Cut Sarah Palin No Slack Nor the Man Who Chose Her

Cut Sarah Palin No Slack Nor the Man Who Chose Her

Today on NPR's Morning Edition, Senator McCain proved his knight-errantry by rushing to the defense of his damsel-in-distress, Governor Sarah Palin, whose performance in a couple of TV interviews with Katie Couric has demonstrated that like “there's no 'there' there.”

At least not when it comes to foreign policy, whether or not the financial crisis will lead to a another Great Depression, or any specific examples of Senator McCain supporting regulatory legislation during his twenty plus years in office.

Her floundering responses made many viewers, and a growing number of conservatives, think out loud that this choice of a running mate was not the brilliant strategic stroke it seemed at the Republican Convention, especially since Governor Palin is clearly not ready for prime time, much less the White House.

But this morning Senator McCain, who seems to think it a virtue to stick with a decision once made, however impulsive and wrong-headed, still insisted that Palin was a good choice, and a better one than Senator Obama or Biden, a comparison you'd think he would have avoided rather than sought.

Asked “what specifically do you believe that Alaska's proximity to Russia adds to Palin's foreign policy qualifications,” McCain responded with a vague reference to “the fact that they have had certain relationships,” and then immediately turned the question to Palin's energy experience, knowing full well that he was not going to be asked what those “certain relationships” might be, much less how they might relate to foreign policy.

McCain then made the tired political rhetorical gesture of suggesting that all the fuss over Palin's lack of qualifications was nothing more than “Georgetown cocktail party” gossip (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95240063).
In fact, listening to Steve Inskeep interview Senator McCain, I could not help thinking that the Senator hopes that voters will be lulled into what Jonathan Swift once defined as “the sublime and refined point of felicity, called the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves,” (“A Digression upon Madness” from A Tale of A Tub).

When Senator McCain defends his choice of Sarah Palin and the paucity of her qualifications, he is either a knave or a fool. When he claims that her critics are a group of cocktail party lightweights, he ignores a growing chorus of criticism from conservatives ranging from Senator Chuck Hagel to David Frum to George Will and Kathleen Park.

In some ways, Palin has been given a more sympathetic response from many on the left, who seem to feel almost a need to apologize for the position McCain's handlers have put her in before they can bring themselves to criticize her. For example, NPR's Nina Totenberg started her assessment of Palin by stating, “There's no way to sugarcoat this. After a brilliant debut at the Republican National Convention and a speech that electrified the delegates and the country, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is struggling in her second act,” (Morning Edition, 9/30/08, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95196691).

A bracing dash of cold water on this “pity party” comes from Salon's Rebecca Traister, who writes that: “Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics,” (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/30/palin_pity/).

Traister is absolutely right that the 2008 campaign has proven to be one more betrayal for those, men and women like, who hoped that this election season, women would be judged on their merits, not their looks, and that any woman who had a reasonable hope of making it to the White House would not be going there as an “arm piece” or just because she's a woman.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was a slap in the face, not only to all the Hilary Clinton supporters who were so devoted to her because of her hard work, her intellect, and her grasp of complicated policy issues, but also to the many highly experienced and articulate Republican women he could have chosen – like Elizabeth Dole, Olympia Snow, or even Condi Rice. (And wouldn't she have enjoyed playing the role of Dick Cheney for a change?)

The fact that Sarah Palin has already performed so poorly in the few interviews she has given should not set the bar lower for this Thursday's upcoming debate. Instead, this debate should be viewed as her last chance to stop mouthing platitudes and giving her convention speech over and over, and prove to the public that she really does know something about the major domestic and foreign policy issues she will need to face if she makes it to the White House.

After all, this is the woman that John McCain cynically handed to the voters as a possible Hilary Clinton replacement. Let her prove that the comparison is anything but laughable.

Yet Palin also has another reason to prove herself at Thursday night's debate. Voters cannot help but consider that if John McCain is elected, his age does raise the prospect that Palin might have to take on the responsibilities of president alone.

That possibility offers a very serious reason to treat Palin's performance as more than just a debate but rather as a dress rehearsal for the White House. And finally, however well or badly she does on Thursday night, her performance must also be taken as a reflection on John McCain, and the judgment he showed in selecting her as his running mate and his possible replacement in the Oval Office.