Michael Kinsley, writing in his unique style in the Washington Post, on Republican Senator John McCain’s pick for Vice President Gov. Sarah Palin:
It seems like only yesterday that the Republican Party was complaining about Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy “experience.” (As a matter of fact, when I started writing this, it actually was yesterday.) Even now, the Republican National Committee’s main anti-Obama Web site has the witty address http://www.notready08.com. The contrast in experience, especially foreign policy experience, between John McCain and Obama was supposed to be the central focus of McCain’s campaign,
But that’s so five minutes ago, before Sarah Palin. Already, conservative pundits have come up with creative explanations for McCain’s choice of a vice presidential running mate with essentially no foreign policy experience. First prize (so far) goes to Michael Barone, who notes on the U.S. News and World Report blog that “Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II.” I think we need to know what Sarah Palin has done, in her year and change as governor of Alaska, to protect the freedom of the Aleutian Islands before deciding how many foreign policy experience credits she deserves on their account.
And then he writes this:
We all know that modern political campaigns choose their issues from the cafeteria line, after market-testing them and then having them professionally framed. Rarely, though, are we offered such a clear and unarguable example. How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama’s background and job history are inadequate experience for a president and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin’s background and job history are adequate? It’s possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been — what’s the word? — lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain’s choice.
This is especially damning to McCain because his case for himself (besides not being Obama, a standard under which many of us might qualify) has rested on his honor and integrity. The North Vietnamese couldn’t break him, and neither could the Brahmins of his own party in the Senate. He was a maverick who always told it straight.
So much for that.
Indeed.
People who are giddy over Palin because she’s anti-choice should come out and simply say they’re giddy because of that. People who are excited because the GOP is now running the same kind of historical ticket that Walter Mondale did, should simply come out and say that.
Some Americans today have sworn off belonging to political parties because of partisans’ penchant to totally discard their previous line of attack and most passionately-held values to defend something when it involves their own “sports team” (you always yell at the other team if they do something that can be criticized and defend your own team like it’s not the same thing if your team does it, no matter what). Will most Americans buy this line of defense which is so transparently… a defense?
This isn’t a matter of being pro-GOP or anti-GOP or pro-Palin or anti-Palin. It’s a matter of accuracy and the growing belief in politics that if you repeat a talking defense point long enough it will be accepted as fact.
The question is this: if Barack Obama had picked a similarly dark-horse Democrat with Palin’s exact experience at the eleventh hour to run with him would Republicans say they had to concede that it was a terrific choice because Alaska is so close to Russia? Or would Sean, Rush, and Bill be all over it like a cheap suit and the RNC already be flooding the airwaves with negative campaign ads?
We all know the answer and Republicans do, too.
So much for that…
Cartoon by Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons
UPDATE: Be sure to read Big Tent Democrat, one of the best bloggers on the left.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.