"She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long," – Charlie Black, big McCain buddy.
At McCain’s feet? Memo to Sarah: that good old boys’ club you said you were never a part of? It just acquired you.
"I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe," – Sarah Palin, December 2006.
(In case it isn’t obvious, this is a parody, although Palin has done a photo-shoot for Vogue.)
A reader writes:
After reading through this morning’s NYT with its detailed report on Palin’s background I feel much more troubled about this than yesterday. The most worrisome element is certainly her "troopergate" incident. One of the big problems with the Bush Administration has been an attitude that the institutions of government, the perks of power, are there to be exploited for partisan purposes, which frequently enough get confused with personal advantage. McCain has promised to sweep away that sort of Republicanism with the old version that puts the notion of Honor at the core of government service.
To be fair, Palin’s record is not entirely dark–there is something very encouraging about her trajectory, from PTA to city council, to mayor to governor. But it’s got a distinctly dark side, too, which suggests emotions bubbling under the surface and a willingness to abuse power against an enemy. The next two weeks will be decisive, but I think there’s more than a small chance that this woman could go the way of Harriet Miers and Tom Eagleton.
Matt Continetti provides what is, I presume, the good faith argument for the pick. McCain is forging a reform Republicanism, and Palin, in the political sewer of Alaska, was good at taking on some of the worst offenders. I’m afraid Pawlenty would have made the argument much more effectively, and has some record of interest in domestic and foreign policy outside the small boundaries of state politics.
I’m afraid that Palin’s reform record is very premature – barely eighteen months in office running the equivalent of a small city – and her knowledge and even interest in foreign policy not just close to zero, but dead zero. I’m afraid there’s no getting around the fact that she was picked because she’s a woman (and McCain thinks Clinton female supporters are suckers for a pretty, evangelical, no-legal-abortion-ever face), because she’s an evangelical (and evangelical religious faith is now a criterion somewhere on the ticket for the GOP), because it would piss off Rove and assert McCain’s independence, and surprise all the pundits, and because he thought she was charming, telegenic and hot. Classic McCain. You want your foreign policy run with this level of impulsiveness, recklessness, and self-regard? You know who to vote for, but you will never know from one day to the next what you might get.
I would not be surprised if she is not the veep finally on the ticket. We’ll see.
Part of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article on thinking and science:
When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.
The human mind does not work that way.
It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.
Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
A reader writes:
I had been reluctant to acknowledge how flawed and dead the conservative movement has become; that’s over now. No more excuses, no more clinging to old visions of rational discourse and principled debate. I really have witnessed the death of conservatism and its replacement by a kind of toxic babbitry which would be merely laughable or cringeworthy if it were not also so extraordinarily dangerous.
This election year has been a series of revelations and disillusionments–the crudely ugly tactics of Limbaugh and Hannity (and–worse–their embrace by Buckley’s heirs at National Review), the thinly-veiled racism and nativism of the campaign against Obama, the transparently cruel and God-hating ideology of movement Christians; but–even though dismayed by McCain’s bizarre campaign–I had retained some illusions as recently as this morning. I believed McCain to be at least a patriot, sincerely concerned with issues of national security.
His nomination of Sarah Palin ended that illusion, too.
No remotely serious politician–no honest patriot–would think of placing this individual a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, however admirable she may be, however lively her biography.
Moreover, the elation on the right regarding Palin’s nomination made clear to me that none of them has ever been remotely serious about national security, either. On the contrary, as the left has insisted for years, for them it really has all been about political advantage, noise and bluster and ugliness with no core of principle, no genuine strategic commitment.
The very same people who, only yesterday, insisted that Obama’s resume was too dangerously thin to entrust him with the oversight of our national security, today are celebrating Palin’s accession as a triumph for conservatism (evidently this is because she is hostile to both abortion and polar bears). Their hypocrisy is staggering–they truly do believe in nothing but their own entitlement to power by any means.
And I’m very much afraid I must conclude this is as true of McCain as it is of his ghastly cheerleaders, the Limbaughs and the Hannitys. Nothing else could explain the elevation of a woman so singularly unqualified in every aspect save gender.
Kirchick is upset by the ousting of McCain supporter and Manhunt founder Jonathan Crutchley:
In the minds of too many on the left, gay people (like women and ethnic minorities) have to be liberal and support Democratic candidates. To do otherwise — that is, to have opinions on issues (even issues utterly unrelated to gay rights) that don’t follow the left-wing line — is to be a traitor to the gay "community."
(Hat tip: Chris Crain)
A strong paragraph from the Democratic platform:
We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.
Fallows proposes:
The image to have in mind is not Dan Quayle: a person with quite a bit of grounding in national issues who was added to the ticket in an attempt to jazz it up. Always and only the comparison should be with Clarence Thomas — with this one interesting difference. Thomas was a shrewd choice not simply because his race made it more complicated for Democrats to oppose him but also because, once confirmed, all evidence suggested to conservatives that he’d be the kind of Justice they were looking for. In Palin’s case, this seems to be a choice that looks forward to Election Day, and not one day beyond that.
Palin enthusiast Noah Millman makes an argument:
I realize, of course, that she’s totally unqualified to be President at this point in time. If McCain were to die in February 2009, I hope Palin would have the good sense to appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President, on the understanding that she would then resign and be appointed Vice President by her successor. (Lest anyone say that this is an absurd, unconstitutional or undemocratic scenario, recognize that this is pretty much what would happen in a Parliamentary system where, if the head of government dies, a successor is chosen by the party.)…
She’s not a President-in-waiting; she’s a President-in-training. That’s what Quayle was supposed to be, and to the extent he failed it was mostly because of his own personal qualities. Based on what I know of Palin, she doesn’t have that kind of problem. President-in-training is also what Nixon tried to be (he was also clearly unqualified to be President when nominated for Veep), though I don’t know that Ike saw it that way. I don’t think Palin has his problems, either.
Bottom line: the Presidency is no place for on-the-job training. But the Vice Presidency certainly can be.
The Dish 