge plus that could counteract decades of GOP policies that are perceived as bad for black people, then Steele should have won that race. Instead he lost by 11 points to Ben Cardin (a nice guy, but about as exciting as bread).
I would also like to point out that saying Obama's experience is comparable to Palin's is stretching things more than a little. He's been in the US Senate for 4 years now, he was a state Senator for several years before that, and he was a community organizer for a long time before that. So that's a long time in Chicago (which I'm fairly certain outnumbers Alaska's population as whole by a great deal), a good stretch in the Illinois legislature, and now he's had a couple years to play with the big boys in Washington. He's also been managing a truly impressive campaign for the last 20 months. Palin has been governor of Alaska for less than 2 years and was mayor of a small town. She has no experience dealing with Washington. She doesn't understand the needs of large cities. She has zero foreign policy experience. So Obama may be light on experience compared to guys like Biden and McCain who've been in politics for 30 years, but he's several grades above Palin.
Maybe if Obama had lost to McCain in the primary the way that Hillary lost to Obama…
..
Would McCain pick Obama?
No way. The guy’s black.
All republicans are racists. We would burn his church down and probably drag him behind one of our pickup trucks (if you believe the liberal ads), but certainly we would never put a black person in any high government office.
Would the Democrats have picked Obama is he was a white woman and Hilliary was a black man?
That is the opposite question that should be asked. That is the question Hilliary supporters might be instered in hearing the answer to.
I agree with Amanda. The GOP tends to run black candidates that have little appeal to the African-American community– in the hopes that they will pick up votes out of racial loyalty. But black voters are smart enough to realize that the GOP's policies do not represent their interests. Many middle class and working class white Americans still have not learned that lesson.
In any case, McCain would never chance it, because many older white voters — especially in the South would never vote for a black candidate for VP. (Possible exception is Colin Powell)
Oh come on, what the hell does a community organizer even do. He is maybe one grade above in experience. Also he decided he was ready to be president only a year and a half into his term. After that he basically stopped being a senator. Palin had to not only deal with her party but actually get involved with the other side. Something Obama has barely done.
Also I personally don't think either party represents middle and working class. Sure Dems talk big but actions speak louder than words. I think the last time they really did do a lot was FDR.
BBQ-
George Bush had a history as a popular bipartisan governor– that did not enable him to work well with the other side. State politics and national politics are totally different animals. You at least have to admit that Obama is less partisan than most.
Also, the Dems did pass the minimum wage increase and passed the CHIPS bill to help the working poor pay for their children's health insurance– this was in turn vetoed by George Bush.
Minimum wage increase doesn't help middle class and neither does CHIPS. Not saying I think they are bad but don't pass them of as helping the middle class. They help poorer individuals which is certainly fine.
Also Obama has voted with his party 96% of the time. And you are correct about Bush and bipartisanship but Clinton was able to carry over that bipartisan. Granted he had too.
kritt11 – “You at least have to admit that Obama is less partisan than most.”
Given Obama's voting record in Congress, what leads you to believe that?
S-CHIP would have helped a lot of middle/working class families. According to FactCheck.org:
“He also said the program was “meant to help poor children,” when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of “low-income” children who were well above the poverty line. Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level.”
http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_false_claims_abo…
BBQ- Bush vetoed it because he claimed it was helping families that could well afford to pay for it themselves– that was the GOP's talking point, remember? And the min wage bill helps push up the pay scale which benefits the middle class.
A/R no one who truly has a bipartisan voting record in Washington would have a chance at becoming their party's nominee. Obama has run his campaign reaching out to us as Americans, and has a sizable number of Republicans and Indies who are supporting him.
Low income is not middle class. Your still hitting the same general demographic. Although some of those states are definitely getting closer.
AustinRoth, Obama has been more than willing to work with Republicans on a number of issues, including co-sponsoring bills with Tom Coburn (Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006) and Dick Lugar (Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006). He's also stated very recently that he's willing to compromise on offshore drilling if it means promoting more renewable energy sources. I'd say that's pretty non-partisan.
BTW, the Democrats have also fought against cuts in Medicare spending which hurts middle-class and working class people.
What has the GOP done that supports either besides their stand on immigration?
It primarily helps people getting paid minimum wage. Sounds good to me.
If I can just comment on jwest's response, speaking as a 25 year veteran of the GOP before I left in 2005 to be independent, I understand the snark and the way it rubs people wrong to ask questions like that. But there is also a reality to deal with. Total number of black Republican members of the House and Senate combined today? Zero. Yes, there are prominent black Republicans such as Condi and Colin Powell, but they are in appointed positions. Not the ones that have to face the test of the voting base. Until that changes, it's something that will be hard to shake off. The real question is, why does the GOP fail to break through to those demographics? For that matter, why does Obama enjoy a ten to twenty point advantage with women? The primary race was yet another good example of a slate of ten ROWGs. (Rich Old White Guys) It' hard to make ground on that argument until the voter base turns out for non-ROWGs as opposed to appointed positions.
Thanks Jazz for puttting that into the necessary perspective. The jury is far from being in when it comes to the test of voter racial “enlightenment”.
