Month: August 2008

Now I understand: she’s a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she’s not from the South.

It’s quite a symbolic pick in the current climate:

She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasila and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska’s oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004…  Palin has focused on energy and natural resources policy during her short stint in office, and she is known for her support of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a position opposed by McCain but supported by many grass-roots Republicans. Her biography on the state governor’s Web site says one of the two major pieces of legislation passed during her first legislative session was a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline.

Palin started Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office, an oversight and maintenance agency for the state’s oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure. She created the Climate Change Subcabinet that would forge a climate change strategy, according to the biography. Palin chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multistate panel "that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment," the biography says.

The one national issue where she has made a mark is drilling in ANWR.

An Ambers reader writes:

I thought you might like to know that under the heading of "Sarah Palin on Foreign Policy" at the On The Issues site for her, this is what’s listed:

"No issue stance yet recorded by OnTheIssues.org."

The more I think about it, the more staggered I am by the pick. It’s totally about electioneering (misguidedly, I’d hazard, but I don’t know enough about her to know yet) and fundamentally unserious about governing.

The first criterion for a veep – and I’m simply repeating a truism here – is that they are ready to take over at a moment’s notice. That’s especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That’s more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain’s pick with Obama’s: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.

One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.

She may be a fine person, but she’s my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.

McCain has just told us how seriously he takes the war we are in. Not seriously at all.

The Palin pick sure will win headlines. It wasn’t completely out of the blue, but it’s a little mystifying for one obvious reason. If McCain’s entire argument so far has been that Obama is too untested to be president, then how can he pick a 44-year-old first-term governor of a state with 600,000 people with no foreign policy experience whatsoever?

What this means, it seems to me, is that McCain has decided he cannot win without Clinton Democrats, and this is his attempt to win them over. He has decided that he cannot win on the experience card, so he is trying to pick the change card. Palin’s record on climate change is certainly impressive – and she seems a charming, capable person. She is certainly a different kind of pick for a Southern-based GOP. But McCain will be the oldest first term president in history with a history of health concerns. If America is concerned that Obama isn’t ready, how could anyone say Palin is?

(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty.)

Protein Wisdom:

Only in America Could such a putz be feted for such a crappy speech.  YMMV. I brought a few main things away from this:
“It’s not about me talking about me.  It’s about you talking about me talking about you.”
“I support the right of unborn rural Ohio proto-humans to wield handguns when they visit gay hospitals.”
“I staunchly opposed the Iraq War from the start, in the Illinois Senate.”
“After 8 years of Bush and McCain, it’s time for 10 years of me throughout the 57 states.”
“I’m not going to question John McCain’s patriotism, so he shouldn’t question my . . . anything.  But if he were a real man, he’d invade Pakistan and hunt bin Laden down in a cave armed only with a Bowie knife,  just as I will, if elected.”
“I have a dromedary!”

A reader writes:

I was an enthusiastic supporter of Obama in the primaries, but my ardor had cooled after he wrapped up the nomination, in no small part because I thought he was caving a little too readily on issues that mattered — offshore drilling, FISA, etc.  This speech reminded me why I was so enthusiastic about him to begin with.  It made me get out my visa card and donate again.  I’m also planning to be on the phones again, harassing the good people of VA, since my vote in DC won’t matter.  So I wouldn’t underestimate the impact on people who had tuned out because of primary fatigue and are now, well, fired up and ready to go!

The paranoid strain in American politics is alive and well:

If all you knew of Obama was what he presented to you in his speech, you would think of him as a typical Democratic politician improved by the addition of a bit more thoughtfulness and idealism than the average representative of the class. You would be amazed to learn of his extremely close relationship to a radical anti-American preacher; or that he has followed a no-enemies-to-the-left approach to politics that put him in the company of an unrepentant terrorist. You would not suspect that he favors taxpayer-funded abortion or drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants. You would not realize that he has crossed party lines far less often than McCain. You would not imagine that he had ever voted against funding for troops in war zones. It would not cross your mind that this denouncer of hardball, self-interested politics might be having his campaign intimidate reporters out of looking into his record.

What you see here is something quite simple. Instead of addressing the policies and arguments Obama made, Punnuru argues that you have to rip off the mask that actually disguises a terror-loving, far-leftist, baby-killing, troop-betraying anti-American. In one paragraph, Ponnuru sums up the McCain campaign so far. All I can say, apart from being amazed at how vicious and surreal the attacks are, is the following: it didn’t work for Clinton. And she had some popular policies behind her.

A reader writes:

Please consider what it means to sign off with the trite phrase "Know hope."  I say this as a California Republican-turned-independent who decided long ago to vote for Obama.  You are an emotional person, whose writing is informed and strengthened by that emotion.  But you lose your reserve, your skepticism when you take up campaign slogans, and it’s just plain silly.  I would roll my eyes just the same were you blogging in ’84, concluding posts with "It’s morning again in America."

It’s not a campagn slogan, so far as I know. It’s a phrase that originated in Israel as a way to hope for peace and reconciliation even in the darkest hours of war. I’ve used it for other stories and other issues. But good to hear it grates on some.

Ross has the sharpest critique of the speech I’ve seen:

The whole thing felt schizophrenic – part Clintonian laundry-list, part McCain-bashing polemic, part "beyond red and blue" peroration – and watching it I was left with the impression that Obama would have been better off just sticking with the high-flown inspirational style that got him here, and waiting for the debates to recast himself as the meat-and-potatoes guy who can throw a punch and get down into the policy weeds.

 

Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and you can see what Obama and his speechwriters were trying to do – namely, have the best of both worlds, by being soaring and substance-oriented, combative and post-partisan. But the substance was predictable, thin, and rife with pandering, the combativeness felt faintly inappropriate, and the speech didn’t soar nearly as much as it should have. It was a historic evening, for Obama and for America, and there were moments that gave me shivers just watching on TV – but if you didn’t go in sold on the Democratic nominee, I think it was ultimately something of a letdown.

We’ll see. He couldn’t repeat the primary theme; and his main job last night was to raise the Democratic numbers to McCain’s among Republicans. In that, I think it was more than successful, it was triumphant. I worry about some of the liberal boilerplate. I can see why ideological conservatives would have found much of it distasteful. But temperamental conservatives – those who fear what Bush has done to conservatism more than what Obama can do for liberalism – will not be so quick off the mark. Obama is not promising a return to the Great Society. Sure, he is nonetheless a liberal. But sometimes, a re-balancing of the polity after a period of over-reach from one side is not so bad an idea.

I’d like to support a conservative not beholden to the religious right, not indifferent to fiscal degeneracy, respectful of the constitution, hostile to torture, tough with foreign enemies but eager for new and old allies, and intent on making government smaller and leaner and more effective. Such a conservative is not available, and unless the GOP is reformed root and branch by a new generation, there won’t be one available for a long while.

"A lot of people are emailing me to say that they have made their first McCain donation tonight. Maybe McCain shouldn’t speak next week and replay this instead?" – Kathryn-Jean Lopez.