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Sen. John McCain isn’t the first presidential candidate to select a relative unknown as his vice presidential running mate. In my lifetime, both political parties have picked some doozies: Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Miller and Spiro Agnew, to name a few. But when you’re 72 and constantly complaining about your opponent’s lack of experience, how can you bypass people like Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge to select Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska for just 18 months?
Palin soon could be just a heartbeat away from the presidency. A year-and-a-half ago, she was the mayor of a small town in Alaska, although it could just as well have been Cherry Hill, N.J. The Republicans are trying to sell her as someone with executive experience from an important energy-producing state. If that were the criteria, all of the other people on McCain’s reported short list have more executive experience than Gov. Palin. In addition, Palin is in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, something McCain has steadfastly opposed. One could question if McCain knows Palin any better than the rest of America. Why, then, did he pick her over the other more highly qualified candidates?
When the Democrats put the little-known Ferraro on their ticket in 1984, Republicans rightly griped it was a cynical ploy to get the women’s vote. There is no other way to view the selection of the relatively obscure Palin. McCain’s surprise is nothing but political cynicism wrapped in an attractive package.
Palin isn’t even the most qualified woman from which McCain had to choose. He passed over Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose experience as a senator should have made her a no-brainer if McCain wanted to break the glass ceiling. Sen. Hutchison’s credentials as a foreign-policy expert would have made her an ideal choice to face off against Joe Biden in the coming vice presidential debate. Hutchison isn’t as young and pretty as Palin, but America would be far better off if she were next in line in case McCain’s health falters.
McCain is desperately trying to appeal to the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters with his choice, but Alaska’s governor pales by comparison, if you’ll pardon the pun. To think Palin and Clinton have anything in common, other than their gender, is patronizing to women voters. Besides her lack of experience, Palin opposes everything Clinton voters hold dear, including the right to choose. It’s the kind of condescension that proposes all women think alike, and that gender is the only important issue to them. It’s like putting Clarence Thomas on the ticket and telling African Americans you can vote for Thomas instead of Barack Obama. It’s insulting and the old McCain would have known that.
The problem is it is painfully obvious the old McCain is gone. The new McCain’s embrace of George W. Bush in 2004 was more than a symbolic hug. It was McCain’s admission that if he wanted to be nominated for president in the Republican Party, he would have to make a Faustian bargain for his soul. The old McCain once told an interviewer if his daughter had an unwanted pregnancy, he might view the right to choose differently. The new McCain is ready to throw Roe v. Wade under the bus and leave women, including his daughter, subject to the whims of mostly male state legislatures. The old McCain opposed offshore drilling because of the threat to the environment. The new McCain believes we can drill our way out our dependency on foreign oil. The old McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts because they were a giveaway to the affluent. The new McCain wants to extend the tax cuts, even in the face of record deficits. The old McCain opposed our interventions in Lebanon and Kosovo. The new McCain is against any timeline to get us out of Iraq.
In a sense, McCain, one of our noblest heroes, is a prisoner all over again. He is a prisoner to the failed policies of the Republican Party and Bush. In order to lead his party, McCain had to be willing to wear the shackles of all of its failures these last eight years. In order to play the game, he had to nominate a running mate he hardly knows, who is dramatically unqualified to step into the presidency. He has inadvertently made his age a major consideration for voters. When McCain steps on the stage in Minneapolis-St. Paul to accept his party’s nomination, it will be as if they led him on in shackles. An honored hero had to dishonor himself and most of what he believes in to gain the support of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the others who never had time for the old McCain. It is much too high a price to pay.