I agree completely with Jazz. The comments I heard on tv at the Democrat's convention was that the delegates attending looked like America. More importantly, the slate of candidates in the primaries also looked like America.
McCain didn't dare pick a black, Hispanic, gay or Jewish VP, and was considered a maverick for picking a white female, even though that barrier had been broken in '88 by Dukakis.
Building on what Jazz said, I think the problem the GOP has is one of perception. Whether it's right or wrong to believe so, most people would say that the GOP is an exclusionist party. You have to live a certain way and believe certain things, you have to follow the party line and there's no room for compromise. The Democratic party is seen as being much more free-form, more open to ideas.
Just looking at abortion as an example, the GOP is against it. There's a little wiggle room in cases of rape or incest or if the pregnancy is dangerous to the mother, but even that's not an across-the-board exception. With Dems, you run the spectrum from pro-choicers who think it's entirely up to the mother and any woman should be able to get one without anyone else's input, to the crowd who would ban late-term abortions, to the groups who pretty much agree with the health-risk/rape as the only justification for abortion stance.
With the GOP, there doesn't seem to be room for nuance. That's just a perception – I can't say if it's true or not. It's just how a lot of people see it.
I never really get the perception from the Dems. At least for abortion, it's always portrayed as the Dems are for abortion on demand and the GOP is against abortion in all cases.
But yeah I get mostly what you are saying that the Dems being more open to minorities but I agree less with the perception of ideas. Dems are seen as gov't will solve my problems while GOP is that you have help yourself. Even if neither are really true.
Jazz,
Republicans could make inroads into the black community if they would put their principles aside and pander like the democrats.
Naturally, we simply can’t do that.
My question is why the black community doesn’t move instinctively to the right after so many years of suffering under the left?
• In Detroit, Washington D.C. and other cities, only 20% of the kids graduate from high school. Less than that actually can read, write and do math at a high school level.
• Despite of promises every year, unemployment remains high compared to the white community.
• All other ethnic communities have passed black rates of wealth creation.
It seems that at some point, the black community would realize that the democrats have not delivered on their promises and it might be time to try something different. Prior to this election, they only had Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton as community leaders, but it finally appears people are figuring it out that these two are wholly owned subsidiaries of the democrat party.
I have to say, they've put them aside on every other issue. So why not? Because the base would implode.
Amanda – re:Obama working with Republicans. I will give you that he has worked across the aisle, but will you concede that McCain has done so more than Obama, and voted against his party more than Obama ?(as a percentage, as obviously he has had way more total votes)
I mean, that is why the GOP base dislikes and distrusts him, after all.
As for the GOP being pro or anti minority, it is a mixed bag. Most of the Republicans I have dealt with truly believe that overall, the 'nanny-state' mentality of the Left and the current Civil Rights leadership has hurt blacks and other minorities way more than they have helped them.
But in politics, perception is reality, and the point of the number of elected GOP blacks is valid. But, how many blacks would be willing to run as GOP? The few that have have been vilified by other blacks, and not been embraced as they should by the GOP hierarchy.
“My question is why the black community doesn’t move instinctively to the right after so many years of suffering under the left?”
There's always the future promise of more entitlements as well as the Perpetual Victimhood scam being run not only by the older black “leadership” but by other activists. Black Republicans and conservatives are treated as and called Uncle Toms and worse. The myth that Republicans are systematically racist, oppressive, exclusive continues to work wonders, too.
That the GOP is something of a wealthier-white-male, WASP “closed club” (the kind of stereotype used originally by Sixties activists and what was meant, in a non-racist way, by Obama when referring to whose portraits are on our currency) doesn't help the party. Otherwise, it's due to inertia (the Dems have been the Inclusion party and vote-buying party since the 1930s and those who joined the Dems then, when there was real discrimination and ill-treatement of minorities, remain Dems now, such as black and Jewish Americans from the 1930s onward and women and gays from the 1960s onward; they favor the party and side that has long been their home) as well as exploitation of this (vote-buying; demonizing the other side and party).
Republicans celebrated the “accomplishments” of Jesse Helms this year… this freaking year.
Don't sell Jesse Helms so short, he came around at the end, ask his buddy rock star Bono.
http://bellsouthpwp.net/w/a/watts4u2/bono_and_j…
<snip>
In recent years, however, Helms has worked more quietly to steer
funding for AIDS treatment and relief to Africa and other poor
nations, where the disease has become a major epidemic. In 2000, while
still chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms
co-authored legislation authorizing $600 million for such efforts.
Today, HIV and AIDS affect roughly 40 million people, according to the
World Health Organization. More than 28 million of those live in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Well, at least he attempted to make up for his many years as a segregationist at the very end. He had a lot to make up for, however, and ran out of time eventually.
DLS- Just the fact that McCain was basically forced by his party to give up the idea of a white Jewish male on the ticket in favor of a conservative Christian female, perpetuates the stereotype of an exclusive “country club” party of the wealthy and connected. Those who have positions of power within the party are deciding not to reach out.
Not all black Americans want the government to solve all of their problems, and the Democrats don't promise that any more. A Democrat reformed welfare, remember??
BBQ- The GOP blocked the Democrats' bill to increase CAFE standards which definitely would help the middle-class—just not the oil companies or GM.
No he would never pick Obama. The statements that Palin is more qualified than Obama are outrageous and, at best, borderline racist. The comparison of the former beauty queen, mayor and governor of less than 2 years to a lawyer, former law professor, accomplished community organizer and U.S. Senator, who had the wisdom and judgment to know that it would be wrong to go into Iraq, would not be uttered but for the fact that Palin is white and Barack is not. Were the situation reversed, the same people would think it absurd to declare that a white male of Barack's experience was less qualified than an African American woman with the experience of Palin. Why aren't they comparing Palin to Biden — after all they are the VP candidates? The behavior of McCain and his gang is transparent, shameful and reveals McCain's true character.
Anonymous
Columbus, OH
Amanda,
The first step to understanding republicans is to stop believing clichés and stereotypes.
I don’t know if you noticed or not, but sometimes my views tend to be a tiny bit right of center. If you asked some of the authors to profile me, they would probably follow the left wing template for someone who doesn’t march lockstep with their views.
Republicans are a diverse group. I’m an atheist, pro-abortion in the early stages, pro-life in the later stage. I can state as fact that the republican party has much more tolerance for pro-choice people than the democrat party has for pro-lifers. Coming from a solid red area, I can honestly say I don’t know anyone who is for outlawing all abortions.
Most conservatives, along with me, think that affirmative action is a degrading and insulting program that hampers progress for minorities. We don’t attribute this to some “evil” intentions of democrats, just a mindless naivety that doesn’t think through the consequences of their feel-good actions. Left wingers view this as being racist, but they think everything the right does is racist.
If you look into who really makes up the republican party, you’ll find it’s far different than left wing radicals would like you to believe.
The weird part is that jwest and I probably share a *frightening* number of issue stances in common. I'm also pro-choice in the early stages but support restrictions in the later stages of pregnancy. I'm a non-denominational spiritualist who is pro gun, anti-Iraq war, but support Afghanistan. I oppose hate crime laws and look with severe doubt on affirmative action. And yet I *left* the party because too much of it had gone away from my positions and, frankly, a lot of us (particularly in the northeast) got tired of being called RINOs and hearing the trash talking of Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Christie Todd Whitman.
See that, Amanda,
Jazz and I could do a Coke commercial together.
We’re all just one happy family.
I have to weigh in on Jazz's and jwest's views and compare them with mine… We might approach things very differently in our comments and postings but this is an interesting exercise and shows how much we have in common, when it often seems like we have nothing in common.
To use Jazz's list (and my views in parenthesis);
I'm also pro-choice in the early stages but support restrictions in the later stages of pregnancy. (Personally I'm pro-life but side with the pro-choice crowd because this is a personal issue that everyone needs to make on their own. I disagree with the religious right meddling with what I see as personal decisions, even if I happen to agree with them, such as being pro-life, on a personal level.)
I'm a non-denominational spiritualist (I can say the same- my Mom took my to a Unitarian Church, though very infrequantly. Though she raised me mostly as a Christian, I do consider myself more spiritual than Christian…. but my journey is continuing and changing.)
who is pro gun (same here, though I hate them personally, like abortion I see it as a matter of choice. Given that guns are lethal weapons I do believe in some licensing and on certain automatic/military type weapons some further restrictions.)
anti-Iraq war (same here)
but support Afghanistan (same here).
I oppose hate crime laws (I support hate crime laws- it should be an additional crime to be attacked, on top of the battery charge or whatever the underlying crime is, just because someone doesn't like your religion, skin color, etc.)
and look with severe doubt on affirmative action (I actually go back and forth on this…)
Just to touch on jwest's comment about the Republicans being more tolerant of pro-choicers than the Dems are of pro-lifers… I see this totally. The Dems view the pro-lifers, such as John McCain who want to make abortion illegal, as folks who want to shove their beliefs onto others. The Dems position as beinog pro-choice doesn't shove anyone's belief down someone's throat. No one is forcing a pro-lifer to get an abortion, whereas if the pro-lifers had their way no one would be able to choose to have an abortion.
See how much we do have in common if we just sit down and compare notes? We may not agree on everything but we can agree on some things.
There's no need to get uppity on the topic jwest. As I said above, it's a perception that the GOP is non-inclusive, not a fact. But it is something that they will have to overcome if they truly want to appeal to a broader spectrum of voters. Perhaps that means taking a risk and refusing to pander to certain blocks in their base.
And, I've actually voted for Republican candidates a few times – shocking, I know. Especially for a Progressive Democrat in Maryland. I attribute that willingness to look beyond the (R) or (D) next to candidate's name to a certain high school history & economics teacher I had. He encouraged us to look at the person more than the party which is something I try to do in each election.
Maybe what we need is a cultural shift among the voters. We really do deserve the elected officials we end up with. Whether it's out of apathy or laziness, we allow the two main parties to churn out a series of subpar politicians who care more about furthering their own goals and their party agendas than they do about improving and protecting the country.